Wicked C64 game graphics

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Jubatian
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Wicked C64 game graphics

Post by Jubatian »

I just found this: Wrath of the Demon for C64.



Possibly the most amazing scene is the horse riding on the beginning with all those parallax sections and smooth sprite multiplexing used to realize some very compelling animation for the machine. True there are many nice stuff on the C64, but this I think is definitely something unique, good ideas with visually very pleasant results.

Thanatos is also something interesting for technology (here is a video), it doesn't look very impressive, but it seems to work by realizing the dragon by background (so not sprites), sometimes visible in clashes with other non-sprite graphic elements.
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D3thAdd3r
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Re: Wicked C64 game graphics

Post by D3thAdd3r »

That looks pretty good, and I am a sucker for parallax. I like that last cave part especially, the foreground adds a convincing effect. I forget if mode 74 or another has a per scanline scroll to it, might be capable of such things.

Using the background for big "sprites" is also a neat novelty. Lot of that on the NES/Famicom in games like Contra, TMNT 1, Kung Fu. On Uzebox the only similar example I can think of is Tank Fu boss so far. Some space shooter should definitely do this.
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uze6666
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Re: Wicked C64 game graphics

Post by uze6666 »

Wow, that part with the running horse is pretty damn good. The big sprites alone is already quite nice, but with the parallax it's really impressive! Nice find! :)
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Jubatian
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Re: Wicked C64 game graphics

Post by Jubatian »

Parallaxing... Mode 74 can scroll tile rows independently (supporting the proper rendering of sprites over such scrolled rows), with some trickery with tile row placements it can even mimic per scanline scroll (but only without sprites) to some degree. The problem with full per scanline scroll is that it would demand either per scanline VRAM, or a wide VRAM with room for the independently scrolled rows (which needs such a video mode which can do "real" scroll, not only sub-tile shifts of 1 - 7 pixels, the first M74 concepts had that, but the final uses sub-tile shifting).

For me it seems like Wrath of the Demon also uses only tile row scrolling. The VIC II also does only sub-tile shifting, although in bitmap mode it may be easier to actually do per-scanline scrolling, but often games rather use MultiColor Character mode since the 6510 can't cope with moving around 8KBytes of data fast enough for horizontal scrolling. For me by the visuals of this game it seems possible that it uses MC Character mode indeed for the background ( http://www.zimmers.net/cbmpics/cbm/c64/vic-ii.txt , 3.7.3.2, the game likely reprograms colors repeatedly during the frame, in some scenes glitches show indicating where the game might be reprogramming the VIC).

Yes, the final boss in Tank Fu is definitely a wickedly nice idea, quite unexpected, and technologically impressive for Mode 3 :) That's a very good Uzebox game especially in multiplayer.
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