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Monday, April 13, 2009

ZX Spectrum Pixel Shader

A while back people started remaking old computer games but with modern snazzed up graphics. what i wanted to see though was new modern games but with old resolution graphics. Particularly the colour clash from the zx spectrum. So i started programming stuff. One problem i had was redrawing the screen and still getting a decent frame rate. I got my brother to write a dll but still only got up to 21 frames a second.

I concluded i would need to learn to write pixel shaders so the graphics card could handle redrawing the screen. Meanwhile the obsolete technology show happened at the Here gallery. I didn't have time to solve the problems i had and wanted to make a game in a couple of weeks that would run on a low spec pc so it could be included in the show. I used the system i had for drawing speccy style graphics to render video that would play in the background with sprites over the top.
Does anyone have any links to the other artist work that was in the obsolete technology show ? Please add to the comments so i can link to it.

The game monster target was supposed to be a sort of bowling game but a bit like burnout. And rampage or some other kaiju godzilla type game. You pick up monsters with a ufo and drop them on a city aiming as near to the centre for a pinball style score. Eventually i taught myself to program pixel shaders this next video is a prototype of the same sort of thing but its now all in 3d. You can move freely and pick up monsters with a ufo catcher claw thinggie and throw them dynamically at buildings.

1 comment:

  1. I think Tom Bugs has some links on his website- or he may know a bit more about some of the people involved. The other person who might know is Hal.

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