This toolset will help you to give a more modern look to your favorite ZX Spectrum games and make them attractive even to the new generation of gamers. By following a few simple steps you will be able to:

• substitute any original game sprites with their multicolor double-resolution equivalents;
• add new graphical elements and embellishments;
• provide your own music and graphical effects;
• (more functioins are planned...)

These changes require no coding, and are applied instantly, so it is possible to make just a couple of small changes and leave the rest of the game intact.

Unlike Spec256, ZX Recoloring Project does not require you to analyze and modify game snapshots. Everything works by means of pattern matching: if a certain sprite can be found on the screen, it will be substituted in real time.

This approach naturally works better for sprite-based rather than vector graphics-based games, and handling overlapping sprites require additional efforts. However, very nice-looking results can be achieved in most cases.

So, grab the tools, check out documentation and start recoloring your favorite games!

Building

The toolset can be built with MS Visual Studio 2017. Open Developer Command Prompt for VS 2017, navigate to the project folder and run

msbuild ZxRecolor.proj

The resulting files will be stored in the bin subfolder. If you have MkDocs installed, you will also get full project documentation accessible via index.html. To install MkDocs, make sure you have Python available and run:

pip install mkdocs
pip install pygments
pip install -u markdown

Future plans

• remove unnecessary emulator settings;
• executing arbitrary user code capability;
• faster sprite matching (via better hashing / key rebalancing);
• "don't match areas matched in other sprites" option;
• support of custom border size and palette;
• off-screen sprite clipping for crash prevention;
• toolset improvements;
• antiflicker filter (via delayed recoloring);
• "protected" flag for moving sprites.