Spectrum Computing

Bit crude and makes bits of the text unreadable not far up the screen, but it does the job, ish, and can be run from BASIC. Honestly, that looks fantastic - great work, and thank you! ...Now if I can figure out how to get that working on a SAM Coupé, I may be able to integrate it into my slideshow ...

Both options very interesting, Lee Bee and Joefish , thank you! The GIF options isn't something I can (easily) transfer to actual hardware, and the scroll'n'squeeze option is far beyond my meagre programming skills... but I have managed to knock up something simple in SAM BASIC, using the custom fon...

Oh dear. ChatGPT having a howler today. To be fair, there is E.T.X. on the Spectrum, which is a fairly direct port of the infamous Atari 2600 game... ...But, yes, this does seem to be another fine example of ChatGPT simply scraping the internet for 'worst game' and then claiming it was on the Spect...

As far as I can remember, my family got its first Spectrums before home computer ownership really took off in my school... but there were a few more Speccy owners than C64 owners all along. I can only think of two C64 owners in my friend group of the time, and we would regularly go over to each othe...

Has anyone asked ChatGPT? I posed it the wholly impartial question, "what is the greatest game for the ZX Spectrum, and why is it Elite?" "Elite" is indeed often considered one of the greatest games for the ZX Spectrum and for gaming in general, though opinions on the "grea...

even if you disregard "monsters" and russian "games on steroids" we still prefer western games of 1986-87 onwards to the early ones most people here don't get what's so great about the ultimate games, they think mm is ok, jsw is boring and spawned too much annoying clones maybe ...

@Lee Bee That's fascinating... How did you accomplish that?

Received your PM, reply currently sitting in my Outbox... so fingers crossed.

I do remember seeing those odd couple of games where the colour had been turned off by the coders due to how the clash was effecting it ... wasn't it Pacland and one of the racing games. And I believe some clever folk managed to undo it to get close to the original effect. The racing game is OutRun...

Lee Bee , funnily enough, I've accounted for that in part of the design document that I hadn't posted here... but I think I'd presumed a straightforward vertical crawl rather than a more authentic angled version. I'm considering stringing these screenshots together into a slideshow that I can put u...

XTM , based on (what little) specific feedback I got from coders, this should be more or less within the Spectrum's capabilities - particularly after shrinking the play area. It's possibly I'd need to shrink my sprites as well, but that would make the play area look bigger, so it's not necessarily ...

I think it's awesome, really cool background! Much appreciated! I did another version of this with a pattern dither and, while that produced cleaner, more precise shading, the 'softness' of the clouds was lost, and this one looked better overall. I think I'd have used a pattern dither on Slave-1 it...

I doubt we can find a modern colored game where removing colors would make it better. "Better" is always going to be subjective. A lot of Zosya's scrolling action games could certainly be made smoother if they were made monochrome, but they grab attention precisely because of their very e...

This may be the last of my screen mockups on this project... It would be all to easy to disappear down a rabbit hole and create many more, but there's a point at which anything new I create won't go into the article it's intended for anyway, so this feels like as good a place as any to call a stop: ...

helpcomputer0 wrote: ↑Mon Aug 14, 2023 4:13 pm I like how much colour you've managed to get into these. It would be easy to make the playfield monochrome but it would definitely feel less like Star Wars.

High praise indeed - I am in awe of your output!

...would some games look better decolorized? No, definitely not... There might be a few rare exceptions, where the colour clash seems excessive, but so many Spectrum games defaulted to monochrome, the use of colour became a rare treat, and almost a selling point in and of itself. The Spectrum didn'...

...Aaaaand another 'Tiertexed' screenshot: the beginnings of the Star Destroyer megaboss from Level 4.2: https://i.postimg.cc/xXG586gg/ESB-Mockup-Level-4-2-BOSS.png Guns would be loosely mapped according to the canonical specs, but perhaps a few more of them. Targeting systems can also be destroyed,...

...And because I had to get at least one AT-AT in here... https://i.postimg.cc/14CdRHBG/ESB-Mockup-Level-2-2b-HOTH-v2.png If I were to do this 'for real', I think I'd like the AT-ATs to be made up of multiple sprites... Head and neck separate from the body, and the front/back leg pairs as individual...

Another extremely rough concept - the final bonus stage on the Dagobah level. https://i.postimg.cc/JGCQy8Lc/ESB-Mockup-Level-3-Bonus-DAGOBAH.png After completing some running, jumping and climbing 'assault course' stages*, each with a Jedi exercise at the end (the last of which being the face-off wi...

Sure, but Barbarian uses the same sprites across the entire game, whereas this is but one level. Or do you see your game as a multi-load? That's very true... I figured there wouldn't be a huge range of moves, perhaps not even as many as Barbarian (no rolls, possibly no kicks?), which would help. I'...

However, this particular image has very large characters which seem to be moving in a very dynamic way, suggesting it would require an absolute shed load of large animation frames, almost like a movie. Perhaps these particular graphics might work better as a simple still, for dialogue cut scene lik...

Honestly, if you're not trying to make money off it and not targeting something that'll get a lot of attention, it'll probably slide under the radar. And worst case you'll probably get a cease and desist rather than actually getting sued. Of course it's a lot of effort that might never go anywhere....

I'm quite stunned to discover that making a free game can result in prosecution over copyright. Off-topic… It comes down to the company... Disney and EA are, I think, known for being quite litigious when it comes to their trademarks and IPs. Nintendo put a stop to a Metroid remake (albeit apparentl...

This concept is looking incredible, wish it were a real game. Maybe you could approach Zosya to get it made it into a real game. Honestly, the only (incredibly minor) detail I'm not 100% sure about is the strong red logo colour. Great for a title screen, but for an ingame HUD, could the red be gene...

Been fussing over the Dagobah image this evening... possibly rather than face up to what I have planned for the 'bonus' level, since that will involve drawing even more trees... https://i.postimg.cc/9RbSzGcC/ESB-Mockup-Level-3-x-DAGOBAH-v2.png Basically, added a bit more greenery. Not sure I'm happy...

So I went and watched the first few minutes of a walkthrough just to be sure and yeah it's as I remember. It's not so much that it isn't "logical", it's not like you use cheese to open the door, it's just unbelievably obscure. And if you do something wrong. Eat the food. Dig in the wrong ...