Spectrum Computing

Not sure I really buy into the premise — plenty of games have later levels better than the first — but one that immediately sprang to mind is Mr Wimpy. The second level onwards was a decent-enough Burger Time clone but to get to that you had to endure a god-awful Pssst-meets-Frogger ingredients coll...

Stefan wrote: ↑Sat May 20, 2023 12:06 am Yes, go to your user control panel and then board preferences, choose ZX ProSilver Dark.

Amazing! I had no idea. Thanks darkly.

Forgive me if I've missed something obvious... I mostly use this site at night. It's occurred to me tongight for the first time that I'd quite like a dark mode. Does this site have one? And, as an aside, why isn't this just a browser-based option? I pretty much just want to click a button to turn an...

Good guess but the torches in Sir Fred a way smaller. They are... but I wondered if it might be some end-of-game effect from one of the cauldrons (it's all so long ago I can't recall what happened on completion of Sir Fred, or even if I ever completed it -- even though I was certainly obsessed with...

sn3j wrote: ↑Thu May 18, 2023 6:30 am Check this one.

Pure guess based on graphical style - Sir Fred?

Not that I've seen or followed this until now but also check the graphics within the maps. The top is Roller Coaster, the bottom is Tarantula:

goodboy wrote: ↑Mon May 15, 2023 8:49 pm you don't know assembler?
this constant is responsible for the vertical position of the sprites

I do not. But… wuh? Regardless, what you did there demonstrates that it could be done, and I think it looks better as a result.

Morkin wrote: ↑Mon May 15, 2023 9:31 am

Code: Select all

POKE 40163, 126

That’s 126 lives, right? Awesome.

goodboy wrote: ↑Sat May 13, 2023 3:50 pm #9CE2 LD A,#7A / #7E !!!

I'm assuming this means something to people rather smarter than me?

Just for completeness, here's the capture it's from. But anyway, XTM or someone else's go...

XTM wrote: ↑Sun May 14, 2023 4:01 am Yeah, that sucker always appeared at the worst time, knocking you down to a deeper level ...

Yep, Nebulus - well done. I’m mobile right now so can’t post the full screenshot.

Okay, your next starter for 10. Sorry about the fuzziness... the bigger blobs are about three or four pixels wide.

(This isn't some obscure catch-everyone-out title, incidentally)

Rorthron wrote: ↑Sat May 13, 2023 4:07 pm The overlapping pixels might create a better 3D effect.

Yeah, I did consider that and kinda agree that it does. But not wholly convinced it’s ‘worth’ it.

Cool. I’ll try to post something later. If I haven’t by tomorrow, someone else jump in.

Yeah, I suppose the “Bugger it, that’ll do!” angle hadn’t occurred to me. Seems reasonable though.

That’ll be The Prize then.

Okay, so feel free to file this under 'Lol - WTF bruh?' but... Recently I found myself looking at a screenshot of Way of the Exploding Fist. For the first time in, um, 38 years, I found myself wondering about the graphical layout -- and in particular in relation to the attribute grid. Basically, I w...

Preserved... https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9qyqbcDeQZd9Qw-yXBgHEn20oMudCjiXVS3uR74jG2Z6IMv79E4ibUMgITGxqPg7h3kiFo8B_RXfR_E5KO-tJ0G0F4Kwon5Ie-dSq45K5KLFG_E9oMpaKBNzoNaaGAuXGZHtx28hlLlfvv_mU46sQvJYnBcngoDFI2OPD7MFMlhUVg7498GEokSAdXQ/s320/2.png This screen$ feels worthy o...

Pobulous wrote: ↑Tue Apr 04, 2023 9:46 am

That rings a Joffa Smith-shaped bell, but I can’t place it. Or perhaps I’m wrong.

stupidget wrote: ↑Fri Mar 10, 2023 10:28 am Okey Dokey, what's this from then?:

Nightshade?

They genuinely are. It complicates drawing of the road and probably means you're displaying more sprites for traffic etc. Almost any feature costs something in terms of the additional complexity involved. Chase HQ does support different road widths and branching roads, which is a lot more than most...

People always say this, but OutRun had a bunch more features than Chase HQ didn't, like wide highways etc. I'm not sure if you added those things in, it wouldn't impact performance - it's not like ports on other platforms were much better. The alternative would be leaving those out, but then you ge...

Are these games slow because how they were written? Obviously OutRun on the Speccy was a big disappointment but would it have been much better if it had used the engine from ‘Travel Through time Vol 1’? Precisely. Or even OutRun with the Spectrum Chase HQ engine. So a good OutRun on the Spectrum wa...

To be honest, any game that can't manage at least 17 fps or so qualifies. There's tons of games chugging along at a terrible frame rate, even some of the most popular ones like Jet Set Willy are just so sluggish. It didn't me bother too much as a kid but these days I'll not touch anything this jerk...

Same genre but Hard Drivin’ must surely be on this list. I think the Spectrum is simply incapable of delivering the speed required to pull this off.

I have sometimes wondered, though, whether a vector version could’ve worked — Stunt Car Racer was pretty good, for example.