8 bit Z80 compatible build version of Unity needed for Spectrum Next....

I understood what you meant. I'm not saying it's a perfect comparison. Quake isn't a perfect comparison either since the engine functions considerably different under the hood and the game is on a completely different level in terms of what it tries to achieve.

 

Emulating an entire machine architecture is far different than software 3D rendering, though. Of course it's not exact, but software rendering on a modern machine is at least vaguely comparable to what they were doing with the Spectrum game. Perhaps a more direct comparison is something like Mandelbrot generators, which I remember on the Amiga where you'd have to sit there for quite some time to generate a low-res image, and now you can do it real-time.

--Eric

 

I'd like to see how much one of those computers such as Spectrum, C64 or Amiga could do if CPU was running at modern speeds even with just a single cpu single core assuming rest of hardware (bus, ram, etc) was updated accordingly as well. Of course, it wouldn't take long and people would all be running GEOS OS on their C64s and developing games in BASIC.

I've seen some demos for the C64 with the CPU upgrades that made quite a difference. One was an increase to 4 MHz and another boosted it all the way up to 20 MHz. Also I seem to remember stumbling across a homebrew project where someone supposedly managed to upgrade a C64 to near 1 GHz. I'm not so sure about that one though. lol

 

Just run some benchmarks and multiply the results.

 

That's not the same as actually having it / doing it. It is difficult for folks to relate to these days but back then a 1 MHz increase would have been huge. Developers (and gamers) would have loved it.

 

Well.. you would get a lot of FPS.
How much memory can you even address in BASIC?

 

All of it? Using memory isn't a function/limitation of a language, it's hardware limited by CPU.

--Eric

 

So, what I have from wiki:

I'm a tad rusty in this area. But I don't think this means maximum 64 KB RAM since there was a ZX Spectrum +3 with 128 KB RAM.

 

Compare two or more processors from the same family with everything identical except the clock rate and you'll quickly notice that performance scales almost completely linearly. The Phenom II X4 980 @ 3.7GHz, for example, scores 4,527 on PassMark, the 970 @ 3.5GHz scores 4380, and the 950 @ 3.2GHz scores 3961.

By dividing their clock rate by their PassMark score we arrive at 0.817 for 980, 0.799 for 970, and 0.807 for 950.

The Z80B @ 6 MHz was available when the ZX Spectrum was released.

 

Also different instruction set skew the result, just having mul for example at the same clock would make an alternative faster.

 

There were multiple 128k models: the Spectrum 128k, +2, +2A and +3.

A paging system was used to get round the memory address limitations. Eg the additional memory could be paged into the top 16K of normal RAM that was accessed in the standard way.

 

I think it would still be at least a hundred times slower even at GHz lock rate. ZX spectrum instruction set was very limited without advanced instructions and the cpu lacked many features of modern CPU, for example predictive instruction execution:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branch_predictor

 

Yeah that's what I mean if the entire pipeline was updated of course we'd need the same basic stuff in there and definitely updated bus, ram speed etc to make a fair comparison.

Mainly I was thinking about it from a developer perspective. It would have been fun to have such raw speed to play around with and very interesting as well if the tiny ram levels were kept the same only updated for speed. I expect games would have starting doing some real-time compression & decompression in time.

Still have some challenges such as the C64 bitmapped display mode (had a c64 so am familiar with it not the spectrum). Due to the way it was mapped working with bits that was slow and I always had to build look up tables to make working with it run at a somewhat decent speed. Of course running at 1,000+ times faster... well now we could have bitmap software sprites to some degree.

 

And its video memory layout also didn't let things run as fast as they potentially could.

If I remember correctly, my super duper optimized subroutine to draw a single dot on the screen took about 164 processor ticks to do all the necessary calculation (it didn't use look-up tables). Considering only ~70000 ticks available per frame, I could draw only ~400 individual dots to be able to keep up with 50 fps, and almost no time to clear the screen before drawing.

There was a boom of Spectrum-compatible machines in the USSR / Russia in the late 80s and early 90s. Some of the models had unbelievable amount of RAM, like 512k or 1024k.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ZX_Spectrum_clones#Unofficial_clones

 

I heard of that. Apparently there were people who were making those as a hobby.

Spectrum had .... ODD memory layout for screen.

Basically... (for those who haven't worked with it):

The screen is 32x24 8x8 squares. Meanin 256*192. A square is monochrome, but has color attributes defined in one byte. Background color, Foregrdoun color, "Brightness" bit and "Flashing" bit. Colors are predefined - 8 colors. 0 is black, 7 is white, 1 is red, etc. Basically, one bit per R, G, and B channels.

now, the odd thing was memory layout of the screen.

Basically, scanlins (one byte per 8 horizontal pixels) weren't stored in sequential fashion, and instead screen was split into 3 vertical blocks 64 pixels each, and within each block lines were stored in some sort of "progressive" order. Order went like this... scanline #0, scanline #8, scanline #16, scanline #24...scanline #56, scanline #1, scanline #9... . once the block was done it went to the next one. Meaning to plot a point you'd need to swap few bits in Y coordinate before calculating memory address. I have no idea why they did it this way.

