Spectrum Computing

Narco Police managed to create a nice not-so-blocky rock tunnel:

R-Tape wrote: ↑Fri May 18, 2018 1:12 pm Maybe not but the Kremlin looks great.

You are dead to me.

druellan wrote: ↑Fri May 18, 2018 1:51 pm Narco Police managed to create a nice not-so-blocky rock tunnel:

That's quite a neat 3D effect - it's the same graphic just being drawn a little further across and down each time, but because of the sloped edge and the overlap spreading out it looks a little bigger each time. Shame it has to be pixel-masked though as that's clearly slowing things down.

Joefish wrote: ↑Fri May 18, 2018 3:50 pm

druellan wrote: ↑Fri May 18, 2018 1:51 pm Narco Police managed to create a nice not-so-blocky rock tunnel:

That's quite a neat 3D effect - it's the same graphic just being drawn a little further across and down each time, but because of the sloped edge and the overlap spreading out it looks a little bigger each time. Shame it has to be pixel-masked though as that's clearly slowing things down.

Well, yes. Is not quite a problem when you are just walking the tunnels (love the effect when you move side by side), but the action sequences are at the verge of being unplayables. Just as a fun fact, while the game was published in Spain, the original development team was from Uruguay.

I have seen Narco Police before but never got into it. Couldn't understand it what I am supposed to do, beside walking in some tunnels of course.

But I know some people do like this game.

So you guys have a challenge. It has never been recorded as rzx walkthrough. If anybody feels compentent do a recording and send it to Rzx Archive

Oh, didn't noticed there is no RZX of this game. But as far as to try to finish it, not sure if I can manage to do that without a trainer.

I've also loved the background shown in Yie Ar Kung-Fu:

Does Virus count?

Juan F. Ramirez wrote: ↑Sun May 20, 2018 9:12 pm I've also loved the background shown in Yie Ar Kung-Fu:

Looks like a bloody shambles!

Seven.FFF wrote: ↑Sun May 20, 2018 11:19 pm Does Virus count?

It looks more suited to a Spectrum utility for finding oil reservoirs.

R-Tape wrote: ↑Mon May 21, 2018 8:10 am

Juan F. Ramirez wrote: ↑Sun May 20, 2018 9:12 pm I've also loved the background shown in Yie Ar Kung-Fu:

Looks like a bloody shambles!

It's modern art, you uncultured!

R-Tape wrote: ↑Mon May 21, 2018 8:10 am
Looks like a bloody shambles!

...And not a naked woman in sight..!

Morkin wrote: ↑Mon May 21, 2018 8:42 pm ...And not a naked woman in sight..!

Dunno, there's bound to be some cryptic smut hidden in this melange.

The original arcade background is almost as vague.
Looks a bit more like a painting though.

I recolored the arcade version to avoid the black on dark blue...

Actually it's not a bad port then. The speccy misses out George Washington at the bottom left but kind of manages Scandinavia at the middle top.

R-Tape wrote: ↑Wed May 23, 2018 7:52 am Actually it's not a bad port then. The speccy misses out George Washington at the bottom left but kind of manages Scandinavia at the middle top.

And I see the head of a demon at bottom right.

And it's not Scandinavia, it's a crocodile.

I would say this background in Yie Ar Kung Fu is something inspired by traditional Japanese art. It just became very symbolic on Spectrum, hard to tell what is what.

I can't find a good reference but it would be something like this - mountains and waterfall:

Towdie has surprising design in rocks outside the castle (and I think that the castle blocks and columns are the best of all Spectrum games; I know these are not 'geology' but I can't help to refer to these).

I keep coming back to Melkhiors Mansion, but hey its one heck of a graphical achievement, and when Bob Smith has converted it to the 128k then minus some of the colour we can hopefully enjoy exploring;

I keep coming back to Melkhiors Mansion, but hey its one heck of a graphical achievement, and when Bob Smith has converted it to the 128k then minus some of the colour we can hopefully enjoy exploring;

This is certainly some good pixelart. On real Spectrum it would be hard or impossible to get it so colourful but in monochrome it should look very decent too.

Rocks are, uh...hard...to do. You could take the easy “that’ll do” root and create random noise, but I think that looks really rubbish. The surrounding rocks for Vallation was “easier” - 2 different blocks for each level. They pretty much tiled but deliberately kept blocky to give a console-y stylish look.

For Melkhior’s Mansion, I actually studied various rock types before I put pixel to screen. Similarly to Vallation, I created 4 variations of different sized rocks; tall, medium, small and rocks. Before we decided on the rough stone cavern doors, I created more rocks that could be assembled into a blocky door frame, I suppose they could be used as walls, too, but we never used these. Before the each rock wall section was finalised, I tiled each rock and retouched sections that didn’t look right when tiled.
I saw rocks and rock textures whenever I closed my eyes and even when I slept! I certainly don’t mind pixeling rocks now. Pixeling different rock types for a project is the next thing, though.

Don’t get me started on the rock floors.

C’mon Dave, put the effort in

Bob Smith is working on the 128k version. He teased this screenshot last month.
https://twitter.com/bobsstuffgames/stat ... 10981?s=21

A big problem is saving memory. You don't want all your rocks looking the same, but if it's a unique piece of art for the background then that's all your memory gone in just a few screens.

Joefish wrote: ↑Fri May 31, 2019 7:16 pm A big problem is saving memory. You don't want all your rocks looking the same, but if it's a unique piece of art for the background then that's all your memory gone in just a few screens.

I totally agree. Slightly unrelated to geology, but Jonathan Cauldwell's Egghead 6 gets around this by scattering random tiles when building the level surfaces, which makes each section look unique without using too many bytes. My only complaint is that he uses a different RNG seed each time a screen is constructed, which stands out when flipping back to a screen just moments later. I use a similar technique in my game, but with the brick walls, by randomly scattering 'broken' tiles over the brick surface after the original image has been decompressed into the background buffer.

I always quite liked the rocks in the second level of Dynamite Dan II.

Ralf wrote: ↑Wed May 23, 2018 11:21 amI would say this background in Yie Ar Kung Fu is something inspired by traditional Japanese art

Chinese. It's called Shan shui, lit. "mountain (and) water". The Japanese imported that style from China (among other things) in the Nara period, ca. 8th century.

cave level of Viaje al Centro de la Tierra:


also 2nd level of Che-man - blocky but good: