Spectrum Computing

OK, here's an odd one. I've been messing with something for the last couple of days and saving it as a .bas file. Everything was fine, the file was saved and re-opened probably ten times or more with no problems, until today. Attempting to open it does nothing, there is apparently no program. It's n...

Ok, no problem. I want to finish the season as top scorer! :mrgreen: I'm still considering how it's all going to work. Normally I'd save a bit of memory by having the initial competitors pre-defined, but as new competitors are going to have to be generated as the game progresses, I thought I might ...

From the Wally Week saga I'm missing Hinsley & Strudwick. We can also include artists like Thorpe, Wakelin, Azpiri, Delcan & Royo (another three foreign! ;) ), Frey, Rowe and Lund. Excellent! Think I've got 95 now, so probably enough to get going (although I've not worked out exactly how ev...

I honestly barely remember more than a handful of these. The only one that I spent any kind of time on was Mindshadow, so that gets my vote. Adventure games could often be quite impenetrable in those days (especially as in most cases I only had tape-to-tape copies with no instructions) but Mindshado...

Thanks everyone, some great suggestions here. I would add some of the people who created the speccy... Done! If 'tangential' counts, then how about Braben and Bell? or are they/Elite more associated with the Beeb? Oh absolutely, I already had a couple of C64 programmers. I've put the rest of your su...

Ast A. Moore wrote: ↑Sat Aug 10, 2019 7:04 pm Both Cooke and Smith are in your list, so I’m good.

But you can add Follin, Bruty, and Perry.

Done! I shouldn't have missed those. Any more would be much appreciated!

Sorry for the double-post but this might be something else that you lovely people can help me with. I've started the names database with Spectrum-related people (and a few from the C64). They're just more interesting names than generic phone book names. So far I'm going to be using (deep breath): Au...

Thanks. I know what you mean - there isn't much contrast between white and cyan. But blue on white is too dark. I love the screen (lower half), but I think blue on white for the logo in the upper half would be fine. I guess you must have tried it but does it really look that bad? I'm only imagining...

I'm planning what will probably be another terrible BASIC game (it's a sports simulation, but I don't want to say much more than that yet as I think it's a bit over-ambitious and may come to nothing). Anyway, it's going to involve generating (from a list of probably a hundred or so surnames) a fairl...

It's a shame I don't actually have a copy of Hungry Horace to take along with me. I've got Horace Goes Skiing as it was one of the ones in the game pack that came with my original Spectrum. I'll take that instead. Close enough, right? Looking forward to this now. Gonna get a bacon bun. Or maybe a ba...

Alessandro just made a game that I wanted to have a bash at myself! Just a moon landing though, not the whole flight. I'm unbelievably crap at programming and that in Basic only, so it was always a pipe dream more than a possibility...although thirty years ago I did manage something reasonable as p...

The 'Hungry Horace' I posted is in Redcar, BTW - so that makes five that we know of! ;) No that's the Marske one that Fahhn mentions (near Redcar). Actually lister is right, it is in Redcar, it's on Moore Street, which is one of the roads linking the High Street to the Coast Road. But when I first ...

Some of those have to have been intentional references, right? I'd like to know too. Google shows at least 4 "Hungry Horace" greasy spoons situated in or near London, Marske by the Sea, Bristol, York. At least one of these must be a spec-chum, if not all. Is anyone here nearby, or already...

Before anyone thinks it, can we please not be presented with the results of a Google image search for Penetrator ... :mrgreen: Just like Booty ! :lol: I came onto this thread (uh, unfortunate wording there, but I'll leave it) to make both these jokes. Stop ruining my fun! If I won the lottery, I wo...

AndyC wrote: ↑Mon Aug 05, 2019 11:29 am Some of those have to have been intentional references, right?

This definitely wasn't:



Or this:

PeteProdge wrote: ↑Mon Aug 05, 2019 3:15 pmAnyway, here's another one for ya...

Ha, excellent! I think I've got that book somewhere. If I remember, it was pretty good. Might have to try to find it now.

One thing that I did notice when I was writing the porn game - even after ditching the font routine - is that once the program got too big, it started overwriting the UDG area. I never had any intention of using UDGs in the game so I figured that it shouldn't matter as long as I didn't go too far. B...

I have a question, is the bold font one 33, 0, 61, 17, 57, 252, 1, 0, 3, 126, 203, 47, 182, 18, 19, 35, 11, 121, 176, 32, 244, 33, 57, 251, 34, 54, 92, 201 Yep that will make a bold font. Where did you get it from? I used to use that in all my games at 65338, to fit (as I thought) directly below th...

I have a question, is the bold font one 33, 0, 61, 17, 57, 252, 1, 0, 3, 126, 203, 47, 182, 18, 19, 35, 11, 121, 176, 32, 244, 33, 57, 251, 34, 54, 92, 201 ? I used to use that in all my games at 65338, to fit (as I thought) directly below the UDGs but it did create some weirdness especially if a BA...

There were a couple games set in the town that I grew up in, Dundee, Scotland, that featured LOTS of pubs. Pub Crawl... No idea that these existed. What a find! I went to university in Dundee from 1989-1993 and - being a feckless student - spent a lot of time in a lot of pubs. So I had to play the ...

Although my vote for the best game was quite easy, it was extremely difficult to come up with a top three. I better post it now before I change my mind again: 1. Quazatron 2. Nebulus 3. Ranarama I reckon if I added up the time I spent playing those three, it would run into weeks rather than days and...

Yeah, Hewson were an absolutely top quality outfit. Some all-time classics in this list and barely a duffer amongst them. I also liked that they were Consultants, it made them sound very grown-up and scientific to a nerdular boy as I was at the time (and still am) :) I'm going to re-play some of the...

Matt Westcott is not only a Spectrum demo & music supremo but he also worked his computer coding magic by creating the infamous Nohzdyve - the game within @blackmirror's Bandersnatch! I hope some of you enjoy the interview below: https://www.arcadeattack.co.uk/matt-westcott-spectrum-supremo-int...

Ocean were never my favourite software house but it's absolutely undeniable that over their long history, they released some very high quality games. Sure, there was some rubbish, but when they got it right they tended to get it very right. 1. Daley Thompson's Decathlon 2. Firefly 3. Gilligan's Gold...

Before I persuaded my parents to buy me my own, I played a lot on my mate's Spectrum. Our major (for a while only) source of games were these four very badly-recorded C90 compilation tapes that his dad got from someone at work. One thing that really sticks in the memory is that in between each recor...