Spectrum Computing

A new one - how would Superfrog look on Spectrum, by maestro Andy Green:

Nice. It just gets away with the thick black line, that's a neat way of having a black lined image mixed with a colourful background.

Yes, we have a nice trick here, first the thick black line around the hero, and then another dithered "line".

Black line was required to avoid color clash but here it became an integral part of design, it actually fits the picture quite well.

Thanks Ralf, for posting the screens. Really appreciate it! And thank you everyone for your continuous kind comments.

Here's something I don't normally post - abandoned screens:

With Superfrog, I played with a couple of ideas before the final screen. The first you see below, would've been based on the Commodore CD32 box art (also pictured). The frog in my pic looks like he's just done 10 rounds with Mike Tyson lol. The third image below; I thought about putting in the game level screen behind Superfrog but on a curved planet instead. I wasn't happy with it so gave up on that one as well.

Andy Green wrote: ↑Sun Mar 25, 2018 10:07 am

I really like this one. The colors just seem to work great.

Ast A. Moore wrote: ↑Sun Mar 25, 2018 10:43 am

Andy Green wrote: ↑Sun Mar 25, 2018 10:07 am

I really like this one. The colors just seem to work great.

If ever I'm not working on any screens (!), I might return to this one and see how it progresses.

New loading screen for the unreleased Backpackers Guide to the Universe Part 2 (Fantasy Software). More information on how this one came about can be found here: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=595#p8203

Another nice one!

Great screen.

Part 1 is a cool game. I love wandering around it.

A screen/mockup for Another World by Andy Green, If anybody ever tries to convert it to Spectrum, here is the start

Yeah, I had the PC game and I think it's a good idea to convert it to Spectrum.

Another World seems possible to be converted to Spectrum but if I were to do it I wouldn't bother with vector graphics like in the original and do it all on sprites. Just lke in the Andy's mockup. It would be much faster and easier to do this way.

Toki

(from the list of "games that could appear on Spectrum but never did")

Ralf wrote: ↑Thu Apr 12, 2018 12:35 pm Toki

(from the list of "games that could appear on Spectrum but never did")

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 6&id=10317

Being quite cynical of my own work, I have to say I'm really pleased how the Toki screen turned out. This one also has the biggest number of saved WIP files as well which can all be seen in a timeline video that I uploaded to my Facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/AndyGreenPixel ... permPage=1

Andy, that Toki loading screen is just a piece of art

Ivanzx wrote: ↑Fri Apr 13, 2018 11:26 pm Andy, that Toki loading screen is just a piece of art

Yep agreed. It's all good but I have to say I can barely bring myself to concentrate on anything but the bottom left of the picture.

R-Tape wrote: ↑Fri Apr 13, 2018 11:46 pm Yep agreed. It's all good but I have to say I can barely bring myself to concentrate on anything but the bottom left of the picture.

That^ didn't sound right, I meant because it was so good rather than it being imbalanced or anything (and it's based on the inlay anyway). One of my favourites.

The Forest of Doom (ZX Spectrum, Puffin Books, 1984) - alternative loading screen.

This game, based on the brilliant Fighting Fantasy books, never had a loading screen and although I originally did one back in 1995 on the Amiga (which can be found in the Commodore Amiga Pixel Art album on my Facebook page), I set myself a challenge of giving it the humble ZX Spectrum treatment.

The method I used was running WinUAE (Amiga emulator) with DPaint and my picture loaded into it alongside Multipaint (the program I use to create Spectrum screens) and then redraw all the sections using a grid method.

Of course, the ZX Spectrum palette doesn't have brown, so non-bright red was used to get a closeness and while the screen may seem a tad overkill with the aforementioned colour, it is, afterall, a night-time scene. Anyhow, I hope this screen brings back memories of those ace books!

Great.

Text adventures are usually a good source for new screens.

Wow, that looks great! FF books always had good artwork, and the Sorcery series had a unique style as well. One of my favourite pictures was this chap from Return to Firetop Mountain. It would definitely be nice to see more FF-inspired games on the Speccy!

Very stylish screen.

And yes, it's very red but we shouldn't be afraid of using some dominant colour. There are cases where using whole pallete is good because it makes picture more vivid but there are also cases where mood of the screen requires everything more toned down.

If we watch some pictures from demoscene, these guys often try to use as much colour as possible. It's good in some cases but sometimes seeing these rainbow people again and again is too much.

Couple of screens recently finished...

Quahappy (new homebrew game by Jaime Grilo). Note: I'm also doing a version for myself (without title or face and the building a different colour. All the details is lost with dark blue although it does it purpose of making it look spooky...)



... and City of Thieves fan art loading screen (from the Fighting Fantasy book by Ian Livingstone, 1983)

City of Thieves looks lovely.

City of Thieves looks excellent. It also helps that this is also my favourite FF book of all time. I got it from Safeway supermarket in Kingswinford on our monthly shop back in 1983.