Spectrum Computing

Infocom were able to use there z machine to cross compile but they designed it to be that way from the jump start. And one could argue its much easier to do with a text adventure than say a graphics system. But it was still impressive for the time.

Wall_Axe wrote: ↑Tue Jan 02, 2018 1:54 pm if yer usin linux you can use pasmo i think, or some other assembler
make files are useful

Pasmo is what I am using at the moment, I like how you can generate the tap files with it.

Well the Beeb had the z80 co-processor, but that was expensive and I didn't know anyone that owned one. I think they are pretty rare now. But that sounds like a great way to develop specy titles back in the day. It was watching the 8-bit guy talking about porting his game from the vic-20 to the c64 ...

Day 2: (363 days left..) Got the pawn sprite done. got a bunch of libraries for z80 assembly on the spectrum so while i feel its a little bit of a short cut, it greatly improves my noob chances of getting something finished that looks ok. I think even a crap game has some standards... 1. It should b...

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 explanatio...

Sure there are many systems that share a common z80 cpu, but I was curious. Assuming you are starting with a 48k spectrum assembly program - that used graphics and sound. What would be the easiest system to port to? and the most difficult? I guess it depends on what the program actually does but I w...

ZXDunny wrote: ↑Mon Jan 01, 2018 11:00 am For Linux? no. You'll need to use WINE. BASin comes with a screen paintbox, and that does work with WINE.

Cheers, that is a cracking set of tools.

Its the 1st of January, So I have 364 days to complete this crap game. Things are looking good. 1. SevenUp works fine, so its now much less of a hassle doing specky graphics. That was the first good news of the day. 2. Audio is already ready to go into the game. Sound effects got done this morning. ...

To be honest today was not so fast progress, but what progress there was was ok. Player input is now a thing, in a basic way. But at least the program now looks at 23560, compares it to a bunch of different keys and then does a bunch of stuff. ala the menu. That said, what didn't go so well today wa...

Tried to get ZX-Paintbrush to work with wine and while it installed I can't convince wine to run the thing.

I just need a simple editor to do a title screen. Is something like this available on linux? Or that is just a basic windows exe file that I can run on wine?

'Music' for the title screen is done. Thank you Beepola that is a cracking little app and it runs just fine on linux with Wine. Now just need to research how to cobble all these bits together, knock up a loading screen and that is another hurdle crossed. 8-) I was going to crack on with the graphics...

<snip> The problem is that while making a game you play and test it hundreds of times so you learn it ,you memorize it. It becomes easy for you and you are no longer able to take point of view of a guy who sees it for the first time. So many of the microcomputer games of the 80s fall into this trap...

Nice one - you gotta start somewhere and I remember how happy I was just to get something printed on the screen. Also part of the fun is improving and debugging your own code, and working out different ways of doing something. In fairness I had a lot of help from blogs, and posts from the forums (W...

That weird message is from when the program was loaded into memory. It's simply remnants of the screen left from BASIC. To get rid of it, you need to clear the bitmap area of the screen before you draw your board, like this: ld hl,16384 ld de,16385 ld bc,6143 ; Length of the screen minus one ld (hl...

I find the annotated disassembly listings really useful, far more so than the books on assembly in making a game. While the books are necessary for looking up things like processor specs, timings - of a technical nature. And of course the basics. Its the games themselves where the practical applicat...

Why not go for a square grid? Most Speccy chess games use tiles (16 x 16 pixels), or even UDGs? (8x8) that'd be easier to use with your chess pieces too. Also remember that attribute 0 means you won't see your sprites! (black PAPER and INK). Interested to see how this progresses. I was hoping to us...

Well further my resolution for 2018 to spawn my very own crap assembly game I will put my laughable progress here for all to have a chuckle at and hopefully give me a few pointers/obiwan like advice along the way to bring this baby home! So at the moment I have this... https://s10.postimg.org/ygkp23...

Following up on William Tang, the Wikipedia page said he had a serious medical incident during 1985 and ceased developing games after that. Can't imagine what kind of work environment would have triggered that in the poor bloke. From the Crash article that Wikipedia is talking about... ...Steve join...

Back in the day I had the basic books, and in fairness they would usually do what they said on the tin. But I notice while reading through the assembly books for the spectrum that.. they are mostly written by wide boys and autists. The classic books seem to spend chapters explaining basic computer s...

By all means - nuke the Chit Chat section - that's worthless anyway ... but there's a lot of useful information on that forum, that it would be a damn shame to not have access to anymore. Oi..! There's a lot of valuable culinary information in that forum that needs preserving... In the future who k...

Mysterious person, just by accident I was browsing a book (Machine Code Sprites and Graphics for the ZX Spectrum by John Durst (1984) and came across a plug for a user group and magazine. (at the start of the book the page before chapter 1) MicroArts - MIA but check out the details. https://spectrum...

2018 - Will create a crap game written in assembly for the spectrum. Once I have the template figured out, I will shamelessly do re hashes for the rest of the year (joke, ok perhaps a little bit true.) Unlike most of my new year's resolution this is already under way, got the toolchain setup and I h...

So do you think just going into the hobbit without a walkthru is too frustrating and obscure? Try it first without a walk through, when you hit the wall, then consult the hint book/strategy guide. http://www.mocagh.org/tolkien/hobbit-hintbook.pdf You get the help and hints, but if you want the stra...

The only text adventure I completed on the spectrum was The Hobbit. But I grinded that for the better part of 3 years. At that time I didn't know the strategy guide existed - If i had access to that back in the day it would have made things a whole bunch easer. But honestly today you can just use th...

WOS was one of the first websites I found on the internet back in the 90s, come to think of it its the only one from the dialup days that I think is still in existence. Like most of you guys and girls the Spectrum was a huge part of my childhood, so finding such a active community in the early days ...