Why Does The Border Have to Be White?
Posted: Mon Apr 01, 2024 1:45 pm
Doesn't time fly? It's the beginning of April already! What better than to start off the first day of the new month with an interesting development.
Have you ever played a ZX81 game that is set on a black background but felt that the look of it was somewhat let down by the border having to remain white? For instance, here is Macronics' Space Intruders:
Wouldn't a Space Invaders clone like this look much nicer with the border black? Imagine if it could look like this:
If you think about it, when you run something in FAST mode then the whole screen goes black, which proves that the hardware is capable of displaying black in the border area. So why can't the border be black and the game displayed in the centre of the screen as normal? Well, it actually turns out that this can be done!! I know, who knew?!!
Now I appreciate this might sound quite unbelievable but you can try it out for yourself, either in an emulator or ideally on a real ZX81 (assuming you can get a good stable picture from it normally). No special hardware is required; just a standard ZX81 with 16K RAM. Here is the enhanced black border version of Space Intruders for you to try out:
I feel a little foolish now for having thought all these years that this just wasn't possible on the ZX81!
Have you ever played a ZX81 game that is set on a black background but felt that the look of it was somewhat let down by the border having to remain white? For instance, here is Macronics' Space Intruders:
- SpaceIntrudersWhiteBorder.png (3.82 KiB) Viewed 1496 times
Wouldn't a Space Invaders clone like this look much nicer with the border black? Imagine if it could look like this:
- SpaceIntrudersBlackBorder.png (3.67 KiB) Viewed 1496 times
If you think about it, when you run something in FAST mode then the whole screen goes black, which proves that the hardware is capable of displaying black in the border area. So why can't the border be black and the game displayed in the centre of the screen as normal? Well, it actually turns out that this can be done!! I know, who knew?!!
Now I appreciate this might sound quite unbelievable but you can try it out for yourself, either in an emulator or ideally on a real ZX81 (assuming you can get a good stable picture from it normally). No special hardware is required; just a standard ZX81 with 16K RAM. Here is the enhanced black border version of Space Intruders for you to try out:
I feel a little foolish now for having thought all these years that this just wasn't possible on the ZX81!
