NOW!

NOW! is a music disk I have been working on in collaboration with Ultrasyd and Fenyx Kell for the Amstrad CPC 128K system. The music disk features 12 awesome music tracks, and was coded in a little over two weeks before I get settled into working on Zine again. This is my first production on the Amstrad (and also the first CPC project for Brainstorm) that was any good (as I did a bit of BASIC many moons ago), I have played with a friends system many years ago as a kid, but this is the first piece of code I have written on the system that hasn’t been utter shite. I am very pleased with the outcome of this project, and the music is amazing 🙂

I started working on this project on Sept. 13 with Ultrasyd, as the people who were supposed to write him a music disk had bailed out of the project. I took it on as a challenge, realizing the path would not be straight and easy, plus I have been looking for an excuse to get back into 8-bit development for quite some time 🙂

The project is written using Z88DK (available HERE) and uses C and Z80 Assembly language. I used CPCRSlib for some of the graphics code, mixed with a bit of my own dodgy code. The music replayer is by Targhan and available HERE.

There were many technical challenges on this project. The biggest was the small amount of RAM available to the system at any one time, certainly not enough to hold all the music let alone the program and the data it needed to run. At one point, I spent 2 solid days working on getting 5 tunes in and working without crashing the computer, when I realized a mistake I had made in some code earlier that would allow me to hold many more. So at around 4pm yesterday I was able to fit all 12 songs into the production without a problem. Nothing quite like a last second fix for a production thats due to be released the very next morning 🙂 Many thanks to Ultrasyd for staying up late on the CVGMOneLiner to get this thing finished in time for Main (and showing it off to the Amstrad community there). There is also a hidden, 13th tune 🙂

Download the DSK file Here. To run, insert the disk and type RUN “NOW!” to start the music disk. Up & Down arrow keys to change between music. Escape to quit. If you wish to run this in an emulator, I recommend using JavaCPC or WinAPE. This disk has been fully tested on real 6128 Hardware (Thanks again, Ultrasyd!).

Full Production Credits

Music: Ultrasyd/BRS and Fenyx Kell
Graphics: Yes/BRS (Loading Screen), Ultrasyd/BRS (Main Picture)
Code: FishGuy876/BRS
See the TXT file on the DSK/Zip for a full list of everyones greetings and thanks 🙂

EDIT: The music disk was entered into the Wild compo at Main and ranked in 3rd place!!! Fantastic! \o/ Congratulations to everyone again! It can also be found on Pouet now, where you can comment and rate it! Thanks!

And some screenshots taken during the development:

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