Search found 2042 matches
- Thu Mar 28, 2024 5:15 pm
- Forum: Other Retro Stuff
- Topic: any suggestion for a good portable device that can play zx spectrum games?
- Replies: 3
- Views: 122
Re: any suggestion for a good portable device that can play zx spectrum games?
Yes, an early DS is a good bet. Which model is not quite so easy to decide, as each has strengths and weaknesses. The original DS doesn't have a particularly bright screen, but can play GBA games as well as DS ones, if that's remotely interesting. The DS-Lite is smaller and has brighter screens, but...
Re: 3d prints
I've had a Weedo Tina2 3D printer for a year and a bit now. It's one that has a case surround rather than being an open deck. It's not completely enclosed - the back and front are open, but it keeps the dust out and doesn't knock other things off the table while it works! It's a neat compact design ...
- Mon Mar 25, 2024 10:58 am
- Forum: Design/Ideas
- Topic: Totally speculative bicolour 8x8 Jetman ideas…
- Replies: 10
- Views: 425
Re: Totally speculative bicolour 8x8 Jetman ideas…
Nirvana doesn't let you do 4x2 attributes. A multicolour-enhanced attribute still takes up the whole 8-pixel width of a character cell, even when it's only 1 or 2 pixels high. It doesn't offer any improvements or smooth stepping to attributes in the horizontal direction. If you look at multicolour ...
- Fri Mar 22, 2024 2:10 pm
- Forum: Programming
- Topic: Machine Code: Moving from Attribute scrolling to pixel scrolling
- Replies: 33
- Views: 778
Re: Machine Code: Moving from Attribute scrolling to pixel scrolling
Uridium runs at 25fps, so there's no time for multiple screen copies. There are plenty of tricks it could be using, all of them very complicated. The dreadnought designs aren't exact copies of the C64 ones either, so it seems there are limitations to what it can render. And even at it's slowest it'...
- Fri Mar 22, 2024 12:00 pm
- Forum: Programming
- Topic: Machine Code: Moving from Attribute scrolling to pixel scrolling
- Replies: 33
- Views: 778
Re: Machine Code: Moving from Attribute scrolling to pixel scrolling
by the way, you cannot copy the whole screen in one frame, not even using stack tricks. there is simply not enough tstates. you may be able to build it from several tiles, but copying fullscreen backbuffer and keeping 50 FPS is physically impossible. This is true. This is the first time I got it wo...
- Thu Mar 21, 2024 6:39 pm
- Forum: Programming
- Topic: Machine Code: Moving from Attribute scrolling to pixel scrolling
- Replies: 33
- Views: 778
Re: Machine Code: Moving from Attribute scrolling to pixel scrolling
You can always use the time after a HALT to draw some more sprites, or maybe paint a scrolling area that the player and other sprites can't cross (maybe a bit of parallax foreground), so long as it's all based on data from the previous frame of your game update. Then once the raster has got past the...
- Thu Mar 21, 2024 5:34 pm
- Forum: Programming
- Topic: Machine Code: Moving from Attribute scrolling to pixel scrolling
- Replies: 33
- Views: 778
Re: Machine Code: Moving from Attribute scrolling to pixel scrolling
Although it means an additional delay at the start, it's easier to update just behind the raster. If you're ahead, you have to keep ahead, and you just can't do that unless you're only updating a small area of the screen. Otherwise, the raster will catch up and overtake your copy function, leaving a...
- Thu Mar 21, 2024 12:34 pm
- Forum: Programming
- Topic: Machine Code: Moving from Attribute scrolling to pixel scrolling
- Replies: 33
- Views: 778
Re: Machine Code: Moving from Attribute scrolling to pixel scrolling
Actually moving the data in the screen memory area is nearly always going to flicker, unless you get very, very good at timing exactly what you're updating where on the screen with how the TV picture is redrawn. Most games will draw the game to somewhere else in memory first, with all the scrolling ...
- Thu Mar 21, 2024 11:52 am
- Forum: Preservation
- Topic: Fake history
- Replies: 16
- Views: 715
Re: Fake history
I did code two educational games (well, convert to the Speccy) back in my schooldays for a games shop in Kettering that had its own line in business and educational software, but I question whether a copy was ever produced, let alone sold, and my old tapes were thrown out some time after I'd graduat...
- Wed Mar 20, 2024 4:22 pm
- Forum: Programming
- Topic: Progamming with Chatgpt 4/ copilot
- Replies: 13
- Views: 374
Re: Progamming with Chatgpt 4/ copilot
With Z80 it seems to fail to grasp the very precise rules whereby you can perform certain tasks on certain registers, but not every task on every register, as you usually can with variables in a higher-level language. It also seems to throw-in the odd instruction from other assembly languages (like ...
- Tue Mar 19, 2024 12:46 pm
- Forum: ZX Spectrum Next
- Topic: Atari Driving Controller Games
- Replies: 7
- Views: 320
Re: Atari Driving Controller Games
According to this video it is a pulse-counting type of encoder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTrUw8XFM50 I know you can get rotary encoders that report their absolute angle on four or five pins (a 0..15 or 0..31 value that relates to the angle 0..359°), but according to that rebuild it simply use...
- Mon Mar 18, 2024 2:53 pm
- Forum: ZX Spectrum Next
- Topic: Atari Driving Controller Games
- Replies: 7
- Views: 320
Re: Atari Driving Controller Games
Surely you need to be reading that at a hell of a rate to detect the switching, to the detriment of the game? Then again, it seems they only use 16 pulses per revolution of the controller, so maybe interrupt-driven checking is fast enough. For a good rotary controller I'd suggest wiring a rotary enc...
