RR #3 - Have You Got The Scrolls?

It must be acknowledged that the ZX Spectrum version of Reckless Rufus is neither as pretty nor as colourful as the original C64 version, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the background to each level. On the C64, a range of static backgrounds - from starfields to regular dot patterns, from abstract orthogonal shapes to vine-like textures, from rigid mechanical constructs to freeform scatterings of colour - sit behind the tiles the player must navigate. They are solid-looking, yet distinct enough from the tiles that the player should only need to drop off the edges once to learn where they can safely step. The same is true for the Amstrad CPC version, though its backgrounds are largely less colourful - several appear to be shades of grey only - allowing its brighter, more vivid sprites and tiles to stand out.

The Spectrum version, for some reason, ended up with a green-and-black background, made up of square blocks - 16x16 pixel bricks, boxes, interference patterns, and such - that could have made discerning between safe tiles and 'empty space' rather more difficult. In the programmer's early draft graphics, these tiles were all drawn in red-and-black, which probably would have been a better option, visually, so I've no idea why the lighter, brighter colour became the final choice. Given the regular, square nature of many of the background patterns, though, most of them would have ended up aligning all too well with the 'safe' tiles if it weren't for one feature unique to the Spectrum conversion: the background scrolls constantly, in one of eight directions.

(NB: Simulation based upon my final draft of the UI panel and platform tiles, not the finished game)

Upon first playing the game myself - via an emulator, many years later (I wasn't offered a free copy of the game, and couldn't find it in the shops at the time) I was disappointed by how slow it was. It's not as bad as the Amstrad CPC version in that regard, and certainly has smoother animation and sprite movement, but it's incredibly sluggish. At the time, I put that down to the unnecessary scrolling on every level.

These days, I don't believe it's that simple, especially since the enemy sprite movement is of a decent speed. Rufus himself is the only part of the game that feels slow but, since that's the player's avatar, that makes the whole thing seem slow. Also, according to one response to my Rufus thread on the Spectrum Computing forum, the way the screen is redrawn could be the most significant part of the speed issue.

When the discussion of a SAM Coupé port started, after RetCon 2019, one of the first questions was "should the background scroll, like the Spectrum version, or stay still, like the original?" My initial instinct was to say that a scrolling background was surplus to requirements, even if it could be done without a significant performance hit on the sprites' animation and movement. Given that the SAM could easily improve upon the definition of the C64 backgrounds, the division between 'platform' and 'background' would be that much more apparent.

Plus, as I'll get into in a later post, while my first dabblings in a SAM port, back in the 1990s, kept the 16x16 pixel size for everything, giving a small game window inside a huge UI panel, my intention with this new start was to take fuller advantage of MODE 4 to make the play window as large as possible, by increasing the size of the tiles. If the background was to move at all, my preference was for it to be more subtle, and to move contrary to the player's current direction - that is to say, as the player moves down the screen, the background shifts slightly upward, perhaps just one or two pixels for each tile traversed, to give the impression of perspective. Nevertheless, I did start figuring out how a background, built up of non-square tiles of the size required to occupy a larger portion of the screen, could be made to give the impression of scrolling:

It's not immediately apparent, but the 'grid' doesn't move in consistent jumps... but, assuming sufficient speed, the difference between some steps wouldn't be particularly apparent on a more complex tile, particularly if the player's attention is where it should be: on the game.

This led to me consider something new: effectively a single background image across all levels, but showing a slightly different area of a larger-than-screen-size picture, which then shifts subtly as the player moves around each level... Perhaps even an image of the planet Killey, which the game is supposed to take place upon/around. Of course, there's a huge difference between rolling the pixels of a single, comparatively small, repeating tile and scrolling an image multiple screens in size, so I started imagining ways to make it easier, such as doubling the size of a smaller image, or displaying it as alternate pixels to spread it out and give the appearance of being 'faded into the background'. Of course, this is me just imagining... Unencumbered as I am with any understanding of coding, either option may have been presenting the coder with a ridiculously convoluted problem where there really needn't be one.

Unbeknownst to me - until I saw the first build of the work in progress - the coder decided to create background graphics for the SAM himself, based wholly upon the backgrounds of the C64 game and, you know what? They looked great.

I might discuss revisiting the background at a later date but, since development is currently stalled, I'm perfectly content with the current setup. Even if we do end up switching to the Spectrum-style scrolling, I've got a template all set to make that as simple as possible.