I'm curious of what Spectrum Next owners/players feel the graphics for Next games should look like.
From this image which number do you feel matches your expectations for a Next game?
Also what is your computer history, have you only ever owned a Spectrum machine?
So I owned a 48K Speccy in the 80s before upgrading to a C64 and later an Amiga 600. Graphically I preferred the C64 over the Speccy and sometimes the Amiga, though there were exceptions Cobra on ZX & Creatures on C64 beating the superior machine versions.
Very interesting question. There have been a number of discussions recently about what the Next is, or should be, as well as what the Speccy is and was... Without inflaming the wars again... my view is not that simple, but I'll hopefully explain it clearly.
A game should have a style. Often that is inherited from the host system, often designers want to move away from that as a statement. Think about character sets for a moment. There is a statement being made when someone redefines the character set, over using the default Sinclair set. The same with palettes and use of enhanced modes like ULA+ and Layer 2. It is about the game, not the platform. Unless you want it to be about the platform.
I see merit in all four approaches if it fits the game or you want to make a statement that this is or isn't a 'Next' game. Subjectively, I like 1 and 4 over 2 and 3. I like that saturated look.
I'd be very interested to see if a Next style emerges or if people use a mix of old Speccy and new tech.
To answer your secondary question, I had a 16k Speccy, a +3 then moved to Amigas and PCs / Mac and now I'm back with a Next
These styles represent
1 - Normal Speccy 16 colour(with colour clash)
2 - Speccy like 16 colour with more colours allowed on tiles (no colour clash)
3 - 8bit machine 32 colour with palette limations for sprites/tiles(no colour clash)
4 - 16bit machine 256+ colour less palette limations for sprites/tiles(no colour clash)
Last edited by UltraNarwhal on Tue Aug 11, 2020 5:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The nearest for me would probably be style 2. My ideal is high res, no colour clash using the original spectrum palette only, with perhaps a couple more variations on the brightness of the original colours. Anything else to me just looks like Atari ST/Amiga, which while nice just doesn't invoke the same 'feel' of the Speccy. I was glad they didn't implement the SID in the next for similar reasons.
Ninja edit: I think that's why Melkhiors Mansion looks so appealing. Use the extra resolution and frame rate, by all means, keep the original, vibrant palette as is.
Last edited by DouglasReynholm on Tue Aug 11, 2020 6:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Just a technical comment that “32” in the poll doesn’t relate to anything meaningful in the Next spec. The spec allow each layer to have 256 colours chosen from a total number of 512 colours.
Because there are multiple layers stacked with transparency, and you can also redefine palette entries multiple times per frame by chasing the beam, you can have all possible 512 colours onscreen at once.
Also ULAplus allows 64 colours onscreen at once, or 256 at once if you redefine the palettes by chasing the beam.
Seven.FFF wrote: ↑Tue Aug 11, 2020 5:32 pm
Just a technical comment that “32” in the poll doesn’t relate to anything meaningful in the Next spec. The spec allow each layer to have 256 colours chosen from a total number of 512 colours.
Fair enough, I just put that as that's how many colours I used and didn't want people to think there were 256 colours in that screen.
