Spectrum Computing

I discovered this game this evening after seeing it featured on this game art site:
https://thekingofgrabs.com/2019/10/22/k ... -spectrum/

I'd never encountered it before, most likely because its distribution is banned so it's less immediately available. I really like the graphical style. Something about the way the sprites are drawn means that there is a bit of clash, but it's been done carefully so as to minimize the impact. It's not so well shown in the specific shots I've found above, but do check the game art site I linked to above. In some frames of animation the background attributes will take precedence for say the shoulder edges, sometimes it's the sprite attributes instead, which really seems effective in motion. The way the thick black outline works is very nicely done. Typical squared off black outlines have been very skilfully avoided. This technique has freed up the art to use the full palette and with its use of dithering patterns the game looks very good as a result, and even looks significantly better than the screenshots of Karnov for the other contemporary 8bit systems.

Are there any other games which use this style, embracing yet somehow minimizing the clash as it were? To clarify I'd say R-Type for instance, though colourful, avoids clash so it's not similar to this. Also its sprites are mostly against a black background.

Try Dan Dare 3 https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 96&id=1241 and Savage https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 96&id=4353

Karnov is an old favorite of mine. I didn't know the coin-op back then - I would only have played it through MAME many years later - but as a game in itself, it's great. Every level has a unique style (there is even an underwater one) and filled with peculiar enemies and traps. And it's huge!

There’s also The Real Ghostbusters done by the same people.

cave level of Viaje al Centro de la Tierra is my favourite example

Space Monsters Meet THE HARDY:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGGi5PyT5rc

Alone Coder wrote: ↑Sat Feb 01, 2020 1:46 pm Space Monsters Meet THE HARDY:

doubt it fits the topicstarter's conditions, it looks more like R-type with byte precision

it's similar to what Lightforce is doing. Although the character-scrolling background looks a bit jerky, particularly the stuttering vertically. The Real Ghostbusters was a bit jerky too.

Lethargeek wrote: ↑Sat Feb 01, 2020 1:23 pm cave level of Viaje al Centro de la Tierra is my favourite example

You've hit the spot. Looking forward to giving that that a whirl.

Alessandro wrote: ↑Sat Feb 01, 2020 9:41 am Karnov is an old favorite of mine. I didn't know the coin-op back then - I would only have played it through MAME many years later - but as a game in itself, it's great. Every level has a unique style (there is even an underwater one) and filled with peculiar enemies and traps. And it's huge!

Yeah, I expected this to have dated badly and be an unplayable mess but actually it's rather good. I think 8x8 pixel movement can give an illusion of smoothness as long as the engine runs fast enough to make deaths fair etc. Weirdly I hadn't even noticed that this one was moving horizontally one cell at a time, it was only when I was going back to look at the clashing in detail. Vertical movement is a different story here, but I don't think it adversely affects the game.

TomD wrote: ↑Sat Feb 01, 2020 9:18 am Try Dan Dare 3 https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 96&id=1241 and Savage https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 96&id=4353

Thanks for the suggestions but I'd class these more alongside R-Type. They tend to overlay one object over another totally and resort to black square edges where background detail goes missing. Karnov seems to be compositing the pixel detail of the background layer and the sprites, and uses a mask so I think the techniques are quite different. Depending on the specific colours in a given clash, sometimes the background colour wins, sometimes it's the sprite colour, and I think that really works well to minimize the impact of the clash.

See this example of what I mean - notice the background pixel detail remains in the colour clash around his arms:

redballoon wrote: ↑Sat Feb 01, 2020 9:42 am There’s also The Real Ghostbusters done by the same people.

Thanks, taken a look at some YouTube footage. It's really a lot less graphically accomplished isn't it, despite being the later title.

Shadow Warriors are also made in a similar style:


https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 96&id=4428

The gameplay is so-so but it looks great and is very different from monochrome or mostly monochrome games.
Actually when I saw it first time, I thought it must be using some new graphics mode

Mercs

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 96&id=9375

Maybe Golden Axe
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 96&id=2081

Golden Axe and Shadow Warriors aren't quite the style I was describing, because they have no colour clash, opting instead for those black boxes where the background is totally missing in the character cells used by the sprites, which I personally think looks quite bad.