 

I dont know why they did it that way but it was very evident during loading from tape, at the stage where a loading screen is loaded and drawn. At least in the early days, before companies started using fancier loaders, that, for example, hid the loading screen from view until all the data for it was available.

The fun starts around the 25 second mark of this video.

 

The Atari 8 Flashback and Sega Genesis Classic have release dates this fall (short article).



Previously I posted a link to a ZX Specturm Hardware Remake Kickstarter.



I half jokingly posted that maybe Unity could add retro consoles/platforms to their target build platforms.

What if this is more than just a fad, could we see other retro platforms re-launched e.g. Amiga/Atari ST?

They could certainly be popular as they can be single chip solutions like the Raspberry Pi or C.H.I.P computers and therefore only cost tens of dollars.

Could we see retro games of old hit the top of the charts (are there even game charts now)?

Could a developer make more making games on niche retro hardware than competing with the modern flood of games onto existing platforms?

PS Monitors if you want to fold this into the ZX Spectrum of New Atari threads please do, although it would be interesting to contemplate the bigger picture in this trend and can Unity help developers targeting retro platforms?

 

@Ony previously talked about "Nostalgia cycle". Basically, any stuff people saw as kids will resurface 20 years later. Because children grow up, have the money, and want to remember their childhood. Sega Genesis was released almost 20 years old.

I think her observation was spot on.

On a related note.

The answer to any "Could we?" "Could it possibly?" question you ask is usually the one you don't like.

 

Technology branches in all directions. The good branches grow, the bad ones die.

Things are simple.

 

The only trend here is that custom/one-off hardware has become ridiculously cheap to produce, and they already have the content. No one is actually creating new content for retro platforms, they are just recycling existing content cheaply to a new (or old) audience. Also, unlike real old school consoles, these you can actually hook up to your 60in led display/tv.

 

Here are games that have been recently developed or are in development by Protovision for the Commodore 64.

http://www.protovision-online.de/games/gamesstart.php?language=en
http://www.protovision-online.de/development/development.php?language=en

They are being sold digitally through Itch.io. Some of them have limited runs in box form.

https://protovision.itch.io/
http://www.protovision-online.de/shop/index.php?cPath=22

 

Interesting. Though I don't see it as a growth market.

 

It is a pretty big thing overall the retro gaming and development. A lot of new games are being made for retro platforms both as freeware and commercial. For basically all retro hardware plarforms. While any one segment (i.e. C64 or Amiga or Spectrum or Sega Master System) is not very big collectively it is a pretty huge thing.

Just flies below the radar for the most part. Which is good because it gets more people who are involved out of passion than profit (i.e. not flooded... yet... with gold miners). Eventually I expect it will be and then retro stuff will be seen as worthless as the the majority of other gaming markets are seen currently.

It is the old supply & demand. If one game is released on C64 every 5 years that is a big deal. Now probably one game per quarter at the least. When it hits one per week obviously won't be a big deal and games will be taken for granted there as well.

 

Just as likely to get a Unity version for the TI-85

Troll thread is entertaining though.

 

https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=51933.msg1345538#msg1345538

Raspberry with unity 3d on GPU seems to be go now, you can now make your super cheap microconsole with your own game.

 

They are posting the same info on this very forum as well.

eg:

#114

 

Dang! Thanks, i need this thread in my life lol

 

Texas Instruments does manufacture an ARM-based calculator.

https://education.ti.com/en/products/calculators/graphing-calculators/ti-nspire-cx-cas

 

So TI is actually making a calculator that's not thirty years old, at the same price it was thirty years ago... clearly this is a sign of the end times.

 

They're in panic mode as a lot of schools are starting to allow specific phone calculators to be used for testing purposes, so their stranglehold on the market is dying out.

 

Why? ARMs are pretty cheap. And writing a minimal OS for it is not that hard. Especially if you're going to use it in a graphic calculator. If anything, I'm glad TI is getting competitive.

 

These kinds of threads by @Arowx are making me a little bit concerned... if Arowx is about the age I think they are, they might want to see a mental health professional. I'm being completely serious right now.

Some kind of mental disorder is the only reason that I can think of (apart from just trolling) someone, namely Arowx might post things like this. Its just bizarre and illogical enough.

 

Oh come one, he posted a concrete question

The answer was "no", posted almost immediately. But furter off topic disussion is a MUST! This is General Discussion section after all!

 

Not nice as you are now entering the domain of mental healthism. In any forum you will have people with a range of IQ (20-200, average 100), a range of language skills and if you consider the statistics for mental health a range of mental health issues.




Unless you are a qualified medical health professional then maybe just maybe you are being rather derogatory to someone else's ideas.

However, if you would like to talk the pros/cons and possibility of using Unity to make 8 bit games feel free. Then again maybe your mind is not open enough and you are too blinkered a person to think that freely/imaginatively.

 

There is no possibility, as already demonstrated, and therefore no pros or cons. There's "thinking imaginatively" and then there's "blurting out any random thing without thinking at all". Not a matter of an "open mind"; rather having some clue as to what you're talking about, since otherwise it's just pointless. Not really anything else worthwhile to say.

--Eric