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how did zx spectryum programmers make those big character graphics in games?
Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2024 8:25 pm
by Crayon21
Jet pac, Jet Set willy, Exolon. How did programmers manage to get the character so big? I can only manage small versions
if not BASIC, then how, outside of assembly?
Re: how did zx spectryum programmers make those big character graphics in games?
Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2024 9:09 pm
by dr beep
Outside assembly?
Define UDGs and use those to print, like SMURFS
https://www.spectrumcomputing.co.uk/ent ... m/Schlumpf
Re: how did zx spectryum programmers make those big character graphics in games?
Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2024 10:11 pm
by dr beep
Re: how did zx spectryum programmers make those big character graphics in games?
Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2024 1:08 am
by XavSnap
Re: how did zx spectryum programmers make those big character graphics in games?
Posted: Sat Jun 08, 2024 2:03 pm
by RS232
Break into the listing of the Horizons tape or a 16/48k nagazine tape they use a machine code routine to do it.
Re: how did zx spectryum programmers make those big character graphics in games?
Posted: Tue Jun 11, 2024 3:19 pm
by XavSnap
In BASIC, you had to print the word on the screen, test each pixel and print a colored space on the screen to get big chars.
The second way is to test a binary from an UDG.
In BASIC, this routine is very slow.
ASM routine:
http://www.hebdogiciel.free.fr/hd-roms/ ... settes.zip
On ZX81 :
http://abandonlistings.free.fr/ordi5/hd ... etters.zip
Re: how did zx spectryum programmers make those big character graphics in games?
Posted: Tue Jun 11, 2024 3:53 pm
by 1024MAK
There is a faster way in BASIC, but it uses it's own "font" stored as DATA statements within the program. At seven or eight bytes per character, this does mean a lot of data statements to enter if you want the full character set... It also uses a lot of RAM in comparison.
Mark