Dev Reveals Secrets Behind New "3D" Platformer for the ZX Spectrum

https://www.timeextension.com/news/2025/08/dev-reveals-secrets-behind-stunning-new-3d-platformer-for-the-zx-spectrum

by Flow • 11 months ago

100 11 11 months ago

gxd• 11 months ago

I wouldn't have believed my eyes if I had seen that back in the day. The interesting thing is that the capability was there all along.

philjohn• 11 months ago

The capability was indeed there - but the various tricks and optimisations used in this game are very much "building on the shoulders of giants".

pjmlp• 11 months ago

That is what made demoscene cool, surprising others with demos that in theory were impossible on existing hardware.

somenameforme• 11 months ago

Marble Madness was a thing at the time. [1] There's a ZX Spectrum port, that's awful, but it maintained the same 3d goodness.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zByAew6AKJ8

mock-possum• 11 months ago

I always preferred its ‘cousin’ “snake rattle and roll” on the NES - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_Mq1kJ25LVA

cesaref• 11 months ago

Yeah, with those early machines it was inevitably about lookup tables, and producing the illusion of doing work which was otherwise impossible in the number of cpu cycles you had available. I did lots of this sort of thing for the C64, where similarly CPU cycles were short, and then you end up scratching around trying to find enough spare memory...

It's great to see people still exploring and pushing the boundaries of what these machines are capable of. Coding this on a more modern machine, getting the effect right, then back-porting to the Spectrum seems like a smart move and would have been a game changer during the prime of these machines!

bzzzt2• 11 months ago

Lots of commercial Spectrum games were coded on a 'more modern' machine, often an IBM PC with a better keyboard and a cross assembler to generate Z80 code.

bzzzt2• 11 months ago

My thought exactly when I saw the 8088mph demo. Made me wonder why we put up with those ugly CGA graphics in the 80s ;)

Flow2• 11 months ago

Did you ever play Nebulus? The ZX Spectrum version looks as good as the C64 version, just less colors. Nebulus is from 1988.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAud8w5mTa4

SillyUsername• 11 months ago

I wonder if they can get the multicolour mode working with this to, the 8x4 (Vs 8x8) attribute colour switch thingie.

Flow2• 11 months ago

I doubt that. It takes more or less 100% CPU on the scanlines affected.

Dev Reveals Secrets Behind New "3D" Platformer for the ZX Spectrum

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