Spectrum Computing

This has been fun, and I can't get it working fully yet... but at least it doesn't crash any more. A lot of the problems were of my own making, and interoperation with the BASIC Assembly. At the moment I can print one letter, and it is bigger, and looks a bit wonky. If I print TWO letters then they ...

and regular updates and new content and comments create a virtuous circle, as people come back to see what has changed, and then comment, or tell people about their new game, and then OTHER people.... You wouldn't get that in a private forum. There's a place for private fora, and a place for a COMMU...

I've got that book, and a lovely ZX Spectrum assembler I typed in from BASIC. If I get a chance I'll give it a try on Boxing Day.

I did a video on the above. https://youtu.be/bxjCtvbfLNc I also mention that the version we have on here doesn't work, and how to fix it. And then do my own deluxe version which is an exercise in vanity and simple machine code. But I got to use my ZX Assembler that I typed in, and correct some of th...

I LOVED Carrier Command, but never could get in to Elite. I had trouble flying the ship, docking was impossible, and whenever I jumped to hyperspace I'd get ambushed by 3 or 4 ships instantly. I think I'd accidentally activated a cheat. Starglider 2 had a LOT going on across the solar system, but th...

Plenty in there to keep people busy over the Christmas period!

Pro BASIC, especially the BEEP command. Lots of functions. Take that, Commodore 64! High definition graphics with text. Take that, Dragon 32! Cost! Take that, BBC Micro! Con colour clash, and no options to change it. I never had an issue with the power, as I just turned it off at the wall. Mind you ...

How do all, As the weather here in Wolverhampton is, quite frankly, b@stard freezing, I've taken to using my turbo trainer in the garage rather than risking riding my bike on the ice-rink that use to be a road. Now, riding a bike on rollers/turbo trainer is mind numbingly boring and there's no way ...

@uglifruit Thanks! that will work for me. The user can still override this if they wish, I wondered if there was a simple way to stop that. Thanks again There's also calling the ROM to toggle it. Andrew Hewson in Hewson's Helpline in Sinclair User 14 explains https://sinclairuser.com/014/helplne.ht...

That's not true, is it? We've all seen old tapes with a round yellow sticker saying SPEC or CPC... (In retrospect, it surprises me that these were all separate releases. It would be much more production-efficient to put Speccy on side 1 and Ammy on side 2 on a tape, etc. Rewinding isn't that painfu...

"Glass" looked fantastic but seemed a little disappointing to play. But looked AMAZING.

PeteProdge wrote: ↑Fri Dec 09, 2022 12:05 pm Yeah, I had to do the vice versa of this topic. What are the awful ZX Spectrum games that somehow looked amazing in their typical screenshots?

Merlin and the other games with the same engine look amazing... but play poorly.

When I played Lords of Midnight, you'd get a different hum based on what was on the screen... and if you suddenly came across an enemy army the sudden appearance of loads of different characters made the hum quite menacing!

I've got an electronic copy of the board and the counters (I recreated the ones you can't see from the cover) which if you want I can send in? I've started working on a video about it. Step 1) Type it in Step 2) Realise you need the board and counters so print them out and glue them together Step 3)...

The Spectrum Pocket Book by Phipps Associates had a rather good Assembler/Disassembler, as a BASIC type-in. It actually works too, and worked for 16K or 48K Spectrum. With 48K Spectrum you could write a BASIC program with REM statements containing the Assembly Language statements. It did symbols and...

When I upgraded my rubber key to a toastrack back in the day I was completely naive about how the extra memory worked. I think I genuinely expected that I'd be entering things like POKE 134172,255 :lol: I typed in a BASIC game for PC into my emulated 48K Spectrum. Ran out of memory. No problem, tho...

I did a little video on the 1984 type-in, Runaway Robot. Then I compiled it using Simon N Goodwin's type-in Zip compiler!

Shard of Inovar had a menu system too (but was otherwise text-y). And there were pictures. If it counts?

Redhawk! had animation and little pictures, and some keyboard shortcuts for common words. Venom had an interesting menu driven system where you would select a verb and then an object or a word from the text. The R looked weird. There was a HEABAL ORB, or was it a HERBAL ORB? I never knew. Kentilla h...

I had a grey +2 and loved it. The Datacorder was so much better than loading on the ZX81 with Ear and Mic leads and volumes and that. I did some programming on it too, in 48K mode. It's still weird that I did that, because the +2 went with the "let's not bother labelling the keywords much as pe...

Not sure how much help it is, but Joe Pritchard's box on 128K machine code has a chapter on using the sound chip. I still need to read it (after buying it and scanning it in...)

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry.php?id=2000381

the PDF is on archive.org

I think this was on side B of the "Horizons" tape. Or at least it seems like it. The instructions in the second part look like how you are supposed to use the "big text" machine code.

I could very well be wrong though.

I've got nothing much to do this weekend, so I felt like having a go at hacking a few Speccy games for extra lives. (Not infinite - want to make some games easier, but not THAT easy.) Small problem - absolutely no idea how. Can anyone give me an idiot's starter guide to how to find where a game's n...

I tried, it loaded the machine code loader. I tried RANDOMIZE USR at the three addresses, nothing happened. Then I tried LOAD "" and it loaded the UDG thing. Ran that, loads of PRINTs and then "Press Play On Tape". After THAT, I did LOAD "" again and got https://i.posti...

How about XCEL? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykIqm4jVfRY Nice presentation, followed by a simple scrolling avoid em up and a simple old-skool arcade shooter. I get the feeling on a lot of these that a lot of effort went into the coding and (sometimes) the graphics, but then they didn't have a ga...