Sinclair ZX Spectrum Shock Megademo by ESI

Sinclair ZX Spectrum Shock Megademo by ESI



Sinclair ZX Spectrum Shock Megademo by ESI.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Sinclair
• ZX
• Spectrum
• Shock
• Megademo
• by
• ESI

[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

[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

[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...

[navesele]

A machine is as weak as the programmer.

[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 (!)

[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 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 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 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 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.

[Abrimaal]

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

[receptor1974]

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[CoolDudeClem]

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