Nice R-Type hack

[StanVanman]

Don't know if anyone spotted this over on Planeta Sinclair, but someone's finally put out a 128K music hack of R-Type for normal Speccies, not Pentagon/Scorpion.

https://planetasinclair.blogspot.com/20 ... -hack.html

Sadly it's not the proper R-Type music as seen here, which hopefully someone will do as a TZX at some point.



Excellently it also includes an autofire hack that makes the game much more enjoyable (if you toggle it on with SymShift-B you fire at max speed automatically, and holding fire down gives you your charge beam).

Please please please please please can somebody do the same for Flying Shark? It'd be SO much better.

[Wall_Axe]

flying shark needs a colour clash option, to see the bullets

[Daveysloan]

I think the Flying Shark thing has been addressed...

viewtopic.php?t=9764

[Andre Leao]

Thanks. This hack is from the 90's

[StanVanman]

I think the Flying Shark thing has been addressed...

viewtopic.php?t=9764

No autofire there.

[StanVanman]

Thanks. This hack is from the 90's

Yeah, but it being on a TZX for non-Russian machines is new.

[Andre Leao]

Indeed. The last two weeks we have been posting some other trd games on tzx, like Doom, Soko Ban, Ammytris. And some more nice stuff the next few days

[catmeows]

I think this mod is pretty lazy. R-Type has a rich bank of beeper effects and they were replaced by three AY effects.

[Pgyuri]

"... do the same for Flying Shark?"

Simple solution just set $BF6C address to $00 you'll have autofire and you can use smartbomb too by pressing fire longer.

The plane has only 2 bullets and their rythm is not too perfect but your finger can be relax. If you really want, maybe I can solve better but don't know really necessary ?

Pgyuri

[worcestersource]

I think this mod is pretty lazy. R-Type has a rich bank of beeper effects and they were replaced by three AY effects.

Beeper plus AY would have been cool. The music sounds good!

Watching R-Type again reminds me how fantastic Bob Pape was as a coder. His book was a good read too. Legend!

[StanVanman]

Indeed. The last two weeks we have been posting some other trd games on tzx, like Doom, Soko Ban, Ammytris. And some more nice stuff the next few days

I've seen. Watching closely (and especially hoping for the R-Type proper-music mod)

[StanVanman]

"... do the same for Flying Shark?"

Simple solution just set $BF6C address to $00 you'll have autofire and you can use smartbomb too by pressing fire longer.

Ooh, that works perfectly in terms of autofire and enhances the gameplay considerably but only at the cost of turning the sound into torture so it's still pretty unplayable

[Pgyuri]

Sorry, I did it on a muted computer I'll check it....

[ionut76]

I was trying to run it on Spectacular and it's not working. The original game has no problem.

[Lee Bee]

I find this thread confusing. If you want R-Type with the original music then why not just play the 2019 mod, which you yourself said features it?

Personally I've never liked the music from the first R-Type game. The tunes don't have much "weight" to them, with little in the way of a bassline and no drums at all! I find the Speccy versions even worse as they completely lack the metallic grit of the original tunes.

IMHO, the R-Type II music was such a huge improvement over the first game. There's also the 2019 variant mod below with alternative music which I personally find a lot more fun:

[Lee Bee]

Here's a (very) quick attempt at how I might do the music on the Speccy - with added drums

[StanVanman]

I find this thread confusing. If you want R-Type with the original music then why not just play the 2019 mod, which you yourself said features it?

Because it only runs on a Russian machine and I'd like a TZX for normal Speccies, like I said.

[toot_toot]

While I really like the idea of these 128K/AY enhanced games, I always get a feeling of being really let down when playing them. Because it seems a lot of the mods were made in the 90s by Russians, the music almost always feels out of place from the actual game itself. The music is often 90s happy hardcore rave type music with a booming type 4/4 bass drum, which just doesn’t fit in with something that’s either set in something like feudal Japan, nor does it really fit in with the general 1980s era of the Spectrum. It just sounds like someone is trying to make a late 90s Scooter “song” on the Spectrum. Badly.

So R-Type, yes, it has to have the original Level 1 music. It would be like playing Outrun with anything else apart from Magical Sound Shower.

[Lee Bee]

Because it only runs on a Russian machine and I'd like a TZX for normal Speccies, like I said.

Ah right, gotcha. The YouTube description of that video didn't seem to indicate that it was running on special hardware!

[Seven.FFF]

Ah right, gotcha. The YouTube description of that video didn't seem to indicate that it was running on special hardware!

The .SCL linked in the video description does run with Pentagon 128K timing and paging, without Betadisk or TR-DOS but with a divMMC running esxDOS and Bob Fossil's browser.

It does not run on 48K or 128K models with the same divMMC running esxDOS and Bob Fossil's browser. Crashes or hangs after load, before displaying the startup screen.

So it's requiring least some Russian-specific hardware features, over and above whatever TR-DOS simulation a divMMC/esxDOS provides.

[Wall_Axe]

Here's a (very) quick attempt at how I might do the music on the Speccy - with added drums

pretty good