Why not make a VERTICAL game? = Sideways colour scrolling!

Propose new game/software design concepts or new game/software ideas. They can be as whimsical as you like, just be careful you don't ask someone to make it for you...
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Lee Bee
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Why not make a VERTICAL game? = Sideways colour scrolling!

Post by Lee Bee »

I was just looking at the stunning game 'Old Tower' with colour vertical scrolling!

This got me thinking… why can't you have a "vertical" Spectrum Game? Many arcade games are "vertical" - with the screen turned 90° to the side. In the 80s you couldn't turn your TV on its side, but we now live in an age of light-weight screens, pivoting monitors and hand-held screens that can be turned 90°. So who's to say that Spectrum games can't be vertical too?

Of course, the big benefit of having a vertical Spectrum game would allow a SIDEWAYS colour scroller! Surely this would be the holy grail? Just a thought :)

By the way, hi, I'm new to the forum :) My hobby is making AY music :)
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R-Tape
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Re: Why not make a VERTICAL game? = Sideways colour scrolling!

Post by R-Tape »

Hi Lee. Welcome to the forum!

I have mixed feelings on this idea. Even though I don’t have one of these fancy pivot screens, I’d find a way to play and enjoy such a project (even though it would be a bit like making coffee in a microwave!); on the other hand I’d rather see people put their energy into making a proper vertical scrolling multicolour shmup. Denis has proved this is possible, and let’s not forget River Raid.

It’s a shame that not many coders are doing this kind of thing these days. I’m as guilty as anyone on that score.
Lee Bee wrote: Tue Nov 26, 2019 12:26 am By the way, hi, I'm new to the forum :) My hobby is making AY music :)
Great. Is your stuff online anywhere?
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Re: Why not make a VERTICAL game? = Sideways colour scrolling!

Post by Ralf »

In the 80s you couldn't turn your TV on its side
Well, if you were daring enough, you COULD turn your TV on its side. The problem was that usually your mum and dad used it to watch tv and they wouldn't be happy seeing you doing it ;)

And welcome to the forums !
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Lee Bee
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Re: Why not make a VERTICAL game? = Sideways colour scrolling!

Post by Lee Bee »

Hey thanks for the welcome guys! :) I am such a fan of you both! Dave has made so many great games! Bean Brothers is just amazing! :) I love the Bifrost games! :)
R-Tape wrote: Tue Nov 26, 2019 9:15 amon the other hand I’d rather see people put their energy into making a proper vertical scrolling multicolour shmup.
My idea to rotate the screen is not to allow a colour vertical scroller (which we already have), but to allow a colour horizontal scroller - eg a platform game like Mario Bros that can have true horizontal scrolling (not jerky whole-tile scrolling).
R-Tape wrote: Tue Nov 26, 2019 9:15 am Great. Is your stuff online anywhere?
Not yet, but I'm hoping to get my work out there soon :) I'll probably set up some kind of blog / YouTube channel. I love making original music, as well as accurately copying tunes from other systems, especially arcade games (eg I've done all 4 OutRun tunes, Bubble Bobble, Shinobi, etc).

Back in the 90s I also made tons of Amiga music (both original and copied game tunes), but the last few years I have returned to my favourite games machine, the Spectrum :) And this is where I intend to stay!

I'm currently talking with Ralf about trying to add some of my music to his amazing colour mods (eg Rod-Land, Golden Axe) :) We shall see how it goes! :)
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Re: Why not make a VERTICAL game? = Sideways colour scrolling!

Post by druellan »

Let's not forget this experiment from a couple of years ago that looks promising, but never got implemented into a real game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE1KylKQDrQ
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Re: Why not make a VERTICAL game? = Sideways colour scrolling!

