New Spectrum ports for C64!

[Pegaz]

A few very interesting Spectrum ports for c64 have arrived or announced and they are all in hires mode, which is not so common on breadbin:
The real surprise is Alien Neoplasma in wip stage and looks really good:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmRNHrMDsi8

The other two games are Lala Prologue and Tenebra Macabre, also very well-executed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySRqboRRvVo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOzqUAkWqNE

[R-Tape]

Brilliant. It has to be said that the colours really suit these games. The low emergency lighting in Aliens, and surprisingly Tenabre, which I would have thought needed to be very bright.

What are the restrictions involved with using hi-res?

[Pegaz]

Brilliant. It has to be said that the colours really suit these games. The low emergency lighting in Aliens, and surprisingly Tenabre, which I would have thought needed to be very bright.

What are the restrictions involved with using hi-res?

Same as Spectrum, two colors per attribute, but with one major advantage.
Hardware sprites can have an independent color palette in relation to the hires background screen, which makes the color clash easy to avoid.
Also, each individual sprites can have one transparent color, as you can see in Aliens Neoplasma, for example.

[Joefish]

A trick a lot of later C64 games used was to use a low-res multicolour sprite with a hi-res one in black over the top of it, to give it sharper outlines.

One restriction that dictates the look of a lot of C64 games is that each sprite only has one unique colour to itself. So a single-colour hi-res sprite is fine, but a low-res 3-colour sprite actually shares 2 of its colours with all the other sprites on the screen. That's why so many shoot-em-ups have a faded metallic look, as all the sprites share e.g. light grey and dark grey for shading, then one extra colour each. Or a platform game might use pale yellow and brown or dark green as common colours, then try to make all sorts of creature sprites with just one extra colour.

[Pegaz]

Well, it doesnt seem to me, that this limitation affects too much if the game is carefully designed.
btw, here's another awesome hires game, definitely something good happens with the c64 scene lately.
I would like to see this game on Spectrum, maybe it is possible to do something like this with the Nirvana engine?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-aaSljeonQ

[zxbruno]

Reminds me of Myth, Rick Dangerous and Prince of Persia.

[majikeyric]

Hi!

Thanks for your post
I'm the C64 coder of the first 3 ports mentioned, I love Spectrum scene and follow it carefully, ZX scene productivity and creativity are incredible!
I also ported :
Zombie Calavera Prologue : https://csdb.dk/release/?id=170788
Robots Rumble: https://majikeyric.itch.io/robots-rumble

Notice that I also ported all these games to CPlus/4 and VIC20 (can be downloaded from Pouet)

[Pegaz]

Hi and welcome to the sc forum.
Thanks for these great games, it's a pleasure to playing such a faithful Spectrum ports on c64.
Can you share a download link for Robots Rumble, I cant find it?

[Pegaz]

Sorry, I just saw that it was in development...

[Ralf]

Hi !
Your ports are really good. It's obvious that you have a lot of love both for C64 and Spectrum.

Don't be afraid to post here on these forums We are mostly friendly, reasonable men who have never been fanboys/haters
and while we prefer Spectrum (that's why we are here), we have a lot of admiration for other retro platforms too.

[Ralf]

I would like to see this game on Spectrum, maybe it is possible to do something like this with the Nirvana engine?

Nice platformer. Seems quite easy and straightforward to implement on Spectrum - no scrolling, small sprites and graphics that you
can port without any work.

[Pegaz]

Yeah, I think the same.
The only question is, how to fit the main character in a pretty colorfull background without color clash?
btw, the game has an interesting background, it was originally made for the Colecovision console, and then its ported to SNES and c64.
I also saw the announcement for the msx version but I'm not sure if it's finished.
Probably an even better candidate for conversion is the c64 game Barnsley Badger, apparently inspired by Monty Mole series:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9nzSNvsTtA
 

[majikeyric]

Your ports are really good. It's obvious that you have a lot of love both for C64 and Spectrum.

Don't be afraid to post here on these forums We are mostly friendly, reasonable men who have never been fanboys/haters
and while we prefer Spectrum (that's why we are here), we have a lot of admiration for other retro platforms too.

Thanks guys, ho I visit the forum very often, it's my favorite ZX Spectrum related forum.

Also I'm waiting for a second kickstarter run to grab a ZX Next

I had even experienced ZX spectrum coding some years ago,
I wanted to port my C64 game Bug Hunt ( https://csdb.dk/release/?id=146979 ) to the speccy.
Unfortunately I realized that there were a bit too many sprites to make it run at decent speed.
And I don't like too much Z80 asm
buggy WIP demo :
[media]https://youtu.be/CKSVuHzgSig[/media]

[Ast A. Moore]

Bug Hunt looks like a lot of fun. Reminds me of Koji the Frog for older Macs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIU_A8jEF-U

I think a Speccy port is quite doable. You should keep at it.