Here is our attempt to be totally up-to-date. #Galastrad has been out for only few days. To be on top of recent development, we even shifted our regular schedule. Good thing that you're subscribed to our RSS feed, so you've caught this unusual Tuesday addition!
After our recent post on the 16/8-bit editions of Bushido Warrior, remains of the #AmstradCPC version has been found and released today on #GTW, thanks to preservation efforts of Steve Brown. A neat oriental themed Gauntlet clone due for release in 1988.
That’s what I call a good start to the weekend 🙂🙂🙂
The only soldering error was a short between power and ground on the USB power connector.
Design wise the backplane has a couple of footprint issues, and my attempt to keep the board smaller by placing components under and between the cards is proving less than ideal in practice. The taller components are actually fitting between the cards but it looks messy and there’s potential for damage from soldered pins.
Always when I pass this little building, it reminds me of the game "Tiny Skweeks" by #Loriciel that was originally released for the #Amstrad#CPC. Among others there are versions for #SNES, #Amiga, #AtariST and #DOS, some of them known under the name "The Brainies".
I have fond memories of the game and really need to play it again.
Here is a short insight of the #AmstradCPC version:
I have hacked the source to add an indirection table that all object references go through. The indirection contains a pointer and a bank number. "dereferencing" an indirection maps the corresponding bank.
The loading of the initial images goes through, and I can execute 3 bytecode opcodes before it crashes! But this is really a tight fit in the rom, and I quickly ran out of space after adding some debug traces.
#Smalltalk for #AmstradCPC is alive! Well, sort of. The virtual machine is running now, but my choice of memory organization with an indirection page turns out not to be a very good one, as the indirection table quickly fills up because many small objects are created.
Maybe the next step is implementing chars similar to smallints, that is, inlined in other objects. But that will save me only 256 entries in the table, out of 5000.
Made available a little app I've been working on and off (mostly on) for the last couple of weeks: https://github.com/Cwiiis/maped/ - an Amstrad CPC/Plus-centric tile map editor. In combination with whatever image editor you like, it lets you do basic editing as well as manage and visualise map metadata. It can export binary that's very easy to load on the CPC/Plus too. Enjoy! https://github.com/Cwiiis/maped/
First finished cart for Oh Chute 🙂 Boxes (ordered), booklets (mid-design) and box inserts (blocked on boxes) to go... And much flashing and soldering of EPROMs... #retrogamedev#gamedev#amstradcpc#gx4000#8bit
Ok, it's pretty cool getting to see your own retro game running on a console in the living room 🙂 Plays much better on a 12" CRT really, but still... #retrogamedev#amstradcpc#gx4000
Those with CPC ROM expertise, take a guess at my mistake. It's really obvious once revealed. But nowhere in any of the pages about that cart did it point it out.
In March, and thanks to David Crookes, we added four previously unpreserved #AmstradCPC games into #GTW, including two strategy and two action games by Angela Swinbourne: