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Rodland

Started by sigh, 15:19, 25 May 11

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sigh

#125
Quote from: Axelay on 05:47, 27 June 20

A standard CPC screen is any combination of height and width that totals 1024 characters or less - and fits on the screen of course.  Because you appear to have reduced the CPC screen's width to 32 characters (128 mode 0 pixels), that would allow for a height of up to 32 characters, or 256 pixels, so there's no reason you couldn't go 224 pixels high, no overscan required.

*I had no idea about this! I always thought that the maximum height on the CPC was 200 pixels. :o

Quote from: OneVision on 08:28, 27 June 20

Thank you @sigh : I'll take some time to include your sprites (that looks better than mine) into the background I already did. To see how it works.
I assume you used a unique 16 color palettes for heroes bonus and items to take benefit from the HW sprites of the PLUS ? And 16 other colors for backgrounds or some enemies ?
It is 16 colours, however - I did not assign a colour for transparency, which would mean that a mask would have to be used for the sprites.
Another thing is that your colour palette is closer to the arcade, so the graphics I did would need to be re-coloured.


* Xyphoe Fantasy is 320 x224.

OneVision

Duly noted.


Thanks !

sigh

Quote from: OneVision on 15:30, 28 June 20
Duly noted.


Thanks !
Sorry, I double checked again! It's actually 15 colours and not 16. So a colour can be assigned for transparency - no masking is needed.

andycadley

Quote from: sigh on 10:36, 27 June 20
* Xyphoe Fantasy is 320 x224.


That requires overscan techniques to use more than one 16K bank for the screen though. If you're reducing the width to 256 pixels you can gain some height without needing to use more than one bank.

Vince

ok, so, that's all the grooves ironed out, we just need a plucky volunteer to step forward and take on the coding...  :)

sigh

Quote from: Axelay on 13:46, 24 June 20

A spectrum port is not about the graphics, it's about the code.  In all likelihood it is a spectrum port.


Basically it looks like it probably is a spectrum port with no thought put in to how the code design would work on CPC.  Even if not a spectrum port, it's been coded like one.  There's two main things it's doing that really weren't ever going to work well on the CPC that take the vast majority of the time.  One was the pretty common use in spectrum ports of a software copied back buffer with a string of LDI instructions.  With such a comparatively large play area for employing that method, it takes around 2.7 screen refreshes.  So that's down to 17fps to do 'nothing'.  Then there's how it handles updating that back buffer.  It doesn't just update what's animated or moved, no dirty tiles, it reprints the entire background screen every frame.  That also takes over 2.7 screen refreshes.  Add over a screen refresh for everything else and you have a game running at 7.5 fps and down.




I had a look on the Rodland wiki and it says that the CPC was the first port and that the Nes was the last.
So they probably had a spectrum programmer do the CPC?

Axelay

Quote from: sigh on 12:06, 02 July 20



I had a look on the Rodland wiki and it says that the CPC was the first port and that the Nes was the last.
So they probably had a spectrum programmer do the CPC?


The manual for the game on cpc-power indicates the CPC & spectrum versions had the same coder.

sigh

Quote from: Axelay on 13:13, 02 July 20

The manual for the game on cpc-power indicates the CPC & spectrum versions had the same coder.
Ahh - they also had the same artist too. Interesting as the differences between the two are games are night and day.

Vince

Quote from: sigh on 18:00, 02 July 20
Ahh - they also had the same artist too. Interesting as the differences between the two are games are night and day.
Yeah Shaun McClure. Though the booklet says Shaun McClurg. I am not sure what went awry with the conversion because the Spectrum version is stellar.

Vince

having said that, for all we know they were working on the Speccy version and late in the hour someone said,'Oh we need a CPC version out of you too!', and they might have only had a few weeks to bang it together?

redbox

I can neither confirm or deny if I have been working on a new version of Rodland...  8)

Attached is a quick preview of the intro... It's called "Rit and Tam" as a nod to the original arcade name.

