Pacmania Acorn Games Video Archive A3010/TV Card

[Archimedes75009]

Hey Shaun hats off to you.

At this time why didn't you use the overscan ?

Lack of infos about the VIDC to create one, or was it because it would have taken too many cycles and you wanted to stay in the VBL ?

Thanks.

[Alexfromherts]

Wow that was a retro experience... I wish Acorn hadn't sunk...

[Pablos544]

Acorn sunk?

[borgirdummu]

One of the most fun Acorn games, and the best version of Pacman ever. I loved JUNGLEMANIA

[garth1288]

i hate to say but the c64 version had better music

[dcikaruga]

The Acorn version was the best, even better than the arcade machine. It's probably your video capture or youtube the framerate was a lot better than that, its was smooth as silk.

[Ahle2]

This is a straight conversion from the Amiga version, only lacking the Overscan mode from the Amiga version. Very good conversion though!

[shaunhw]

Wow, I've not seen this for a while. It brings back some memories.

Indeed it was as smooth as silk. I even knocked out the Acorn Engineers in Cambridge with this one. "You're writing to the screen ram directly!" one said to me. "Er yeah" I replied.

It beat the lot of 'em IMO. Amiga included.

The frame judder is because PC screens don't run at 50hz

Wasn't really an amiga conversion. Almost completely re-written save for logic. I know. I did it!

Regards,

Shaun Hollingworth

[dcikaruga]

I remember you Shaun, from Krisalis software!!!

Was really great of you to help port those 16-bit classics over to the Acorn. I spoke to Nigel Little once too, he told me you used 16 Colour mode (13 right?) because 256 (Mode 15 I think) was too slow. Still some other developers got by with it.

[shaunhw]

Indeed, Krisalis it was.

In fact these games were usually mode 9 screens, which were 320 pixels across with 16 colours. Mode 15 was a 640 pixel 256 colour mode. Scrolling 16 colour screens used less cpu time because one only had to scroll half the screen memory. On later hardware it wouldn't have be a problem but we tried to keep our games at full speed on the slower A310/A3000 series etc. Some games we did, were in 256 colour mode, when speed wasn't as important.

Regards,

Shaun

[dcikaruga]

I remember I wasn't very happy about the Amiga versions still looking better than the Acorn conversion (me being a snob I guess), but I did accept the Amiga offered 32,64 and 128 colour modes.

Matt Furness right? He did that Music Module for your games, I couldn't help but poke around, excuse me!

Incidently Nigel Little was programming mobile phone games in JAVA last time I heard, a friend of mine actually went for an interview with that company and he was one of the interviewees.

[kimosaaaabe]

music is ported from Amiga! Looks OK but lacks overscan of the amiga version. Played around with soundtracker on the acorn - sound quality wasn't great...

[Archimedes75009]

@kimosaaaabe

It's true the 1st Archimedes had a too powerful filter... You could remove it easily and get the true sound from the VIDC.

[Clive0075]

Yes the VIDC was the video controler but also the sound chip, capable of 8 voices. Unfortunately, it took quite a lot of processing power in use ...

Another chip created by Acorn ingeneers', not a re use from another brand... so hats off to them !

[BigChiefMullet]

Quality! The music on the Acorn really was something.

[SegaMegadriveMic]

Jesus christ man! I have not played that game since high school! :-)