*Watches as stuff flies over my head* Oooh, purdy colours!!! :-D
I could do graphics and level design for it lol! Very cool to hear how
you'd go about it... Wouldn't it be a wonderful big finger to all the
naysayers who always said the SAM couldn't compete? ;-)
Warren
Quoting Thomas Harte <tomh.retros...@gmail.com>:
Being one of my favourite topics... the Wolfenstein algorithm is
actually incredibly inefficient. It's a linear search for every column
and then a couple of multiplies, an add and a divide to get scale.
If you instead used a combination forward/backward renderer with
portals and convex sectors, you could do significantly better for any
sort of geometry you'd expect on that level of device.
Assuming I've thought this through, costs Wolfenstein doesn't incur
would be: per visible sector you'd end up at a quadrant test, a divide
and a small table lookup per vertex, a divide, two multiplies and
three adds per visible wall. But you'd then be looking at (much the
same) two multiplies and an add every 8 or 16 columns and just two
adds per column. So you're spending a little on setup to save a lot
per column.
You'd draw front to back, zero overdraw for the world. Sprites would
be sorted per sector and I guess you'd want to walk back to the front
in sector order to paint them in, making it a stack-type thing rather
than merely a queue.
Walls could be any angle, and costs would increase as geometry
complexity increased, whereas in Wolfenstein they increase as your
rooms get larger. But freely angle walls would probably allow you to
keep the geometry simple.
Disadvantages would be indeterminate, and usually larger, level data
sizes, and the need to create a proper editor rather than just editing
in TextEdit or Notepad or whatever.
So, yes, I'm good at bluster.
On 24 April 2012 23:18, <war...@wdlee.co.uk> wrote:
Just been having a quick play!! Love that it works so fast. :-) very cool to
see another new SAM game. How many is that now, in the last few months? Dave
Invaders, Garden Centre of the Universe and now XOR... :-) What next??? :-D
Those making them, should see about getting them mentioned in Retro Gamer
magazine. They've got a section in the magazine about new games for all the
old machines, with mini-reviews etc. Definitely worth a bit of free
promotion and seeing your game in print on the shop shelves. :-)
I agree with the discussion that we all concentrated on emulating the 16bit
machines too much instead of working within the limitations to create other
stuff, but such is the way of things. We all wanted to do what the big-boys
could. Then again, that pushed a lot of the games further than a lot of
people expected anyway. I suppose that's another area where the SAM was like
the Spectrum. It wasn't technically as advanced as say the c64 in many ways,
but competed by sheer versatility and creativity. Such was the SAM to the
Amigas and STs. I think over the years the SAM has certainly proved it could
do great stuff, when pushed to its limits. Who originally thought Lemmings
would work? It's a shame we didn't see more games that weren't as limited by
speed, like Dizzy/Flashback types.
I'd love to see a basic test of a wolfenstein game running! :-) It'd really
be a nice show-piece. Having said that, if someone managed to get it
working, once the pseudo 3D engine of that was running, why not create the
SAM's own first FPS? (Like Colin was planning with Chrome) No need to use
the existing Wolfenstein graphics and such, when we can create our own for
the SAM, and our own level designs, story, creatures, etc?
Warren
Quoting James R Curry <8...@itdoesntsuck.com>:
I remember ordering the original from one of those ZX Spectrum mail order
places. They were never able to deliver it, for some reason, and offered
me the choice of another game, instead.
No idea what I wound up buying.
Now I can finally play it. Looks good! Is it in Mode 4?
On Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 8:21 PM, Thomas Harte
<tomh.retros...@gmail.com>wrote:
I played it for five minutes and it all looked very impressive. That
being said, I don't actually know the original game so I was quite
lost. Looking at the incredibly sparse World of Spectrum inlay scan
though, I think I'm meant to work things out for myself?
On 24 April 2012 18:00, Balor Price <toberm...@cookingcircle.co.uk>
wrote:
> Hello everybody
>
> I'm proud to present my conversion of the 1987 Spectrum game XOR. I
finally
> kept my promise to my teenage self to finish a SAM game!
>
> You can download it for free from the revived
> http://cookingcircle.co.uk
>
> I hope you enjoy it (and yell in frustration). It's 25 years old and
still
> as rock-hard as I remember.
>
> Any feedback/initial bugs found would be greatly appreciated. :D
>
> Cheers
> Howard
--
James R Curry
8...@itdoesntsuck.com
