Invasion of the Zombie Monsters preview

OMFG gfx looks amazing! Hopefully the playability will be awsome too

Well, I remember a promise somebody made me....

Now we've just published a game trailer on Youtube. Check www.relevovideogames.com for lots of info

oh my... that looks very promising. lot's of (fast) action.. great gfx.

gameplay vid here

This is the first time I see a spectrum version that is slower than the MSX version \o/

Ah, it's a scroll like Astro Marine Corps!
I'm glad someone finally did that again. Great!

@ Hrothgar, yes, but that was for MSX2. Really a shame it never got finished BTW - I'm sure it would have been a great game, surpassing Akin.

Hardware specs don't improve the game, it's viejo_archivero and his team that made this dual platform game as great as can be

From the videos, there could be some theoretical improvements within the MSX1 spec, such as hardware sprites and smoothly scrolling large tile-based enemies (at least vertically). But seeing the action and speed of this game both Z80 and VDP are probably working overtime already.

As for MSX2, this could be done in screen 5 with block copies as well, but with a somewhat diminished framerate (see Coredump). So indeed improving the specs isn't always guaranteed to improve playability and overall quality. For the specs that this is built in, it looks fantastic.

with the usage of hw sprites the game would be better. i do not think having the main charater go behind the background is a *MUST*.
Having, instead a full colored main charater made with sprites would be great.

Maybe it is not a "must" to have main character which can disappear behind the background, but it is the thing which makes this game unique when comparing it to every other MSX game. How "many" MSX games you know which have player disappearing behind the background? Right now only F1-spirit (in just few stages) and Jack the Nipper II (direct Spectrum port) comes to my mind. Maybe one or few others may exist I think (direct Spectrum ports too).

Player looks really good already, but of course it would be nice to see some MSX game which has player made with both tiles and sprites. And of course smaller enemies could look better if they had allowed to move smoothly by using hardware sprites. But I know I would never had seen any problem in tile sprites´ eight pixel movement, if this game had published in the 80s. I still remember that in early nineties, after few years Amiga playing, I played Salamander again and wondered how blocky that scroll was and why I didn´t seen it that way in the 80s. So Yes, I can see those Zombie tile-sprites moving blockily, but I know that it is part of MSX´s life. At least they don´t flicker, like things were sometimes on some hardware-spriteless 8-bit machines. (not just on Spectrum, but on BBC, etc, too)

@Masaxi: mixing sprites and tiles is the worst solution: you get the worst from all
1) when sprites need to flicker they display the tile. Usually the tile is a blocky solid color, and when the sprite disappear looks badly
2) you are pratically still limited to move on 8 bit steps.

Tiles have the major drawback in being colored by scanline (no more than 1 color for each scanline) like msx2 sprites.
Hw sprites for main chars are better, and remember, making the sprite disappear could be done even with hw sprites. It's only more difficult, not impossible.

Well I am not an expert at all. But I think the extra time gained by disabling the sprites is well used for other stuff updating the screen.

@Huey
about your idea of disabling the sprites: on msx1 it's not possible. even if was, i'm not sure that this allowed a gain in speed. there is no blitter that can take advantage, and writes to vram appear to be hardcoded (for the minimum delay) based on the screen mode and on vblk, not on the sprites. (unfortunately)

@Masaxi: jack the nipper is a good candidate of a sprite/tiles mixed game, or at least the main charather could be rendered with two sprites.
even using a sprite for the main charather could save a bit of cpu time.

Pingpong, I was thinking Jack the Nipper II. It has trees and pillars which hide Jack and other people and animals, also tree leaves (on branches) and grass partly hide them.

Haven´t given much thought for first Jack the Nipper, but I think that Jack 1 can give some headache for programmer, if he´s going to use tiles+sprites for every walking toy, animal and human. That´s because Jack the Nipper has somekinda "3D" effect, as toys, animals and humans can walk in front or behind each other AND they can do the same with collectable objects. Even if only Jack has made with tiles+sprites, there are many moving and still software sprites around the screen which all will react when Jack´s body hits them, they either walk to behind or frontside of Jack and Jack can stand between two dropped objects etc... In Jack the Nipper II everything is in pure 2D, animals and humans can pass each other (except Jack who dies) but they all move in same Y-coordinate (I mean when they are on same platform) with exception of those butterfly look-a-like bats and arrow-like bees and that´s why Jack II doesn´t need as much calculating when someone walks behind pillar or tree or gets partly hided by grass.

I made demonseed cry.


(didn´t download it)

@DemonSeed: in fact A.M.C. was one of my inspirations for this game engine, but I wanted it without the big scoreboard and of course full screen 2 graphics

Thank you all for your feedback!

@ viejo_archivero
Not surprising! Though it looks like a big improvement upon the A.M.C. idea, because of the much larger gamescreen indeed but also things like color use, smoothness etc.

@ MäSäXi
Knowing you just a little makes me expect you'd be quite enthousiastic about it.