ZX Collection Vol #1 - 8-bit Wars Entry

[Qube]

Title : ZX Collection Volume 1

Download : Windows  Mac  Linux

Required dependancies : Windows may require the DX9 Runtime - On Linux you may need to install OpenAL - Terminal > sudo apt-get install libopenal1

Media Info : All graphics, coding and music done be me \o/

Four classic *cough* ZX Spectrum games covering the 16k, 48k and 128k variants.

Rescue Rob :



Galaxy Defender :



Bean Drop :



Bomb Da City :

[therevills]

Very nice classic games!

Spotted a little gfx bug when the zombies(?) walked off the "screen limit", but doesnt effect the game.

[Qube]

Spotted a little gfx bug when the zombies(?) walked off the "screen limit", but doesnt effect the game.

They walked off the screen for you? - Everything should be clipped fine but I guess not, grr. Was it the Windows version where this happened?

[Qube]

zombies(?)

Zombies, mummies or zombie mummies, which ever works best for you

[Qube]

Spotted a little gfx bug when the zombies(?) walked off the "screen limit", but doesnt effect the game.

Super Lol's, just spotted that too. Can't believe I missed it - Thanks for spotting that ( too much game testing misses silly things )

[therevills]

No problem

Yep it was the Windows version.

[Steve Elliott]

A really nice collection of retro games and also demo scene effects.  Cool.   

[craigd]

Very nice retro collection! Bomb Da City brought back a few memories of my Speccy days Couldn't find any bugs, so I guess that's a good sign haha

[iWasAdam]

nicely done

[Derron]

Would you mind adding:
- windowed mode
- low res movement (so round x,y to "low res grid"-integers before rendering) - asking as characters move way too smooth for retro :-)
?

Really nice tunes. As said before - if one of you bg music geniuses wants to create some (free) music for TVTower - you know my name...

bye
Ron

[Steve Elliott]

Works great on Linux too.   

Would you mind adding:
- windowed mode
- low res movement (so round x,y to "low res grid"-integers before rendering) - asking as characters move way too smooth for retro :-)
?

   Retro look with a modern update works for me.

[Derron]

Its the AGK runtime - if that would fail on Linux, all AGK linux users would have already blamed.
So I assume it would run for all official platform AGK supports (with sound and the given resolution).

Don't want to reduce Qube's efforts with above's phrases - it's still a great looking piece of software (I like the vibrance and crystal clear appearance of the first game).


Edit:

  Retro look with a modern update works for me.

Let's see how it looks if the movement was more "chunky". As said in another thread using "high res" and just draw your stuff "blocky" is more of the "current retro game wave". If you used _real_ low res (so with a 4x zoom you move 4px instead of 1px) you need to take into consideration some other stuff for a "smooth appearing" movement. So speed of moving characters will be higher to trick the eyes (to not see the "jerky movement") or way slower for "passive/background" creatures as you then "miss" a movement and your brain creates the smooth animation afterwards (once it registers: oh, it moved for about 5px inbetween).
Maybe Qube could elaborate a bit on how he renders the stuff - in a virtual resolution or native desktop resolution but with the sprites being scaled up (unfiltered). Maybe he has a trick leading to the smooth movement while still moving on the "low res grid".


bye
Ron

[Qube]

Would you mind adding:
- windowed mode
- low res movement (so round x,y to "low res grid"-integers before rendering) - asking as characters move way too smooth for retro :-)
?

I can add in a Windowed mode after voting closes. Easy enough to add in
Low res movement?, lol, I think having fat pixels on a a 27" monitor is retro enough for me

Really nice tunes. As said before - if one of you bg music geniuses wants to create some (free) music for TVTower - you know my name...

Glad you like my little funky tunes - Would be far easier to grab free ones from the web but it's fun to do your own. Sure I don't mind doing a tune to donate to TV Tower. If you could give me a couple of example of the type of music you're after I'll give it a whirl.

Maybe Qube could elaborate a bit on how he renders the stuff - in a virtual resolution or native desktop resolution but with the sprites being scaled up (unfiltered). Maybe he has a trick leading to the smooth movement while still moving on the "low res grid".

It was a virtual resolution of 256x192 with filtering set to nearest neighbour. AGK has two methods for rendering final output though.

1) Set the virtual resolution and it'll scale up to native resolution. Rotations and floating point movement also take advantage of the upscaled image for smoother visuals.
2) Set the virtual resolution and then create a render to texture of the same virtual resolution dimensions. Send all drawing commands to the texture and then render the texture to your virtual resolution. Although the output is still finally scaled to native resolution all movement and rotations will be accurate based on the texture dimensions. This gives the best results for ultimate retro rotations and movement.

[Derron]

So I would prefer "2)" to see all that jiggely-diggely-movement.

@ tunes
As the game plays from "80s on" and the basic game idea was "Mad TV" (which is done in the late 80s/early 90s) ... Just watch youtube for the "Mad TV Intro (DOS Version)" - or even more music "Mad TV - IBM-PC AdLib Soundtrack [Emulated]" (dunno if it is still copyrighted - which is why I did not directly link to it). It's not the MAD series but a game (if find the MAD-dude then its the wrong video ;-)
Of course it could be a bit more "modern" sound sample wise.


bye
Ron

[Imerion]

Nice! These were really polished! I especially liked Galaxy Defender and Rescue Rob. Nice smooth feel to the gameplay. I'm impressed you managed to make four games for the competition when I barely managed one.