Search found 100 matches

by Hikaru
Fri Mar 02, 2018 8:40 am
Forum: Preservation
Topic: Where are the actual scans of the machine manuals?
Replies: 14
Views: 3431

>planetwide cancer

How was this allowed to happen? didn't someone at the time think "now hang on, html and text are great but perhaps one day someone might actually want to check all this non-reviewed, non-supervised stuff against the originals?" There's some unexplored potential in this part. With a bit of...
by Hikaru
Sun Jan 14, 2018 12:04 pm
Forum: Music
Topic: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?
Replies: 42
Views: 14353

Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Sound itself conveys a mood. If you pay attention to it, you will see (hear) that, before there is even a melody or a sense of progression, even the simplest case of having a continuously playing 'sound' of 2~3 notes put together might sound happy, or sad, or scary/awkward/menacing. Or something el...
by Hikaru
Sun Jan 14, 2018 8:17 am
Forum: Music
Topic: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?
Replies: 42
Views: 14353

Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Sound itself conveys a mood. If you pay attention to it, you will see (hear) that, before there is even a melody or a sense of progression, even the simplest case of having a continuously playing 'sound' of 2~3 notes put together might sound happy, or sad, or scary/awkward/menacing. Or something els...
by Hikaru
Thu Jan 11, 2018 8:15 pm
Forum: Website
Topic: Cannot edit older posts.
Replies: 44
Views: 9526

Re: Cannot edit older posts.

I mean something that would explain doing this out of the blue 3 months in, of course. There's typically some kind of a precedent/context wherever a serious change like that is imposed. What happened here? What did we miss? I set this parameter back in November, nothing has changed. Oh. I see. Some...
by Hikaru
Thu Jan 11, 2018 7:57 pm
Forum: Website
Topic: Cannot edit older posts.
Replies: 44
Views: 9526

Re: Cannot edit older posts.

I think of forum threads as conversations that take place in time, so I don't understand why it's 'giving up' anything. In the end, forums are just another form of information exchange online, with its share of conventions that IIRC have remained more or less the same since the late 90's, with all ...
by Hikaru
Thu Jan 11, 2018 1:10 pm
Forum: Website
Topic: Cannot edit older posts.
Replies: 44
Views: 9526

Re: Cannot edit older posts.

Frankly, that is an impressive number of people in one place just willing to voluntarily give up on whatever they write. Anyway, it doesn't look like this thread is worth further time, so I'll keep this brief. - It would probably help to hear a real explanation about why this became needed in the fi...
by Hikaru
Thu Jan 11, 2018 8:00 am
Forum: Graphics
Topic: Feedback wanted! Best choice for bullet clarity and appearance
Replies: 7
Views: 2569

Re: Feedback wanted! Best choice for bullet clarity and appearance

Voted the first option. 2 and 3 are more or less instances of the same thing. Unmasked printing looks easier on the eyes, but frankly I don't think you want more of that going on. Not sure how feasible this is, but you might want to try keeping the default bullet size but making the black outlines w...
by Hikaru
Thu Jan 11, 2018 7:46 am
Forum: Programming
Topic: Sound libraries, any examples.
Replies: 13
Views: 6029

Re: Sound libraries, any examples.

AYFX and BeepFX are tools made by Shiru. I think the AYFX player had some issues, see on my post a link to the routine fixed by a zuno forum member. I made something called mFX last year, specifically with Cgonzalez's Gandalf game in mind. It's a system for combining AY effects+music in the best wa...
by Hikaru
Wed Jan 10, 2018 8:43 am
Forum: Website
Topic: Cannot edit older posts.
Replies: 44
Views: 9526

Re: Cannot edit older posts.

One of the reasons for this thread is precisely the fact that, as far as I can remember, there weren't any sort of limits of this sort on the old WoS whatsoever. On the contrary, it wasn't until the forum imitation of the new 'WoS' that this practice really took root and became a noticeable annoyan...
by Hikaru
Tue Jan 09, 2018 10:06 pm
Forum: Brand new software!
Topic: In nihilum reverteris - new Polish text game from Yerzmyey
Replies: 14
Views: 5867

Re: In nihilum reverteris - new Polish text game from Yerzmyey

Gamebooks were very popular in the 80s, but I don't remember any Spectrum game designed as one of them. Anyway, it's a very interesting idea. I remember this one too, completed it with some effort BITD alongside a huge English dictionary we had at home (a lifeline too many times) just cuz I liked t...
by Hikaru
Tue Jan 09, 2018 9:48 pm
Forum: Website
Topic: Cannot edit older posts.
Replies: 44
Views: 9526

Re: Cannot edit older posts.

Maybe I’m missing something though, why would you want to be able to edit anytime? Personally I'm missing the transition from 'people should be able to edit their own posts anytime' to 'people should not be able to edit their own posts anytime' for the most part, I suppose. As well, a major website...
by Hikaru
Tue Jan 09, 2018 5:49 pm
Forum: Website
Topic: Cannot edit older posts.
Replies: 44
Views: 9526

Cannot edit older posts.

It seems like there's no way to edit older posts. For instance, I see no edit button on this one, which was posted today a few hours ago. While I'm sure this is probably unintentional and caused by some sort of default board settings, I think it's important to not let this become a thing. As well, a...
by Hikaru
Tue Jan 09, 2018 10:47 am
Forum: Programming
Topic: Randomize and rotate left.
Replies: 28
Views: 6283

Re: Randomize and rotate left.

