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Great game made with awesome technical achievements.

Cool! I need to try it on the real thing.

Wonderfull. Amazing tunes and graphics, great gameplay too. Played on the CTM644, will try the GT64 soon. I wonder what EGX could be on the C64 and Atari XE/XL. MODE 1 can display 4 colors 1x1 instead of 2 (but also 16c 8x8 on the C64 like ZX spectrum) So MODE 1 seem much powerfull than before to my eyes :) it seems to have enough colors to draw the main thing and MODE 0 simply add colors, if MODE 1 had only 2 colors I think that optical illusion of 16c in MODE 1 wouldn't work well.. 'straaaaad!
Really nice with the intro tune too!

Those game features really rulez!

Technically very impressive (no worries that was expected from CargoSoft ;-).
Unfortunately, Mahjong game itself is not my cup of tea so I admit I did not play the game more than few minutes..

I played Mahjong a long time ago and I was very slow. Now I will try again because the graphics modes and music will keep me.

Had to get WinAPE running and see how is this possible... :-) First I thought it's MODE 1 all right, but with clever colour changes per line. Seemed that far more colours were packed tightly together, though. Then I had to check that my eyes are seeing right, because while I debugged per instruction I saw MODE 0 is being used?!? But it seems all MODE 1? Good thing that I debugged a bit more... :-D Very nicely designed tilesets and good colour choices for MODE 1 parts..! Too bad it's practically impossible to do fast paced games using this mode.

Technically top notch..! And fun too: on the second round I got the table cleared.

How do those EGX modes work by the way? As a former Atari ST coder I'm curious :)

@keops: It's MODE 0/192xNnnx16 colors every even and MODE 1/384xNnnx4 (well chosen) colors every odd line or vice-versa :). It's hard to believe but half of what you're seeing is blocky MODE 0. Especially when you consider how detailed some of the tiles look like (flower-tiles, bird-tile and 1 ball-tile for example).

Years ago I remember testing page flipping so that every other line would toggle MODE 1/0 on every other line with 2 images to get 384xNnnxLotsAColors, but the results were not good at all. I never could imagine that it could look this good without page flipping. Very well designed gfx helps, heaps of course! Practically it looks like 384xNnnx16 colors bitmap, and that in about 26KB: not bad!

It simply changes from Mode 0 to Mode 1 every single line, with carefully designed graphics to trick you, if I understood correct. I am also curious if one needs to set split screen for every line (I think you can set every 8 pixels high char, but then another CRTC reg will set char height from 8 to 1 line, though you'd have to change vram address to point to new lines else there will be a pattern repeated every few lines). I don't know if there is something more sophisticated used in this case, but even so it still looks hard enough to use these videomodes in games.

MODE 0.5 ;))

Amazing result!
I'm curious to know how the graphics were made, if they have any specific tool, and if they plan to release it.

@Optimus: no need to touch the CRTC, you can change the screen mode at any horizontal blanking (but not elsewhere in a line)

Oh and yes, great work on the game btw :)

Nice !!! Must be played on real hardware.

The graphics look really impressive!

Really Great Mahjong game ! I love this one...Wonderfull graphics.

Another fine display of sweet CPC graphics for a killer game with huge production value.

Encore une Victoire de CPC.

Technical achievement.
Possible nominee for That's not possible on that Platform? the intro screen does not look and sound as a CPC.
Once the cheat understood: still a nightmare to code and to draw.

Works very well. congratulations on this. I did something similar in the concept of having alternating hires and multicolor per line on the c64 some time ago, but utilised color interlacing so that multicolor blocks would mix in together with the hires blocks. first frame would have hires,mcol,hires.. and second one would be mcol,hires,mcol... each line.

Mixed screengrab below

Hmm... Nice to see similar tricks on C64 as well. Had to check the separate screens on the picture above. With CPC I think I had similar "tearing" patterns with separate screens as below.

the one above used less tolerent luma difference boundaries which generated more flicker. Flicker could have been reduced further by propogating pixels in each field although to freely do this would require same color definitions per field. The method above alternates lines which reduces flicker but not to a satisfactory amount.

Oh, and congrats on the neat mode! :-)

Beautiful graphics, amazing music, addictive gameplay! Top job, guys! ^_^
It sure is a good time to be an Amstrad fan!

Brillant production, more innovant than 90% of demos released these last 10 years! Graphic side (new mode without flipping), musical side (first original clever SID), and FDC (first sample trackload). The whole result rocks.

Impressive amount of work for a "simple" game

Impressive level of polishing and use of hardware tricks!

Huge work!

Nice design, cool GFX, polish interface, great musics!

You have to see it on a CRT screen cause sharp screen spoil the effect

What Hicks said. THe game worths a mil!

Great

this is outstanding!

I have played again this game a few days ago. It's really a nice piece of code/sound/gfx, that's a good way to spend time during holidays :-).

Fantastic music-disc! :)

A revolution on graphical side with an amazing hand-made work by Supersly but also for its impressive loader and musics by Targhan.

Watch it on a real CPC!

The game itself and the interface are well-done, a newbie can't imagine to play on a 40 years old computer...