Hi-Colour Games
1 message · 2006-02-05 → 2006-02-05 · Yahoo Group era · View archive on archive.org
Participants: Andrew Owen
Preserved from the Timex/Sinclair 2068 Yahoo Group (2001–2019), which is no longer online. Text reproduced from the archive.org archive; email addresses masked.
Messages
1. Hi-Colour Games
Andrew Owen · Sun, 05 Feb 2006 21:33
Since I discovered the Timex I've had a number of ideas for games that could make use of
the hi-colour mode. I don't really have time to work on any of them so I thought I'd just
put them out here in case anyone wants to pick one of them up and run with it.
1) Vertical Scrolling Shoot-Em-Up.
192x192 play area. The background and ship are done on alternate lines, although the
ship mask would be added to the background (to stop it looking seethrough - except
when you're invulnerable). This gives you the ability to do vertical and horizontal pixel
scrolling with no attribute-clash. I did a few mock-ups of Goldrunner to test the theory
and it looks great. If I was to do this game I'd port Goldrunner.
2) Frogger clone.
Owing to the very specific colour areas used by the game a fairly decent clone of the
original could be done with as much colour as the arcade version and no attribute clash.
3) Tetris clone.
How about a version of Tetris with full colour converted 24-bit BMP backgrounds and pixel
smooth scrolling tiles. Shouldn't tax the processor too much and would look very nice.
4) Ultima style RPG.
Tiles based games are perfect for Hi-Colour mode. I actually might write this one myself
one of these days.
5) Mixed mode graphic adventure.
Another one I might one day have a go at. This would have a hi-colour picture and hi-res
text. The only limiting factor is that you'd have to hold up the normal processes in order
to flip the screen mode at the right time. You could probably use the top third of the
screen for graphics and the wasted processor time to play an AY tune and read the
keyboard though.