Post by Joefish »

I was trying to do a horizontally scrolling multicolour shooter but it's HARD. It's fairly easy to write a routine to do the background graphics. The problem is you need a lot of moving sprites - both for enemies and shots - and the variable timing that can give you is a bit of a nightmare. That's why I started on an ordinary attribute shoot-em-up, just to figure out all the things that need to happen. Making it 128K-only helps (thanks to screen-flipping), but then everyone wants tedious in-game multi-channel music and all that baws. Mind you, some people can't deal with 48K games that don't have an annoying continuous soundtrack anyway... :roll:

As for River Raid, has anyone done a good analysis of how the procedurally generated canyons are done, so I could try adding the algorithm to the scroller?
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Re: Why not make a VERTICAL game? = Sideways colour scrolling!

Post by Joefish »

Actually, Speccy River Raid seems different to the Atari original. As well as the higher res graphics, the river shifts sideways in places, whereas the Atari original is always symmetric. I can't see if it deliberately makes the river narrower (or uses bigger islands) to make it harder, or if that's just part of the random pattern. Also, the Speccy one may just be pre-programmed patterns anyway.
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Re: Why not make a VERTICAL game? = Sideways colour scrolling!

Post by Joefish »

As for a scrolling shoot-em-up, I think I'd rather have the multicolour horizontal anyway, for the design of the ships. Although however they move, you've got a problem of having higher precision in one direction than the other.
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Re: Why not make a VERTICAL game? = Sideways colour scrolling!

Post by Ralf »

I'm currently talking with Ralf about trying to add some of my music to his amazing colour mods (eg Rod-Land, Golden Axe) :) We shall see how it goes! :)
I can confirm that we are in contact :)

Adding music to an existing game may be in many cases harder than altering the graphics. The game may run with disabled interrupts or enable an interrupt only every few frames. And music usually must be played during each frame. Also game may not use music but use AY effects and adding the music will mess with the effects and the effects will mess with the music. And so on.

But each case is different. We shall see what I'll be able to achieve.
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Re: Why not make a VERTICAL game? = Sideways colour scrolling!

Post by Joefish »

That's always been a problem, and we could do with a modern solution for new games.
I'm not sure how you'd want to control the channels though. You could have a routine that progressively steals channels from the tune to play effects, or maybe you could stick to a 2-channel tune without noise effects, then use the third channel for effects. Or even a combination of the two, where you reserve one channel for deep noise effects, play the tune on the other two, and also rob one of those two tune channels for your 'pew-pew' shorter spot noises.
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Lee Bee
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Re: Why not make a VERTICAL game? = Sideways colour scrolling!

Post by Lee Bee »

druellan wrote: Tue Nov 26, 2019 10:47 am Let's not forget this experiment from a couple of years ago that looks promising, but never got implemented into a real game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE1KylKQDrQ
That is great, but it's not true horizontal colour scrolling. All the colours are in horizontal bands, with black gaps between them. There can be no coloured tiles directly next to each other, horizontally. But if this were a "vertical" game, that limitation would go away :)
Joefish wrote: Tue Nov 26, 2019 12:10 pm As for a scrolling shoot-em-up, I think I'd rather have the multicolour horizontal anyway
Yeah, in many cases, it is easier to design sprites with horizontal colour bands. For example: a character has a yellow head, below that, a cyan body, below that, green legs. So horizontal colour bands are useful. But vertical bands could be useful for some games too :) Vertical bands would allow you to have tall, thin sprites (like people) that can move left and right, without clashing with the background or each other :)
Ralf wrote: Tue Nov 26, 2019 12:28 pm Adding music to an existing game may be in many cases harder than altering the graphics.
Yeah, I know it's a lot to ask. :) I appreciate you having a try.
Ralf wrote: Tue Nov 26, 2019 12:28 pmAlso game may not use music but use AY effects and adding the music will mess with the effects and the effects will mess with the music. And so on.
Actually, I think I've solved the problem of music and sound effects clashing. The system I'm using (Arkos Tracker) is a complete audio system which handles both music and sound effects and automatically deals with sound channel priority info here. So I figure that the best option is for me to create all the audio, including sound effects. (This also lets me improve the sound effects too! :))

So what you'd have to do is find and remove all the existing in-game sound effects triggers and replace them with triggers to the Arkos player. This may be too much work, I don't know? Or perhaps once you get it working, it could be relatively easy and fun? LOL I guess we'll see.
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Re: Why not make a VERTICAL game? = Sideways colour scrolling!

