'Inspired by' suggestions

[Alessandro]

Code Masters' Kamikaze seems to be inspired by Namco's Sky Kid coin-op.

✓ Reviewed

[Ersh]

Seems this thread has been overlooked, so I'll give this a bump.
Would be nice if the following games mentioned above could have an "inspired by".

Crime Busters – inspired by Mappy (Arcade)
Pi There! - inspired by I, Robot (Arcade)
Robon – inspired by Berzerk (Arcade)
Kamikaze – inspired by Sky Kid (Arcade)

✓ Reviewed

[Cosmium]

Robon by Softek is clearly inspired by Berzerk arcade game:

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index. ... &id=4185

It certainly was! It's one of the arcade games I was recently referring to here: Re: What do you now know many years later

along with
Megapede inspired by Centipede
Repulsar inspired by Missile Command
as correctly catalogued in the DB.

[Cosmium]

Yes, you'd have a striped bitmap and draw the squares by mapping the level design onto alternate INK / PAPER values across the row. That's how Knot in 3D works.

Sounds interesting! I've always wondered how Know in 3D achieved it's clever display. Can you elaborate some more on how it was done?

[Joefish]

Yes, you'd have a striped bitmap and draw the squares by mapping the level design onto alternate INK / PAPER values across the row. That's how Knot in 3D works.

Sounds interesting! I've always wondered how Know in 3D achieved it's clever display. Can you elaborate some more on how it was done?

Pause the game in an emulator and just save off the screen pixel bytes (6144 bytes from address 16384). Then reset the emulator to the black/white startup page of 48K BASIC and load those pixels back in. You'll see a pattern of diagonal wedges drawn on the screen. By colouring them in particular patterns you can get the appearance of solid blocks.

[Cosmium]

Sounds interesting! I've always wondered how Know in 3D achieved it's clever display. Can you elaborate some more on how it was done?

Pause the game in an emulator and just save off the screen pixel bytes (6144 bytes from address 16384). Then reset the emulator to the black/white startup page of 48K BASIC and load those pixels back in. You'll see a pattern of diagonal wedges drawn on the screen. By colouring them in particular patterns you can get the appearance of solid blocks.

Oh yeah, so I see.. so only needing to manipulate the ATTRs instead of the whole bitmap to animate the display, and so using 1/8th the CPU. Clever stuff.

I really liked this game back in the day and got quite lost in it (literally!). There wasn't much else like it. It's good now to have an appreciation of how it was achieved. Thanks

[Joefish]

Oh yeah, so I see.. so only needing to manipulate the ATTRs instead of the whole bitmap to animate the display, and so using 1/8th the CPU. Clever stuff.

I really liked this game back in the day and got quite lost in it (literally!). There wasn't much else like it. It's good now to have an appreciation of how it was achieved. Thanks

Yes, it's clever. I'm not sure of the extent to which it can render blocks around you. I suspect it's limited to something like a 3x3 grid up to four of five blocks ahead of you, with anything outside that stretching off to infinity - or at least to the edges of the screen. It just all goes by too quickly to really be sure. But not really good enough to do something like a 3D platform or exploration game, since far-off blocks can't be seen properly as individual cubes.

Although the technique could be adapted for some sort of 2.5D platform game, where player movement is limited to certain planes, so you can control to what extent you need to draw the local blocks.

[PeterJ]

The SAM Coupe game 'The Lost Disks of SAM'

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/3 ... sks_of_SAM

Was inspired by a game written by some bloke called [mention]R-Tape[/mention]:

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/2 ... _of_Albion

Supporting evidence here:

https://www.worldofsam.org/products/lost-disks-sam

✓ Reviewed

[druellan]

Oh Mummy 2021 (https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/3 ... Mummy_2021) is of course inspired by Oh Mummy (https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/3 ... m/Oh_Mummy)

✓ Reviewed

[StanVanman]

This is pretty obviously inspired by Xevious:

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/1 ... trum/Orbit

The SAM Coupe game 'The Lost Disks of SAM'

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/3 ... sks_of_SAM

Was inspired by a game written by some bloke called @R-Tape:

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/2 ... _of_Albion

Supporting evidence here:

https://www.worldofsam.org/products/lost-disks-sam

✓ Reviewed

See also:

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/3 ... ts_in_Hell

and

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/2 ... _Beautiful

✓ Reviewed