Spectron 2084

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Seven.FFF
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Spectron 2084

Post by Seven.FFF »

Here's a little teaser of the Spectrum Next game I'm working on.

https://seven-fff.com/spectron/

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PROSM
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Re: Spectron 2084

Post by PROSM »

That looks absolutely astounding! It doesn't even look like a Spectrum game, but instead looks like it could have been an arcade game from the era! Keep up the good work!
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Working on something, as always.
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RMartins
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Re: Spectron 2084

Post by RMartins »

Interesting attract mode with a nice presentation.
How many KBytes have you used already ?

NOTE: At first, I didn't register that this was a ZX Next project.
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Re: Spectron 2084

Post by Seven.FFF »

Thanks!

I’ve used about 2 or 3 16k pages, and about 30 8k MMU banks so far. The Next does Timex-style horizontal MMU, but instead of DOCK and EXT, any 8k of the 768k in the unexpanded machine can be paged into any 8k slot.

So far I’ve written for speed and logical organisation rather than compactness. The attract screens are all data driven, so for each subscreen there’s an 8k bank containing script data, getting interpreted by the same code each time.

This script data is mostly created programmatically in C#, so I can generate it consistently and tweak it as necessary.

The 256-colours-per-pixel data is also quite memory intensive. For example the 256x192 rainbow letterbox hiscore screen takes up an entire 48k, and is left untouched in memory once loaded - the zooming animation is done with transparency and palette cycling. It’s easier and probably faster to load this, than to generate it at runtime.

The 8-bit sound (not present in the video) takes up a fair bit of space too. I’m playing at 312 samples per frame (one per video line, 15.6 KHz), so a 2 second sound effect takes up 24k. The plan is to stream sounds on demand from the SD card.
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Re: Spectron 2084

Post by spectron »

Seven.FFF wrote: Tue May 29, 2018 6:38 pm Here's a little teaser of the Spectrum Next game I'm working on.

https://seven-fff.com/spectron/
Oi! I claim Copyright on that title!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2WWjoqRV6g


Having said that, I have no rights and whilst my game was s&^t (although it was 35 years ago), yours is obviously excellent.

As you were...
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Re: Spectron 2084

Post by Seven.FFF »

Ha, I didn't even do the most basic research, did I! Oops.

I'll mention you in the credits for inventing the name, how about that?
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Re: Spectron 2084

Post by spectron »

Seven.FFF wrote: Wed May 30, 2018 3:42 pm
I'll mention you in the credits for inventing the name, how about that?
Oh no need for that at all! We both tried to copy Robotron except you're doing a good job of it :lol:

I think it's more like great minds thing alike on the naming front !
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