Spectrum Computing

I think possibly not quite up to the speed of the remake, however, I think if the routines were all optimised well and the sprite routines unrolled, then a decent speed can be achieved. There are no nasties in the video yet, just the sparkly throwy thing that bounces around. No objects in the rooms can be physically moved, and theres no food items either, so all that would have to be considered.

Perhaps if we ask Craig nicely he'll redesign everything to suit 256 pixel width

Well, you have Bobby Bearing (https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.php?cat=96&id=606), smaller graphics, but pretty fast, and wonderful physics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWG6utK3KCI

Bobby Bearing is my absolute favorite isometric game, EVER!

Unfortunately though it slows down rather a lot with more than just Bobby in the room

Morkin wrote: ↑Thu Sep 06, 2018 11:45 am This has got me thinking if there were many fast moving iso games on the Speccy.

Spindizzy was pretty fast if you errm..went fast.

Head over Heals was pretty fast compared to the likes of Knighlore and I don't remember there being quite as much sloooowww doooowwwwwn when there was a lot happening on the screen.

I'm ripping the graphics at the moment to try a few experimental mock-ups! Hehe

1K 3d Atic Atac ftw!

1k! Thats far too big, aiming for 256 bytes actually!

arkannoyed wrote: ↑Thu Sep 06, 2018 2:16 pm I'm ripping the graphics at the moment to try a few experimental mock-ups! Hehe

(waits expectantly to see the Atic Atac knight running around a chessboard)

Morkin wrote: ↑Thu Sep 06, 2018 4:31 pm

arkannoyed wrote: ↑Thu Sep 06, 2018 2:16 pm I'm ripping the graphics at the moment to try a few experimental mock-ups! Hehe

(waits expectantly to see the Atic Atac knight running around a chessboard)

Well, actually....Sabreman did have an outing on the chessboard if I recall.

Quazatron was pretty zippy - that was all designed so you could never pass behind scenery. In this case you would just have to order the sprites and overlay the two nearest doors. Just Nightshade without the scrolling. Though you'd want 8-way movement.

arkannoyed wrote: ↑Thu Sep 06, 2018 12:08 pm Perhaps if we ask Craig nicely he'll redesign everything to suit 256 pixel width

Hah, the technical details are all out of my hands, really. I'm just designing and creating all the graphics while Richard refines his game engine. I have stated, though, that if anyone were to attempt a Spectrum conversion (well, a Spectrum Next version), that I'd make all the graphics available, though I suspect some would have to be amended slightly. We're currently trying to sort out some technical gameplay issues regarding the doors and room objects as well as where to place to door frame. Let's just say that the gameplay itself is (and will) continually be tweaked so that you still get that Atic Atac playability experience in an isometric viewpoint. The things is, we're not just throwing this together quickly and chucking it out there. I have long list of graphics to produce, half of them have animation of some sort.

Joefish wrote: ↑Mon Sep 10, 2018 6:39 pm Though you'd want 8-way movement.

The footage revealed so far is using a test character (is it from Nightshade? I can't remember) as a stand in until I create all 4 playable characters. We might leave the demo character in there as wee unlockable. Each character, and enemy, will have 8 frames of animation and 8-way movement.

We've had some nice encouragement from a few ex-Rare staff, as well as from a couple of developers from the Spectrum days and the creator of the recent isometric game "Lumo" (prompting me to get meta and to include "Lumo" easter eggs into my list of graphics).

It's going to a lot of hard work for the 3 man team (yes, we even have a musician and he's produced a lot of cracking Spectrum and other game music over the years).

AWESOME!!!!!

The character you've used in the demo is the guard from Knight Lore, which only has 6 frames of animation (as does Sabreman, but with the optional head-looking-left-or-right frame). The guard sprite is actually quite an efficient sprite, and as with many of Ultimates characters, the top and bottom are separate. basically the guards top half is one frame and his legs 6 frames.

Eight way movement would make each character need 8x6 (48 frames) on the Speccy, and to be as fast as possible, no flipping can happen on the fly really, so it'll be quite a heavy load of maybe 15k per character if you include the masks too.

Thankfully, that’s something I don’t have to worry about and if it was going to be ported to a Spectrum, it’d be someone else’s problem Also just leave out 2 frames of animation...2 of the characters you won’t really see their legs (and I haven’t decided about their arm animation) so 8 frames may not be needed for these on a Spectrum at least. I’ll still be creating 8 frames regardless.
I suppose you could just use 4 directions in a Speccy conversion, it still works as can be seen in the demo.

4 directions might work well enough if the speed were there. If it ended up being a slow old pony, with boring clunky movement, then even 16 way movement wouldn't help I suppose.

Much of the graphic content is however quite compressable it would appear, which certainly helps from a Speccy point of view!

I have almost managed to build a room with the floorboards wall stone features and doorways based upon an 8x8 sized layout. Doesn't look like it'll be too crowded.

The original only has 3 room sizes which are roughly equivalent to 8x8, 6x8 and 8x6, then the stairwells too of course.

I know you’re only doing this as a proof of concept and all, but since that original screen, the doorways have been move “back” from the main play area so that the frame is flush with the edge much like the original Atic Atac and Knight Lore i.e. the frame doesn’t stick out. That also means the skirting bricks have changed and, with no actual doors yet, you can see the floorboards of a next room fading into darkness through the open door. S’all about the play testing early on.

Sounds interesting, would love to see a picture of that

I did start to consider the difficulties with collision etc with the doorways protruding into the play area.

arkannoyed wrote: ↑Tue Sep 11, 2018 12:56 pm Sounds interesting, would love to see a picture of that

I did start to consider the difficulties with collision etc with the doorways protruding into the play area.

Bingo! The answer to that is “difficult” and “annoying as fu[REDACTED]”

Well, not so much difficult, just a pain. With it sticking out into the play area, it’s easy to get caught on it and the helpful nudge you get to go through a door won’t help with that. What was interesting to see was just how many people thought that Knight Lore’s door frames protruded into the play area when in actual fact they don’t.

Just giving the inner part of the doorway some depth give plenty of feeling without actually having to make it get in the way.

The table seemed to be a bit out of proportion when I first saw it, but when you compare it with the item in the original, it is about right. Still seems quite an oversized item in the room though. Need somewhere to put the candle though!

Nothing will be in the correct proportion, but that’s deliberate and deliberate for various reasons.

In the original Atic Atac, the table serves no purpose except to be an obstacle to slow down progress it would seem!

Is it likely, the Hunchback, Zombie, Dracula and the Mummy will be making and appearance?

Perhaps tiny Stampers (Tim, Chris) could be hidden somewhere!

That sounds a lot like a song lyric! Hold me closer tiny Stamper?!

All the basic core game and objects will be there, of course, but we’re not doing a straight remake with an isometric viewpoint, though. Note that there are now 4 playable characters, and there are chests! What can the chests possibly do and they aren’t just set dressing. That’s just a couple of things, though.

Intriguing....