how did zx spectryum programmers make those big character graphics in games?

[Crayon21]

Jet pac, Jet Set willy, Exolon. How did programmers manage to get the character so big? I can only manage small versions
if not BASIC, then how, outside of assembly?

[dr beep]

Outside assembly?

Define UDGs and use those to print, like SMURFS
https://www.spectrumcomputing.co.uk/ent ... m/Schlumpf

[dr beep]

Outside assembly?

Define UDGs and use those to print, like SMURFS
https://www.spectrumcomputing.co.uk/ent ... m/Schlumpf

or make your own characterset

[XavSnap]

https://www.sinclairzxworld.com/viewtop ... 338#p47338

[RS232]

Break into the listing of the Horizons tape or a 16/48k nagazine tape they use a machine code routine to do it.

[XavSnap]

In BASIC, you had to print the word on the screen, test each pixel and print a colored space on the screen to get big chars.
The second way is to test a binary from an UDG.
In BASIC, this routine is very slow.

ASM routine:http://www.hebdogiciel.free.fr/hd-roms/ ... settes.zip
On ZX81 : http://abandonlistings.free.fr/ordi5/hd ... etters.zip

[1024MAK]

There is a faster way in BASIC, but it uses it's own "font" stored as DATA statements within the program. At seven or eight bytes per character, this does mean a lot of data statements to enter if you want the full character set... It also uses a lot of RAM in comparison.

Mark