I've spent the evening playing with the main game again, this time adding a couple of new cool features that we'll keep quiet about for the time being. However I was also adding the speedup I was on about yesterday to the X axis this time and in doing so I managed to speed up Y a bit as well. Doing this then led me to this new feature - its pretty cool, and its somthing that a C64 would struggle to do properly - if at all! The current thinking is that each port of the game will actually have quite a bit different, to the extent that some would say its not a true port, but a different game. While I could cripple one version to make anothers more like it, I don't want to - I want each machine to be pushed to its limits, even if that means adding features that the other versions won't have!
Purists will complain that they want XeO3 ported exactly, but I think having a great game - regardless of what the original looked like - is more important. It also means there may be several new games fo people to play which look only vuagely like each other. The style and baddies will be the same, but I suspect the levels and probably the paths they follow will all differ - weapons should be fine though. If someone wants an identical port - they can do it themselves by mixing code from one playform to the others.
However, this also free's me up to use the C64 sprites better, have more detailed backgrounds and all that this entails, and it also means that the spectrum version can push its own strengths - should be good!!!
One thing has occured to me though, I'm going to have to untangle the sprite routine from the Plus/4 version into some sort of framework so others can use it properly! Its a bit intertwined just now and some might have difficulty extracting it....
2 comments:
I agree 120% with chicken
I remember that in spain they id a lot of games for the spectrum and they would port them to the cpc and msx, but the poor msx version was always 100% like the spectrum, except for the music perhaps but the graphs were exactly the same but msx could use hardware sprites and more colours per 8x8 pixels... this was a pitty. So don't do the same with XeO3. Use the features of each machine to the full!
Hi There
I am doing a port for the Amstrad CPC+.
Many routines work.
Scrolling, Background animation and some of the sprite movemovement is working.
But i would like to test it with the original graphics of the +4 version. Is there a place where the raw graphics of the +4 version can be downloaded (eg. in BMP or GIF format - needs to be converted into the special format used on the CPC!).. I also think of the graphics of the background tiles etc. Also the 200 x 3 x 3 tiles map. I tried the Alpha version of XEO3 in the Yape emulator and would thought about dumping it into an CPC emulator. But i am a complete novice in commodore stuff, (Z80/CPC only) so unsuccessfull :-(
Keep up the excellent work!
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