It's the absence of those kinds of ugly black boxes that struck me about Karnov. Incidentally I recently tried Golden Axe and wow it's unplayable. I used to like completing the game in an arcade with old machines during family holidays, and also played the Megadrive version. The movement on the Spectrum version is abysmal.

Thanks for the Mercs suggestion, will give that a play. It does look a bit like the designers just gave up trying to mitigate the colour clash entirely though, especially later in the video linked to from ZXDB, rather than cleverly minimizing it as with Karnov.

I am particularly impressed by the graphics in Viaje al Centro de la Tierra since they made great use of colour but also had per pixel movement, and the clashing doesn't really stand out.

Maybe also games by Oleg Origin such as Metal Man Reloaded and Valley of Rains. Metal Man uses masking on the main character sprite, so the background graphics don't look so blocky.

Yes VoR is amazing because the clash depends on the precise colours that are overlapping. It's not as simple as sprite winning over background every time. Also the parallax and the water reflections are incredible touches for a Spectrum.

I only recently tried MetalMan Remixed since I only just discovered that the DivMMC Future reads TRD files. Have finally discovered that multiload games are best enjoyed via vtrd.in in this format, not to mention all the re-releases like R-Type with AY music etc.

Luckily Oleg Origin's site, though gone, can be retrieved via web.archive.org and it's basically the only place to get MetalMan Remixed in English. He seemed to have a lot of projects that were partially worked on: https://web.archive.org/web/20171204022 ... _soon.html

...and then decided to chuck in the towel altogether in 2018:
Artem Orlov (aka Oleg Origin) isn't engaged in creation of games for ZX Spectrum anymore.
'Oleg Origin' was not the real person, but the virtual project. The project is finally closed. Website is closing.

Does Valley of Rains use masking? I thought all the graphics were drawn straight to the screen buffer as 8x8 characters, with sprites on top getting priority when there's overlap.

djnzx48 wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2020 11:29 pm Does Valley of Rains use masking? I thought all the graphics were drawn straight to the screen as 8x8 characters, with sprites on top getting priority when there's overlap.

I don't think it's masked, but attributes of the bg layer are sometimes preserved/combined as a sprite crosses it. I remember noticing that when the main character's hair moves past say a mushroom.

...and then decided to chuck in the towel altogether in 2018:

Artem Orlov/Oleg Origin is a bit mysterious person And you can't be really 100% sure what true about him and what's fake.
Some people even claimed that he doesn't exist, that his games were a project of several people.

But I believe he exists, he's a single, real man and I also believe he... didn't abandon writing games for Spectrum.
I wouldn't be so surprised if he was somehow involved in Valley of Rains

Ralf wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2020 9:56 am

...and then decided to chuck in the towel altogether in 2018:

Artem Orlov/Oleg Origin is a bit mysterious person And you can't be really 100% sure what true about him and what's fake.
Some people even claimed that he doesn't exist, that his games were a project of several people.

But I believe he exists, he's a single, real man and I also believe he... didn't abandon writing games for Spectrum.
I wouldn't be so surprised if he was somehow involved in Valley of Rains

Behind Zosya Entertainment (the people who did Valley of Rains, Drift! and Just a Gal for the Yandex Retro Games Battle 2019), there's a team. The spokeswoman for this development team on social networks and press interviews is Natasha Zotova (also programmer in the group and author of an awarded BASIC game called Lava).

You can find news related to Zosya here (https://vk.com/zosya_net). I especially recommend reading these two interviews with Natasha Zotova (https://idpixel.ru/news/1874-intervju-s ... -of-rains/) and (https://idpixel.ru/news/1924-obzory-igr ... rtainment/), they are working on more than 50 Spectrum games that are in different stages of development, and some of them will be released in 2020.

I think it's clear Zosya it's a team effort of anonymous developers. I think Oleg Origin is simply an alias, but the man/woman behind that alias is clearly involved in Zosya. Valley of Rains shares a lot of techniques previously developed on Metal Man Reloaded.

Wow, I had not idea it was that mysterious. It's like some sort of art movement. I guess that's good news, it would have been a bit of a shame if such a talent had changed interests.

Back to topic... what about AMC?

Juan F. Ramirez wrote: ↑Tue Feb 11, 2020 9:25 pm Back to topic... what about AMC?

Great music too!