Sinclair ZX Spectrum Shock Megademo by ESI

[receptor1974]

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[Abrimaal]

@receptor1974 сволоч, this is a pure speccy, not pentagon with additional features like gigascreen or general sound.

[CoolDudeClem]

How did they get so many colours so close together without the colour clash in the middle of the demo?

[CUR50R]

Eagle Soft Incorporated ?

[equin0x80]

Really good demo, not just technically skilful but also stylish in design. My other favourites would include Gasman's "Losing Victoria" and some of the Dream-Makers/Rush productions.

[SpadajSpadaj]

Hmm... anyone has info how the vertical bars at 2:17-5:18 were done?

[astralbee]

It is a visual effect created by refreshing the screen very quickly. The spectrum can normally only display 2 colours in each 8x8 pixel square, but if you switch between images very quickly it appears to the naked eye that the colours are all present together. I believe it was called "the rainbow processor". No mod or enhancement was required, but the power required to do it meant it was not possible "in-game". Look at the title screen of the game "Mask 3" for an example of it being used.

[SpadajSpadaj]

Hmm... you mean that's cycled so every scanline the line of attributes is changed? Makes sense but seems horribly cpu-eating.

[Abrimaal]

@astralbee In games you can see the multicolour effect in Action Force 2 and the ending screen of Dan Dare 2 (Sinclair User demo), but they all are static screens. I wonder why nobody tried to create multicolour sprites in games.

[astralbee]

@Abrimaal They never tried to create it in games for the reason I gave in my original post. The rainbow processor effect is an optical illusion. The computer is 'faking' the appearance of extra colours in a single 8x8 square by switching very quickly between them. The interrupts required to 'fake' that many colours take up too much processing power to have anything else happening.

[Abrimaal]

@astralbee I mean "static" screens where the colour exchange is synchronized with the display rate and a multicolour screen looks like a normal screen with the exception that the colours are defined in 1x8 pixels. I heard that the Z80 clock in Spectrum is to slow to display a "static" multicolour full screen, so such screens are always smaller, but sprites are much smaller and it would be theoretically quite easy to write a routine that exchanges colours for example of your ship in a game.

[astralbee]

@Abrimaal I see what you're saying, and I admit I have forgotten almost everything I knew about z80 programming. However it really isn't just the size of the sprite to consider. Interrupts mess with the clock speed to achieve the effect... so normal routines for movement of sprites, collision detection etc wouldnt work.

Having said that.... before Jet Set Willy they said you could never have an in-game sountrack on a Spectrum.

[Abrimaal]

@astralbee Let's make it more simple. Have you played R-Type or Lightforce? In these games the sprites are moving by 8 pixels (not scrolled by 1 px what would be difficult for the multicolour), so when you move the ship right, the pixel matrix (8 bytes for an 8x8 square + 1 byte of colour) would be exchanged by 8+8 bytes for each square. If the movement routine would be run as the first one on interrupts I think it would work. I have seen a multiclr VERTICAL scroll see in my profile 48 IRONS

[astralbee]

@Abrimaal "more simple"... right well you go program it.

[Abrimaal]

@astralbee And when we're about in-game music on ZX48, check Kung Fu Master, the in-game tune sounds very clear, because this is the main part of the CPU work, the rest of the game is made on interrupts (!)

[LukeElsdonVideos]

Where can I buy a Spectrum with the power to do this? An unmodded spectrum could barely do this.

[baze128]

It's a plain old Speccy.

[HarryMatic]

Aahh. A very good point. It's just my poor old Speccy is dead. It only comes up with a grey border, no text and doesn't respond to anything.

[extremisto47]

YEAAAHHH! I have one, it was with a BASIC compiler. Loading programs was from Compact cassettes ...

[HarryMatic]

RUN. flashflashflashflashflash.

R.I.P. ZX Spectrum +... :(

[yerzmyey]

Music trackers for ZX Spectrum (samples & chiptunes) zxtrackers. republika. pl

(Remove SPACEs).

[Denibull]

Oh god, this brings back the memories. I almost shitted myself when I saw second part for the first time. I had to get AY straightaway and do music. BTW. I'm the author of Eye of the Beholder and Power of love demos. May upload it one day just for fun. I can't believe it's been 15 years since I've done it..

[Polonpo]

Pretty impressive!

Music was good too.

[jbones76]

the sinclair is a weak machine for demo coding

[SuperClr]

I think the point was to show the programmers skills which is pretty impressive given the basic limitations of the speccy

[navesele]

A machine is as weak as the programmer.

[ChuckBleedinNorris]

?? How can you say that? The amount of power some of these demos push out of a 3.5mhz chip is amazing.

[3yE]

Technically, he is right. No character mode, no line interrupt or programmable interrupt controller, no possibility to trick the graphics hardware into reading some other region of memory... And then the CPU also stalled quite a bit of time.

[Karagianis]

getting this out of a spectrum is impressive. you used a 128 I'm guessing?

[SuperClr]

Isn't it? The second part is just breathtaking when you see it on the screen - especially when you remember that the spectrum usually had the colour clash issue (each 8x8 pixel character cell could only have 2 colours - paper and ink!) but the effect on part 2 is even more impressive when you realise that the effect extends right into the border and off the edge of the TV screen.

This works on any 128 in 48k mode (BASIC command: usr 0). Many 128k demos actually crash in 128k mode. Music is AY

[schneil]

This was one of the few games I could load in +3 basic - so I could actually load it from my +3's disc dive :)

[Agilo3]

VERY fucking awesome!!

[Tanas666]

There are no background stars in the last part of the demo when there should be. What emu are you using?

[SuperClr]

Hi there are actually stars there, however the crappy youtube compression is so bad that they are lost during the conversion after uploading =(

The effect on compression is also noticeable on the otherparts such as part 2 and matt guest screen. I might be able to zoom in on the screen a bit and remove some excess border - but I dont think it will help much...

[corkytara]

this was amazing x