what is the status of Slotmans 'prince of persia' ?

By nikodr

Paladin (750)

05-07-2007, 09:10

Hey this thing has been ported to zx spectrum any chance we see an msx version?

By viejo_archivero

Paragon (1395)

05-07-2007, 12:30

I'm agree with MäSäXi on his game planning comments. For Prince of Persia (of course, MSX1), I would spend the whole sprite thing for the main character and make backgrounds and enemies with patterns... well, this will cause 8x8 moves for the enemies (they do not move that smoothly as the prince), but you'll still have the smooth moves for the main character with full sprite color power and some decent enemies and backgrounds. We can take Yiear Kung fu as an example of relatively big starring character using sprites and relatively big enemies using patterns. And I'm sure those 200 frames can be somehow reduced (removing some frames here and there, mirroring the left position using the game code...)

By nikodr

Paladin (750)

05-07-2007, 12:32

How on earth did they do it on the much limited spectrum?Did the use all of 200 frames?Msx is much more powerful than spectrum 128+.Ula of spectrum can't be compared to the msx video hardware.Msx is lights of years ahead.I wonder what is the problem and it hasn't been ported yet

By viejo_archivero

Paragon (1395)

05-07-2007, 12:44

I guess it was not cheap those days to make a proper MSX version for the game, and porting from zx to msx is not easy sometimes, as video memory is located in RAM on zx spectrum, allowing big and fast transfers (RAM to RAM)... a "direct" MSX port usually results on using the same routines (but RAM to VRAM), slowing down the thing A LOT...

By nikodr

Paladin (750)

05-07-2007, 14:34

However with the knowledge present now after all these years i think it can be easily done right?
I still insist that Spectrum's graphic chip ULA and only 6 kbytes of ram are no much for 9938 and 128kbytes of video ram.Spectrum did not even have hardware sprites and yet prince of persia seems good enough there.I still think that even without hardware sprites it could be possible for msx.

By SLotman

Paragon (1242)

05-07-2007, 17:07

The Spectrum version SUCKS. Was made by some Russian guys, it isnt a complete game, and it has color clash. It could be done on a MSX1 in the same way, but I dont think it's worth.

I do however found another way to do Prince, but it's far from being even an alpha. If it improves, rest assured you all will hear about it

By nikodr

Paladin (750)

07-07-2007, 00:30

Well i was impressed to see it for spectrum.And if a spectrum that is so much inferior to our machine can do this then msx can do it a hundred times better.All we need is someone skilled to try!

By dioniso

Champion (479)

07-07-2007, 03:18

Well i was impressed to see it for spectrum.

Me too. I think it's very well done.

I guess that the use of sprites could compensate for the lack of direct access to VRAM. Probably just for the main character, as MäSäXi and Viejo say.

By PingPong

Enlighted (4098)

07-07-2007, 21:54

Someone said that there is a NES version... does not have the NES similar limitations in HW sprites? Probably they flicker a lot but this game can be done....

the nes allow for 8 8x8 sprites on a scanline each of 4 colors. so where the nes gain in more coloured sprites is balanced by a much less limited sprite width....

By Shiru

Expert (115)

08-07-2007, 14:03

The Spectrum version SUCKS. Was made by some Russian guys, it isnt a complete game
It IS a complete game (demo and full versions exists), although not very quality. Also there is ATM2 version (ZX clone with 320x200x16 colors per pixel), and official ZX version was in developing (source code exists).

You can also check versions for Sam Coupe and Amstrad CPC.