Spectrum Computing

Hi [mention="Hikaru"]Hikaru[/mention], I wonder if you could link me to your copy of 'ZX-Spectrum & TR-DOS Для пользователей и программистов', if you have it as a scan. The one I have only goes up to page 114. It's either a different book or it's missing all the good stuff :) Heys. Th...

Certainly, I will have to disagree with this being a bad year for the Speccy. I would also say sprawling epics are very much in demand! Dat Santos ending though. Loved the Doodlebug too. Bob's puzzlers have some interesting ideas. Unfortunately I think '12 days' has a bug. If you cancel a link just ...

RMartins wrote: ↑Sat Dec 09, 2017 2:08 am 11 - REX ? (spread gun )

Nah, those were phatter and sorta diamond-shaped I think. Nevertheless, those pixels do seem familiar...

out of interest, what is the best rom to use for testing (compatibility wise?) Well, the original 5.03 is considered the baseline version of sorts. This is the last known official release. Another widespread edition is the unofficial 5.04T, which comes as the default ROM in some major 'Pentagon'-or...

Yes, it's probably less relevant in the case of boot.B, the only difference I can think of is when it is loaded with LOAD or LOAD "boot". Otherwise, the default implied command for those is RUN. Looking at my own loader, the autostart marker is #80 #AA placed after the final #0D at the end...

3. Soldier of Fortune
5. R-Type
6. Lightforce?
9. Cobra
10. Dan Dare 3

It looks like the 'bad' image has the file type set to 'b' as opposed to 'B'. The ASCII code for 'b' is 98, so that should at least explain the 'custom header type #98' thing. Something to do with trdtool perhaps? BASIC files need some spesshul treatment in TR-DOS in order to enable autostart from l...

USR0 it with fire!

But then again I had a lot of trouble in the early days becaue TRDos changed their specification between ver 4 and 5, and commands all changed, with "RANDOMIZE USR 15360" changed to "RANDOMIZE USR 15616" causing many of the samples of source-code I found could not work.. I belie...

Non-Unicode page is most likely to be Windows-1251 nowadays. Native legacy ZX Spectrum software such as word editors and e-zines also used CP866 (aka the MS-DOS encoding) or KOI8-R (e-mail standard encoding). Still some software used custom encodings, only adding the letters that weren't present in ...

My bad. Overall I've adapted that example from the book, 'ZX-Spectrum & TR-DOS Для пользователей и программистов' page 194. However, it looks like I've made a number of mistakes while doing that: 1. The '#00: load, #FF: save' comment is indeed wrong and should read '#FF: verify' instead. Saving ...

On the other hand we have Ghosts'n'Goblins . I'm probably in minority but I consider it to be a bad port :twisted: It''s smooth but that's all. It's very simplistic, with few tiles, ugly graphics, tiny sprites, few levels compared to arcade and crazy difficulty. I respect the author (Keith Burkill)...

I don't think something like this needs a credit at all, so any option is fine of course. For the record, at the core of it is a fairly old trick used in the Tritone engine (and IIRC one more from the 80's), i.e. CP N: SBC A: AND #10. In other words, any values less than N give #10, while values equ...

Well, I gave it a go previously, but decided not to post it in the end as I didn't really like the result. Seems like it was auto-saved as a draft, sooo here SFX ld hl,0 ld de,#0710 ld bc,2 ld lx,#18 call .loop ld c,24 ld lx,#06 .loop ld a,(hl) inc hl cp c sbc a and e or d out (#FE),a djnz .loop dec...

Two cases isn't a problem: 1. Screen clears. As a general rule, you're just writing to the screen, so a triggered interrupt isn't going to corrupt anything. Just make sure not to get too close to #4000 (read: the ROM) or perhaps some sort of upper status panel/s that aren't updated constantly. 2. Sp...

Err, you might be looking too much into it. There's basically two loops, the outer one makes the edges, the inner one fills the horizontal lines if the Z flag is set. Before entering the overall loop, we set the Z flag using CP A so the first line is filled horizontally. Next time this happens is at...

24 bytes. Still plenty of ways to go, I believe.

If you look closer, you might notice even a third (?) title there, which is 'Crime of the Santa Claus' I don't know for a fact but I really doubt any of this is intentional and/or has some additional meaning.

IIRC, one of the authors is Slider, who is also on WoS.

Right, I remember that RR demo. Incidentally, I think I found a way to use non-black colors like green? for the sync marker area in aline, with artifacts kept to a fairly low amount (as sparse bits of BRIGHT for half the line). :roll: Mint uses just one multicolor 'canvas' (data+code buffer) for eve...

Just my 5c, but I've tried it and I don't think this is a good extension. For one, it uses this annoying sort of google-captcha that tends to repeat itself 2 or 3 times until it clicks. But mostly the fact that the kind of link it inserts actually only shows the reduced thumbnail, not the full image...

MatGubbins wrote: ↑Sun Nov 19, 2017 5:21 pm Maybe we are older and don't want

Only played JB3, I thought it had a nice 'stealth exploring the enemy territory' feel to it at the time (sort of like Saboteur), if that makes sense. Never got too far with it though with all the bombs and whatnot.

Some people just habitually use POKEs all the time, even if the gameplay consists of 'pressing X to win'. Otherwise, the number of people willing to cheat can be seen as a means of telling whether a game has reasonable difficulty and/or whether it is achieved using fair means. Or alternatively, whet...

Ralf wrote: ↑Sat Nov 18, 2017 9:11 am But yes, it's a terrible choice.

Depends.

Sokurah wrote: ↑Sat Nov 18, 2017 11:37 pm I think it's only a matter of time before someone (not me) codes a version for the Spectrum Next.

Yes, using a BASIC interpreter written in compiled BASIC, with eyes closed and one hand tied to the back.

The most valuable part of a rank is to implicitly or explicitly define a sorting/order/sequence. <...> Not necessarily. To begin with, it's a derivative of the post count, which is visible on its own. So you might want to keep it at that, or you might regard it more as something else and less relat...