- Mon Mar 18, 2024 10:12 am
- Forum: Games/Software
- Topic: Impossible games...
- Replies: 24
- Views: 879
Re: Impossible games...
At least they wouldn't slip off your boat...ParadigmShifter wrote: ↑Sun Mar 17, 2024 11:07 pmApparently one of the prostitutes on his yacht took him too literally when he said he wanted to be tossed off.
- Fri Mar 15, 2024 5:50 pm
- Forum: Sinclair Miscellaneous
- Topic: Friday Quiz: Alphabet Quiz 4
- Replies: 57
- Views: 650
Re: Friday Quiz: Alphabet Quiz 4
No-one else has posted for hours, so have another one:
W - Swords of Bane
W - Swords of Bane
- Fri Mar 15, 2024 5:42 pm
- Forum: Sinclair Miscellaneous
- Topic: Friday Quiz: Alphabet Quiz 4
- Replies: 57
- Views: 650
Re: Friday Quiz: Alphabet Quiz 4
C - Match Point
- Mon Mar 11, 2024 2:34 pm
- Forum: Games/Software
- Topic: The best Speccy game by Exxos: vote
- Replies: 15
- Views: 489
Re: The best Speccy game by Exxos: vote
Didn't know PSD had come out on the Speccy. I had both on the ST. Captain Blood took a lot of effort to get into, to master the icon-based dialogue with the aliens (which didn't help being conceived in a foreign language to start with, so the single-word interpretation of each icon you were given co...
- Mon Mar 11, 2024 2:19 pm
- Forum: Games/Software
- Topic: Devfinitive Edition (Mike Richardson): vote
- Replies: 24
- Views: 586
Re: Devfinitive Edition (Mike Richardson): vote
This is an impressive set of very inspiring early games, as I look at the landscapes of Combat Lynx and I see the open-worlds of Just Cause . Turbo Esprit would be Driver if the view would just rotate around the corners. And Scuba Dive makes me shudder at how many times I've drowned and realised it'...
- Thu Mar 07, 2024 5:22 pm
- Forum: Games/Software
- Topic: In game beeper music
- Replies: 43
- Views: 1663
Re: In game beeper music
So are you saying playing a note at a random point in a frame might sound bad? If that was directed at me then no, there's no argument. It doesn't sound bad exactly, just I expect a bit farty as it's constantly stop-start, and it's a harsh-sounding square-ish wave behind that as it's all 1s and 0s ...
- Wed Mar 06, 2024 12:26 pm
- Forum: Games/Software
- Topic: In game beeper music
- Replies: 43
- Views: 1663
Re: In game beeper music
Head Over Heels plays short melodies when you pick up various objects, though there's nothing plays continuously. It's really just an extension of the sound effects. In my own games the beeper sound effects are done by twiddling the speaker bit high/low off the back of a more vital loop of code (e....
- Mon Mar 04, 2024 10:40 am
- Forum: Games/Software
- Topic: Devfinitive Edition (Keith Burkhill): vote
- Replies: 29
- Views: 597
Re: Devfinitive Edition (Keith Burkhill): vote
Tough choice between Space Harrier and Commando . Back then I was all over Space Harrier , but now I've got a dozen different and better ways to play it. But as for Commando , I'd rather play the Speccy version than the arcade, as I think it's actually the better game. Afterburner and Galaxy Force a...
- Mon Mar 04, 2024 10:37 am
- Forum: Brand new software!
- Topic: El Cetro del Sol
- Replies: 5
- Views: 131
Re: El Cetro del Sol
Hmm. I'm sure I've seen that Aztec Sunstone somewhere before...
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/4 ... s_of_Sunak
(scroll to end)
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/4 ... s_of_Sunak
(scroll to end)
- Mon Mar 04, 2024 10:34 am
- Forum: Games/Software
- Topic: £12 gets you "Free software for LIFE!", apparently.
- Replies: 11
- Views: 289
Re: £12 gets you "Free software for LIFE!", apparently.
Given that it has 50% more of both 'Great Utilities' and 'Adventure Games' than 'Arcade Games', I'm guessing it's an early PD library trying to vaguely disguise the fact that you're buying into a giant Cassette 50 scheme without the calculator watch or quality control, rather than a lending library ...
- Fri Mar 01, 2024 5:27 pm
- Forum: Games/Software
- Topic: Branding in games
- Replies: 20
- Views: 506
Re: Branding in games
The Muncher , like Action Biker , only had the endorsement as far as the loading screen. The game itself had nothing to do with the brand. As for Mad Mix , I've seen various screenshots - looks like the C64 and ST versions might have had the PEPSI logo on the scoreboard at the bottom of the screen,...
- Fri Mar 01, 2024 2:11 pm
- Forum: Sales/Commercial
- Topic: The Horace Collection | Kickstarter
- Replies: 8
- Views: 590
Re: The Horace Collection | Kickstarter
I think this is expecting a lot. And what, no official multi-game ROM cartridge version? :cry: At least it's not ridiculously over-priced, but I don't really get the appeal. I know there was one of those pathetic spoil-someone's-day-out-of-sheer-spite hoo-hahs within recent memory, but a bit of poki...
- Fri Mar 01, 2024 12:13 pm
- Forum: Games/Software
- Topic: Branding in games
- Replies: 20
- Views: 506
Re: Branding in games
Well remembered! But why does the database list it as Test Cricket , when the title International Cricket is all over the loading screen and cassette inlay? Interesting that they put the effort in to making the insurance company's logo readable, but just did the word 'Cricket' at the bottom of the s...