Post by djnzx48 »

Sounds like a good idea - I made the same suggestion previously in the Old Tower thread. If you're using an emulator, most graphics cards support rotating the display 90 degrees (mainly used for pranks), so physically rotating the monitor wouldn't be necessary. Or the functionality could even be built into the emulator itself.

I wonder what kind of games would be suitable for a vertical setup. Even for a non-scrolling game, there would be interesting opportunities for multicolour tile graphics that you don't get with the standard display orientation.
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Re: Why not make a VERTICAL game? = Sideways colour scrolling!

Post by stupidget »

Daft question, but why is it easier to have a vertical multicolour game than a horizontal one?
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Re: Why not make a VERTICAL game? = Sideways colour scrolling!

Post by djnzx48 »

Multicolour allows attributes to be set for individual lines of pixels, but only in the vertical direction. You're still stuck with two colours for each 8x1 cell (ULA bugs notwithstanding). So vertical scrolling works in colour, but horizontal scrolling isn't possible without colour clash or restricting what colours are used.

It's also due to the way the display is laid out in memory, with 8 horizontal pixels to a byte. With horizontal scrolling, all the bits have to be shifted over, which can slow things down. Vertical scrolling only requires copying bytes.
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Lee Bee
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Re: Why not make a VERTICAL game? = Sideways colour scrolling!

Post by Lee Bee »

djnzx48 wrote: Tue Nov 26, 2019 11:04 pm Sounds like a good idea - I made the same suggestion previously in the Old Tower thread.
Great minds think alike! By the way I love your music mate! :)
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Re: Why not make a VERTICAL game? = Sideways colour scrolling!

Post by ixn »

I have an idea: make only one of the two screens on the 128 rotated, so you can flip between them every frame.

But if you combine that with gigascreen, what do you get?

Gigarotatescreen?
Gigascrorate?
Gigatatescreening?
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Re: Why not make a VERTICAL game? = Sideways colour scrolling!

Post by 4thRock »

About vertical vs horizontal gaming, the only practical difference is text orientation and obvious control remapping :D

Imagine this with the font characters rotated 90º left
Image

V
e
r
t
i
c
a
l

t
e
x
t

might not be that readable but should work here. No need to physically rotate your monitor :D
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Lee Bee
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Re: Why not make a VERTICAL game? = Sideways colour scrolling!

Post by Lee Bee »

OK, I don't think I've made my idea very clear and people be missing the point of what djnzx48 and I are proposing.

Let me try an illustration instead…

Image

(The Mario game image is just something I made for fun :))
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Re: Why not make a VERTICAL game? = Sideways colour scrolling!

Post by R-Tape »

I knew what you meant, but I wasn't very clear with my reply. I think it'd be a cool thing to do, but I'd rather see a multicolour game that features vertical scrolling more prominently than Old Tower does. Granted, the scrolling is important in Old Tower, but to me it seems like a bonus extra. That's why I'd like to see a vertically scrolling multicolour shooter first.

On topic though: I would like to see your rotated screen idea done. This 'cheat' method would make a horizontal multicolour scroller possible, and also normal colour horizontal shooters would find it much easier to be 25 or 50 fps.

Maybe it's not even that much of a cheat. A rotating CRT telly would have been very do-able back in the day wouldn't it? I'm trying to imagine what the hell one would look like!
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Re: Why not make a VERTICAL game? = Sideways colour scrolling!

