Shadow of the Beast on Amstrad CPC+!! | MSX Resource Center (Page 1/10)

Champion (361)

23-02-2018, 19:12

That's the GX4000, the 1990 upgrade of the CPC. Only £100 though, so a different market segment from the contemporaneous Turbo R.

That said, the main advantages it brings for something like Shadow of the Beast are explicit fine scrolling, line interrupts, hardware sprites and a much expanded palette. So I guess the MSX2+ is the proper comparison?

By msxtrd

Champion (273)

23-02-2018, 20:29

Truly great achivement for an 8-bit system! If it becomes a real game I would get it for my GX4000. that poor thing does not have much software .

By msxtrd

Champion (273)

23-02-2018, 19:53

TomH wrote:

That said, the main advantages it brings for something like Shadow of the Beast are explicit fine scrolling, line interrupts, hardware sprites and a much expanded palette. So I guess the MSX2+ is the proper comparison?

You would rather need a GFX9000 to pull it off on MSX in my opinion.

By maxis

Champion (512)

23-02-2018, 22:13

TomH wrote:

That's the GX4000, the 1990 upgrade of the CPC. Only £100 though, so a different market segment from the contemporaneous Turbo R.

It can run either on CPC+ (i.e. PLUS version) or on GX4000. Parallax scrolling and PSG sampled (OMG!!!) sound.
IMHO it shows again a great example of a good programming and the excellent and well balanced HW architecture... Also one interesting feature is the fully embedded sprite memory into the ASIC. It helps the CPU to have more throughput when accessing the video area in the shared RAM.
IMHO, the architecture was well studied and tailored (maybe even inspired by arcades of that time) - even DMA lists are there... Also the chipset is light and relatively low cost.

By maxis

Champion (512)

23-02-2018, 22:20

msxtrd wrote:

You would rather need a GFX9000 to pull it off on MSX in my opinion.

As GFX9000 is connected via the I/O space and not sharing the RAM with Z80, the bottleneck is the Z80 to V9990 interconnect. IMHO, there must be the balance between CPU peformance figure, screen size (resolution), bandwidth of the CPU to Video interconnect and the simplicity of the HW assistance. The best example, IMHO, is the AMIGA OCS.

By TomH

Champion (361)

23-02-2018, 22:22

maxis wrote:

TomH wrote:

That's the GX4000, the 1990 upgrade of the CPC. Only £100 though, so a different market segment from the contemporaneous Turbo R.

It can run either on CPC+ (i.e. PLUS version) or on GX4000. Parallax scrolling and PSG sampled (OMG!!!) sound.

Sampled sound is a built-in feature of the Plus range, isn't it? Through cooperation of the DMA chip and setting up the AY as a DAC? So, a lot like the setup on the original Macintosh?

By erpirao

Paragon (1315)

23-02-2018, 22:52

maxis wrote:

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Have you noticed that last November Logon System have released the amazing demo of Shadow of the Beast (originally the long standing Amiga benchmark title)?
Here is the video of the demo running on Z80 powered Amstrad CPC+ !!!
https://youtu.be/CPCyF71098o

You can also notice the original soundtrack from Amiga version. Z80, BTW, is clocked at 4 MHz.
Ultra smooth parallax scroller, like on the original platform (Amiga). Simply incredible....

You can see the original Amiga title inhere for comparison:
https://youtu.be/w6Osnolfxqw

more than 20 years ago ...
in msx2+
shadow of the beast MSX2+ (good resolution)

By TomH

Champion (361)

23-02-2018, 23:01

I knew it! Horizontal scroll, line interrupts, sprites, a decent palette. That's all you need!

Well, that and talent and time.

By maxis

Champion (512)

24-02-2018, 00:49

erpirao wrote:

more than 20 years ago ...
in msx2+

I've seen that MSX2+ demo and for me that was a long time benchmark for what can be done on MSX2+ with the talent and passion. And now we see THE REAL 40+ layers parallax scroller, original sampled sound, the animated bosses, the moon, the trees, mountains and moving airships!!! Completely beyond the comparison!

One more thing: out of all the Z80 versions including ZX and CPC, the SMS version is the most playable IMHO and more realistic...

By journey

Hero (575)

24-02-2018, 08:31

erpirao wrote:

maxis wrote:

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Have you noticed that last November Logon System have released the amazing demo of Shadow of the Beast (originally the long standing Amiga benchmark title)?
Here is the video of the demo running on Z80 powered Amstrad CPC+ !!!
https://youtu.be/CPCyF71098o

You can also notice the original soundtrack from Amiga version. Z80, BTW, is clocked at 4 MHz.
Ultra smooth parallax scroller, like on the original platform (Amiga). Simply incredible....

You can see the original Amiga title inhere for comparison:
https://youtu.be/w6Osnolfxqw

more than 20 years ago ...
in msx2+
shadow of the beast MSX2+ (good resolution)

The boot seems from MSX2 and not MSX2+