fCPC32 first beta by Rlyeh


Antiriad

Member
Joined
Apr 11, 2003
Messages
343
Website
Visit site
Oh happy day! Those who know me are aware that I have long campaigned for an Amstrad CPC Emulator for the GP32 as both the Speccy and C64 were well covered.

Thankfully, when I offered to do some icons for Rlyeh's emulators I asked him whether he'd be interested in doing one - and he said yes! (It was mentioned here briefly in the news)

Now...with all his other emulators already mentioned still unreleased (fPCE32, fGEN32, fNGP32, fWS32, fMAME32) i thought he would put it on the back burner..but nooooo! What do i see on www.gp32spain.com today???

FIRST ONE DAY BETA DONE! :D

fcpc.png


So its being done! :rolleyes: I cant be happier! And I know Im not alone!
 
woohoo! I miss my CPC, and playing c64 and spectrum versions of those games just isn't the same! Fantastic news.
 
It's a z80 machine, not totally dissimilar to the spectrum +2 (CPC464) and the +3 (CPC6128). They had 64k of RAM (well, there was 128 on the 6128, but it was hardly ever used by games). Thousands of games are available for it, and many were considerably better than the spectrum and c64 versions. I'm going to have to find all my disk images again now!
 
barnesy posted on Dec 11 2003 at 01:31 PM said:
Thousands of games are available for it, and many were considerably better than the spectrum and c64 versions.
Unless scrolling was required. *flicker* *flicker*

I feel a fight brewing. :ph34r:
 
Last edited by a moderator:
The CPC line of computers is by Amstrad, for starters (since nobody mentioneed that). It was a main competitor for the c64, spectrum and MSX. There's 3 models: CPC464, CPC664, CPC6128. 464's were the worst, I think they had fewer keys or something. CPC's came with monitors, either color or monochrome green, and they had a built in tape drive (in all models or just some?) and you could get a disk drive, I think a 3" one? It was an odd size. It was quite successful in the UK for a while. It died off before Spectrum and C64 did, though. The CPC had a really good set of resolutions - it had a blocky and ugly lo-res with quite a nice color palette (was it 16 colors or more? 128?), a monochromatic speccy-like hi-res and a good medium res which was very detailed and even with a smaller palette, it looked good. Or was this just the hi-res with bad speccy ports? I could never tell.

Cos' of the age of the machine, some ports are completely different to each other. For example, the CPC version of Monty on the Run looks nothing like the other versions, even if it plays the same. Jack the Nipper looks really sharp. There's a bad port of Thing on a Spring...um...moving away from Gremlin, there's lots of good games. Bobby Bearing was excellent. Head Over Heels had more colors. I quite liked Jet Set Willy 2 on CPC - it was the original version or something I believe, out before the Speccy one. I dunno too much on that. The Dizzy and Seymour games were excellent on CPC, too. There's a lot really...just download a bunch and see. CPC was special mostly because its ports were quite often unique enough...at least they felt unique when I first tried them.

That's all there is to say really. It was called the Schneider in Germany, where it had an AZERTY keyboard...um...I dunno. I got one buried somewhere...
 
The 464 had 64kb of memory and a built in tape drive, the 664 was the same memory, but had a built in 3" floppy drive instead. The 6128 (which I had) had another 64k of memory and also had a 3" floppy drive. And yeah - I mean 3", not 3,5". They were two sided (so you had to turn them over) with a cpacity of something like 180k each side. I'm not sure if there were other advantages to the 6128, but I think it was more popular than the 664 for some reason. I think the highest res (640x480) was a 2 colour palette, the medium one (320x240ish) was 4 colours, and the low res was half that again and allowed 16 colours from the palette of 27 the machine was capable of.

I don't remember scrolling problems, but then I'm not looking for a fight - I just want an emu for the machine I grew up with!
 
barnesy posted on Dec 11 2003 at 02:24 PM said:
I don't remember scrolling problems, but then I'm not looking for a fight - I just want an emu for the machine I grew up with!
Was only kidding :p seeing as I owned a speccy and C64, while a good friend had a 464 (with colour monitor).

That said, I remember Green Beret being a decidedly *flip* screen experience.

However, I could be wrong here, but I do remember the 6128 had the only 8-bit version of Hitchhikers Guide. Not that I ever figured out how to make a cup of tea.

Best,

M.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
heh, yes. Best leave that sort of holy war out of this!

Yeah, I was wondering about infocom adventures. Wouldn't fancy one with an onscreen keyboard though! :) The CPCs could do CP/M (google for it - I don't know enough to explain what it is here), and used it to run the Z code interpreter used by the fantastic infocom text adventures, of which HHGTTG is probably the most famous. Little Computer People (mid 80s version of the Sims I guess!) is the only other CP/M mode Amstrad game I can think of.
 
I can't believe it took me like 45 minutes to post that. Urgent messages, y'know...so that's why it might repeat info already said in the post before my last one.

Ultimately the CPC is yet another flavour to 8-bit classic games. Pick a game...like, Pacland maybe for example...and on C64, Spectrum and Amstrad, it'll be different each time. Unfortunately the CPC never really got used to its fullest abilities from what I saw...a lot of games were like adapted games from C64 (using the chunky low res palette to make it look better...16-bit ports to 8-bit machines are the best example!) or Spectrum (direct ports, color for color, sound for sound)

I think history will always remember it as 'that third machine' but it's a great piece of hardware regardless of what history says. History lies. Play the games and you'll find them on par with C64 and Spectrum games.
 
CPC464 ROCKS!!!
A lot of goood games: Phantis, Cozumel, Target Renegade, Combat School, Freddy Hardestt, Game Over, Obliterator, Corsarios, Ikari Warriors,La Abadía del Crimen, Astro Marine Corps, Army Moves, Dustin... :)
 
CPC games can either be worse than the Speccy (eg R-Type, Salamander) or better than the C64 versions (Gryzor, Antiriad) depending on how lazy/talented the programmers were.

Whilst the CPC had inferior sound to the C64 (I like the Yamaha chip mind), no direct sprite support (programmers had to define them very time) and poor scrolling (either it was slow or flip screens were used) it had a lovely palette, and when games were done in Low Res mode (160 x 200 with 16 colors) they looked very nice , better than the C64 which had a more "pastel" palette (and fewer colors) - take any of the Probe games for example liek Trantor or Dan Dare III.

On the other hand, as the CPC shared the same sound chip and cpu as the Spectrum (well with the 128k machines) bad ports would be done which would be worse due to their use of the CPC Mid Res mode (320 x 200 with 4 colors) which had half the colours of the equivalent Speccy mode. Swiv, Uridium or Joe Blade for example.

The CPC is very much the third machine of the 8bit trilogy we knew in England and other parts of Europe where the MSX was unheard of, but those who owned it know it deserves better recognition than it gets today where the "other two" are more prominent in peoples minds.
 
There were some cracking games for the CPC, and a lot of bollocks too...

I welcome the additon, if only to see that blue screen with yellow writing looking nice and clear and crisp (I had one on a TV, while all my mates had a colour monitor!). I only had one for a month (swapped it for my speccy, then decided it wasnt as good and luckily, the other guy decided the same, so we swapped back, no harm done (except his little shite of a brother pulled all the tape out of my 'robocop 2' tape!)

Head over Heels was great on the cpc, as was Target Renegade :)
 
Good news - A welcome addition to the already impressive emulation scene for the GP32
 
Back
Top