Spectrum Computing

I made a little game for the ZX Spectrum NEXT, go in and download it https://sinc-lair.itch.io/battle-tanks- ... ctrum-next

@PeterJ It's actually a very good idea to make a section about ZX-Evolution. There are several firmwares out there, and the adherents of the two most popular ones, Pentevo and TSConfig, hate each other. That should spice up this forum

Not to engage in speculations, it is enough to write a small test, run it on a real Next and see that one interrupt takes about 450K clock cycles, i.e. its effective frequency is about 22.5 MHz on the current firmware version. ZX Spectrum Next is really a constantly evolving computer, so unlike many...

Simply increasing the processor frequency where it was not foreseen in advance leads to deterioration of control. If the game logic is mixed with image output, it will be easier to rewrite such a game from scratch than to adapt it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

AndyC , I urge you to boycott this troll. All he wants to do is provoke you. He deliberately makes absurd statements, like that Next transfers data to VRAM with OUTI command, although he knows very well that Next has a DMA chip. Trying to have a constructive dialogue with him is like playing chess ...

Lethargeek , I've written and release several games on ZX Spectrum Next which are far superior to the example you gave by sprite count. You're telling me, who knows the ZX Spectrum Next like the back of his hand that it's impossible in principle to do something I done many times before, and will do...

Yeah I was never keen on the idea of changing CPU instructions to suit other hardware. It's one of the things that deviate from the idea Sinclair would have actually built this back in the day - they certainly weren't in a position to have a custom Z80 design with Spectrum specific instructions. Yo...

Lethargeek wrote: ↑Sun Oct 15, 2023 11:52 pm 3) the way you need to check segments and switch pages for "extended" bitmap gfx

And by the way, if you had studied the issue, you would know that you don't need to switch pages to full access (read and write) ALL 48Kb of bitmap (Layer2).

For me I lost interest in the Next , my n-go is in the loft the games remind me of the Amiga, sad really as I was excited to get mine 😭 If you have truly lost interest in your n-go, keeping it idle is selfish and irresponsible. Sell it on ebay, given the scarcity of NEXT-compatible machines, you'll...

please pay attention to what i'm saying here and you will find answers without repeating the same questions again as already told, because i may need it to make an "extended" version of any possible standard spectrum scene and it turns out it might need much more than 16K of sprite patter...

Personally, I really like the extended commands of the Z80N it’s clear that they are not a mindless copy of other types of cpu, they feel the experience and dreams of many programmers who wrote code for the classic Spectrum. I wrote code for several games on NEXT, and enjoyed using almost all the ne...

Lethargeek wrote: ↑Fri Oct 13, 2023 9:27 pmyou can't as there's not enough cpu speed (you need more than 8x as the memory isn't as easily adressable, but on the NEXT you have even less iirc)

Please answer one more question: what processor is in the zx spectrum next, what is its clock frequency, how is mmu implemented?

with hw sprites (and dynamically generated picture in general) you have to store everything for the worst case, see above please answer the question: why do you need to store more than 16kb in vram, if 16kb is the maximum that can be shown on the screen in one frame? even if your vram was 1024kb in...

Nope! The amount of dead bodies isn't a problem (these are just 2 small still sprites anyway). But the need to have too many frames of sprite animations ready at any time is THE problem. There are 22 Kbytes sprites in total, masked, one-sided. Let's deduct the masks, this gives us 11 Kbytes or 88 K...

In ZX Spectrum Next 16kb of memory for sprites means 128 sprites with 16 colours per point (https://wiki.specnext.dev/Sprites). That is, you can cover 2/3 of the screen with sprites. In Nemesis the Warlock, the game area is 2/3 of the screen. Killed enemies can be moved to the background in layer2. ...

The sequel is planned in the same style as the first part. After the release of Treasure Hunters and Vradak's Revenge, we did some research and came to the conclusion that we need to use the improved features of Next very carefully, as it is very easy to cross the line and the game will lose its Spe...

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