Code by redbox
Graphics are converted from the Arcade, Atari ST and Amiga
Music is converted from the Atari ST
Code uses ZX0 compressor by Einar Saukas



XeNoMoRPH

your amstrad news source in spanish language : https://auamstrad.es

sigh

Oh boy! This is good news and I'm really happy to see someone working on a much needed remake.
If any of the graphics I did are of any use to you, then please feel free to use them in the game.

redbox

Quote from: sigh on 01:14, 10 February 21If any of the graphics I did are of any use to you, then please feel free to use them in the game.

Thanks sigh, I appreciate that.

I've been working on the tiles and I used your mockups as an initial basis for my tileset.  I then used the Atari ST/Amiga tileset (which contains quite a few errors) and finally the Arcade tiles to fix any glitches.  I've tried to keep it as faithful to the arcade as possible.  Once this was all done, I optimised the tileset to make the level fit within 8kb with the tilemap.

I'm currently working on the engine which is coming along nicely.  I initially tried to disassemble the original Rodland code but it was a complete mess (and slow - less than 7fps!) so decided to start from scratch.  I'm aiming for double buffered, dirty tilemap and probably 25fps (because this will keep the speed inline with the Arcade version taking into account the CPC's double width mode 0 pixels) with full 32x32 sprites.

Here's some tileset previews:



robcfg

Really looking forward to this!


Rodland is one of my all-time favourite games and I've always felt a better port could have been done on the CPC.

Mr. DVG

#140
I am very happy to learn that more and more people (for me real heroes) of good will manage to do justice to many of my favorite games of that period (by the way, the Amstrad version of Rod-Land is the only penalized version of all. those made for the 8-bit of the time) on a computer that literally started me in the computer world and to which I owe a lot on a sentimental level...

Since it is Rod-Land, I also enclose an old disk of mine with some graphic screenshots (nothing professional for charity, they were made just for fun and they also have a broken image report).
Good luck to those who are thinking of making Rod-Land for Amstrad and I hope with all my heart that the project will be realized.

Anyway, thanks for everything! ;)

sigh

Quote from: redbox on 13:12, 10 February 21
Thanks sigh, I appreciate that.

I've been working on the tiles and I used your mockups as an initial basis for my tileset.  I then used the Atari ST/Amiga tileset (which contains quite a few errors) and finally the Arcade tiles to fix any glitches.  I've tried to keep it as faithful to the arcade as possible.  Once this was all done, I optimised the tileset to make the level fit within 8kb with the tilemap.

I'm currently working on the engine which is coming along nicely.  I initially tried to disassemble the original Rodland code but it was a complete mess (and slow - less than 7fps!) so decided to start from scratch.  I'm aiming for double buffered, dirty tilemap and probably 25fps (because this will keep the speed inline with the Arcade version taking into account the CPC's double width mode 0 pixels) with full 32x32 sprites.

Here's some tileset previews:
Nice one! I hope that I haven't left any stray pixels.
The tiles and sprites are also taken from the arcade/amiga, so they will be the same size.Are you using a modification on the engine you created for Brick Rick?

OneVision

Hello,


really nice to see this game advancing ! Is this for OLD or PLUS ?


I had started also some graphic works (as seen in previous pages here) and like Sigh, feel free to use any of these.
I had also done this title screen in PLUS conditions : up to you to use it if necessary.


Can't wait to check a first playable version :)


Good luck with the port !




zeropolis79

Quote from: MacDeath on 22:05, 25 May 11
Wasn't Amstrad CPC Rodland's version just sluggish ?
also less content (bosses) as it was perhaps a 64K version ?


Parasol Star anyone ?


Kawaï is Japanese word for "how cute it is".


I had it on the CPC and thought visually is was very good, but it was a bit sluggish at times. (and I played it on a 6128)

redbox

I've redrawn the graphics from scratch using the Arcade version as the basis.

I became increasingly frustrated with the existing Atari ST / Amiga graphics because they were far from perfect.

This might mean that the CPC might well end up with the most "arcade perfect" port (at least visually)...  :D

Mr. DVG

Quote from: redbox on 13:19, 22 June 21
I've redrawn the graphics from scratch using the Arcade version as the basis.

I became increasingly frustrated with the existing Atari ST / Amiga graphics because they were far from perfect.

This might mean that the CPC might well end up with the most "arcade perfect" port (at least visually)...  :D
Fabulous!!!

At this point a first playable level to make us feel good for a few years would be welcome! :D 

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