Sprite Invaders - Impressive C64 Space Invaders game

[Deleted User]

Sprite Invaders is a Space Invaders port made by C64 Demo Group Booze Designs for the Commodore 64.
Sprite Invaders features a new menu tune and displays only sprites with no chars or bitmaps!
This release is part of the Only Sprites Compo.

Source:https://csdb.dk/release/?id=198593&show=review

 

[KimKong]

What's so impressive about it exactly...? I don't get it..

 

[Deleted User]

What's so impressive about it exactly...? I don't get it..

Sprite Invaders is a full-screen game (using all border space).
It´s running sprites in the sideborder. The timing has to be very accurate, and if you're running a game, this isn't easy.
I think this is a good explanation:

"Timing was the key.
The image was created in the border by changing the overscan (border) colour as the CRT's beam moved from left to right.
There are two timing signals required to produce an image - vertical refresh and horizontal refresh.
By detecting when the horizontal and vertical refresh occurs you can start a sequence of assembler instructions to change the border colour to produce an image.
You need to work out the number of CPU clock ticks per border pixel and use that to create code that changes the border colour at the right point.
It doesn't work very well when it comes to writing games as the CPU overhead is too great for there to be any time lift to process user input and game state."

 

[FAST6191]

Before making it to the C64 part I was hoping we would get space invaders meets mugen.

Anyway I do like to see people wringing every drop out of hardware too.