Now we could just run the algorithms realtime and be able to have fluid movement.īut the artificial intelligence should be the same. In the original ZX Spectrum version, all the maths was pre-calculated and stored in lookup tables to make it as quick as possible. it would mean that as the sun dips and moves across the sky, and the moon rises, the light would cast realistic shadows and have nice highlight lighting. And we would be able to realtime light 2d images, something that is usually the preserve of 3d graphics. Mike was also working on some new graphics techniques that would allow us to draw lots of different terrain graphics, with a small subset of assets. With hindsight it would have been easier to find a way to make real 3D look like the original. Being 2D and the nature of them means they are large and slow to draw. The graphics are also strangely problematic. So finding a way for that to work properly took a little tweaking. Mike always saw them as a Medieval painting. However, the characters at the front of the screen don't fit with that model. It's pretty straight forward 3D maths for a cylindrical projection. The sliding around and moving forward works really nicely. The one which was tricky was the sliding panoramic. How hard was it to make the app – and how true is it to the original game? We caught up with Chris Wild, the man who has brought it to the smartphone nearly 30 years after it first came out – and in the year that creator Mike Singleton passed away. Seminal 80s ZX Spectrum game The Lords of Midnight is now out on iPhone.
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