Code: Select all

	ld a,h
	and 3
	cp 3
	adc #57
	ld h,a
But that makes it 'less random' because 2 -> #5A and 3 -> #5A.
by Hikaru
Tue Jan 09, 2018 10:37 am
Forum: Games/Software
Topic: The best classic Speccy game beginning with B: vote
Replies: 29
Views: 6135

Re: The best classic Speccy game beginning with B: vote

Batty is technically OK, but is otherwise largely on the plain side, and is annoying af to play for many, many reasons. I have no idea why it's pinned fairly often as some sort of ultimate Breakout game on the Speccy, which is of course Krakout, by miles, albeit under one very important condition of...
by Hikaru
Fri Jan 05, 2018 6:07 pm
Forum: Programming
Topic: Inverted Y origin
Replies: 9
Views: 2706

Re: Inverted Y origin

I'm sure there's more than one way to skin a cat, mind you. I might revisit that part sometime, but in the end I can only afford that much attention to marginally useful functionality, so it's not a priority at the moment.
by Hikaru
Fri Jan 05, 2018 6:39 am
Forum: Programming
Topic: Inverted Y origin
Replies: 9
Views: 2706

Re: Inverted Y origin

I'm not really sure if you gain anything from it. At least in my own sprite code, I always load the the amount of vertical lines the sprite includes. Clipping vertically is extremely easy, you just have to change were you start in the sprite data, if you clip on top, and/or change sprite total line...
by Hikaru
Thu Jan 04, 2018 12:27 pm
Forum: Programming
Topic: Multi-Loaders, how did they work and how do you write one?
Replies: 11
Views: 4417

Re: Multi-Loaders, how did they work and how do you write one?

I think you might be confusing loaders with ... ... loaders? - I guess it is in fact the same word. >.> Well, let's call them 'loaders' and 'decoders' for the sake of this example. Decoders: as in the exact routines that decode the tape signals into bits and bytes of data and store these in the memo...
by Hikaru
Thu Jan 04, 2018 11:05 am
Forum: Games/Software
Topic: Renegade or Target Renegade?
Replies: 10
Views: 2735

Re: Renegade or Target Renegade?

Renegade for me. It just has more integrity of the two. Everything is where you expect it to be, plays the way you expect, without any unnecessary elements. TR on the other hand feels like an expanded fan remake of sorts, that is, first and foremost, an attempt to imitate. And that ingame tune is ju...
by Hikaru
Thu Jan 04, 2018 10:44 am
Forum: Programming
Topic: Inverted Y origin
Replies: 9
Views: 2706

Re: Inverted Y origin

Cheers. Sounds like it's worth giving it a go then. I forgot about a small issue with it nevertheless, which is that you'll have to store your sprites upside-down in case you're using the stack to read the data, since POP can only move the data pointer forwards. But this probably just amounts to ano...
by Hikaru
Thu Jan 04, 2018 6:09 am
Forum: Programming
Topic: Inverted Y origin
Replies: 9
Views: 2706

Inverted Y origin

Recently, I found it to be convenient to have the Y origin point at the bottom of images (sprites), so that essentially they are drawn starting from the bottom up. This has at least the following advantages: 1) Easy non-intrusive clipping at the top; in your 'next line' procedure, check if your scre...
by Hikaru
Wed Jan 03, 2018 2:02 pm
Forum: Programming
Topic: IY and the interrupt
Replies: 15
Views: 4416

Re: IY and the interrupt

How is the reader of the book supposed to go from "FRAMES-3" to "IY+40"? The word "FRAMES" doesn't appear anywhere else in the book. Regarding the lack of constant/variable list in the book at least, perhaps the 'ROM Disassembly' authors were relying on the fact that t...
by Hikaru
Wed Jan 03, 2018 11:58 am
Forum: Programming
Topic: IY and the interrupt
Replies: 15
Views: 4416

Re: IY and the interrupt

Hello, world! What you're seeing here is the effect of the so-called 'good practices' at work. A small example: 0038 MASK-INT PUSH AF Save the current values held in PUSH HL these registers. LD HL,(FRAMES) The lower two bytes of the INC HL frame counter are incremented LD (FRAMES),HL every 20 ms. (U...
by Hikaru
Wed Jan 03, 2018 9:14 am
Forum: Brand new software!
Topic: My new game: Wunderwaffe
Replies: 17
Views: 5135

Re: My new game: Wunderwaffe

Made it! - No cheating ofc. :p A bit tricky and some memorization required (there are a few insta-kill spots, sometimes depending on which direction you came from) but definitely doable. http://i65.tinypic.com/qz2pl2.png Also, I've confirmed the diagonal jump direction bug, this seems to happen when...
by Hikaru
Tue Jan 02, 2018 6:16 am
Forum: Brand new software!
Topic: My new game: Wunderwaffe
Replies: 17
Views: 5135

Re: My new game: Wunderwaffe

Nice. Apart from the whole moonbase floaty feel, which I'm not too sure about, there's actually a decent and thought-out game to it, with a combat system that leans more towards a strategic/positioning type puzzler. Got to the lower-floor 'mine railway' yesterday, will definitely try again more. I'v...
by Hikaru
Tue Jan 02, 2018 5:53 am
Forum: Programming
Topic: Porting easy/hard of diffrent micro computers.
Replies: 11
Views: 3452

Re: Porting easy/hard of diffrent micro computers.

Just my impression but the easiest one might be Enterprise 128 . It uses a Z80 and what seems to be a very flexible screen configuration system, apparently allowing it to emulate Speccy screen modes to a good extent. Hardest systems I'm sure should include ZX80/ZX81. 1Kb of memory and an explanation...