Post by Ast A. Moore »

R-Tape wrote: Wed Nov 27, 2019 4:28 pm A rotating CRT telly would have been very do-able back in the day wouldn't it? I'm trying to imagine what the hell one would look like!
For years my Speccy was hooked up to the only color TV in the family. Rotating that behemoth would have required the muscle power of me and my older brother. Also, we’d have been grounded for several days and gotten a few good smacks in the back of the head for good measure. :D

Oh, and the TV wouldn’t have faired too well either.
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Lee Bee
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Re: Why not make a VERTICAL game? = Sideways colour scrolling!

Post by Lee Bee »

I agree Dave, this is perhaps jumping the gun a little. We haven't even had a vertical shooter like this yet - there's so much amazing, untapped potential to this incredible new phase of the Spectrum! The Bifrost engine (and derivatives) is just amazing!
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Re: Why not make a VERTICAL game? = Sideways colour scrolling!

Post by djnzx48 »

Apparently there are games designed to be played on a TV turned on its side, for a more authentic arcade experience. For example, the Namco Museum series:
Some of the games, such as Galaga and Pac-Man, allow for an alternative screen mode to compensate for the lack of a vertical monitor, whereby the scoreboard is located on the left of the screen, or rotates the image 90 degrees if the user possesses a vertical monitor or is willing to risk placing the television/monitor on its side.
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Re: Why not make a VERTICAL game? = Sideways colour scrolling!

Post by R-Tape »

Ast A. Moore wrote: Wed Nov 27, 2019 5:10 pm For years my Speccy was hooked up to the only color TV in the family. Rotating that behemoth would have required the muscle power of me and my older brother. Also, we’d have been grounded for several days and gotten a few good smacks in the back of the head for good measure. :D

Oh, and the TV wouldn’t have faired too well either.
I was thinking of a 'made for purpose TV'. Maybe even on a stand. By DKTronics! I know it would be niche, but there are plenty of weird peripherals out there!

Having said that, and I might be wrong, but I guess that most CRTs owned by real hardware fans these days are pretty small and square (mine is, and ditto in many videos I see).
Lee Bee wrote: Wed Nov 27, 2019 5:18 pm I agree Dave, this is perhaps jumping the gun a little.
There's no rule to say we should have one before the other though. Each case is a vertical multicolour shooter—whether the TV is rotated or not is just a detail. I guess it's down to the usual constraints of desire, energy and free time. It'd be fantastic to see any kind of multicolour scroller next year or sooner.
djnzx48 wrote: Wed Nov 27, 2019 9:56 pm Apparently there are games designed to be played on a TV turned on its side, for a more authentic arcade experience. For example, the Namco Museum series:
Case closed! It's not a cheat :mrgreen:
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Re: Why not make a VERTICAL game? = Sideways colour scrolling!

Post by Kweepa »

Don't forget to degauss your tv!
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Re: Why not make a VERTICAL game? = Sideways colour scrolling!

Post by Ast A. Moore »

R-Tape wrote: Wed Nov 27, 2019 10:39 pm
Ast A. Moore wrote: Wed Nov 27, 2019 5:10 pm For years my Speccy was hooked up to the only color TV in the family. Rotating that behemoth would have required the muscle power of me and my older brother. Also, we’d have been grounded for several days and gotten a few good smacks in the back of the head for good measure. :D

Oh, and the TV wouldn’t have faired too well either.
I was thinking of a 'made for purpose TV'. Maybe even on a stand. By DKTronics! I know it would be niche, but there are plenty of weird peripherals out there!

Having said that, and I might be wrong, but I guess that most CRTs owned by real hardware fans these days are pretty small and square (mine is, and ditto in many videos I see).
Yes, mine’s a 14-inch jobby and very lightweight. However, there are things to consider when rotating a CRT TV, including cooling and . . .
Kweepa wrote: Wed Nov 27, 2019 10:40 pm Don't forget to degauss your tv!
Every man should plant a tree, build a house, and write a ZX Spectrum game.

Author of A Yankee in Iraq, a 50 fps shoot-’em-up—the first game to utilize the floating bus on the +2A/+3,
and zasm Z80 Assembler syntax highlighter.
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