Search found 476 matches
- Sun Aug 21, 2022 8:05 am
- Forum: Brand new software!
- Topic: Vectornauts (Full version)
- Replies: 19
- Views: 1160
Re: Vectornauts (Full version)
Great little game! Clean graphics style with nice music to match
- Wed Apr 13, 2022 8:38 pm
- Forum: Announcements
- Topic: Pringles celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the ZX Spectrum
- Replies: 71
- Views: 2457
Re: Pringles celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the ZX Spectrum
@Ast A. Moore, Once we get confirmation that the prize has been won by someone, maybe you could share your loading secrets? I will let you know when we get confirmation from Pringles. I can confirm the competition is already closed - just received an automatic reply from their address: https://i.po...
- Sun Jan 30, 2022 9:50 pm
- Forum: Sinclair Miscellaneous
- Topic: The final 16K Spectrum game to be commercially released?
- Replies: 5
- Views: 294
Re: The final 16K Spectrum game to be commercially released?
This raises a question from me... You know how a lot of games from 1987 onwards would run on both 48K and 128K, with exclusive enhanced things for the latter? (Usually AY music, all levels loaded in at once, etc, like Out Run or Target Renegade)... Well, is there a ZX Spectrum game that loads in fo...
- Sun Jan 30, 2022 2:10 pm
- Forum: Sinclair Miscellaneous
- Topic: The final 16K Spectrum game to be commercially released?
- Replies: 5
- Views: 294
Re: The final 16K Spectrum game to be commercially released?
The snapshot for Geordie Land has code and data in the upper 32K of the memory map, so it's definitely not 16K compatible. Of course, it's always possible that there exists a 16K version that hasn't been preserved, but I would think it to be very unlikely for a 1989 game. EDIT: Looking at the YS adv...
- Sun Jan 16, 2022 2:19 pm
- Forum: Preservation
- Topic: Jackman
- Replies: 1
- Views: 150
Re: Jackman
This seems to be a very minimally altered version of the "Jack-man" type-in from Tim Hartnell's book, The ZX Spectrum Explored (1982).
- Mon Oct 11, 2021 10:13 pm
- Forum: Games/Software
- Topic: Worst music
- Replies: 56
- Views: 2323
Re: Worst music
... so as you lose lives, the delay value for the note has an increasing offset added to it, distorting the pitches and making the music gradually slide out-of-tune. Do we know the intention? I still wonder if it's to do with attempting to account for printing the number of Willys in the game panel...
- Mon Oct 11, 2021 9:42 pm
- Forum: Games/Software
- Topic: Worst music
- Replies: 56
- Views: 2323
Re: Worst music
I'm getting fuzzy with the details, but isn't this something to do with accounting for the number of lives being printed at the bottom? The more lives that need printing, the longer the main loop, therefore the different the sound. I remember this being mentioned in an interview with Matthew Smith ...
- Thu Sep 16, 2021 7:33 pm
- Forum: Announcements
- Topic: RIP Sir Clive
- Replies: 102
- Views: 5252
Re: RIP Sir Clive
Few can say they've achieved as much in their time. To almost single-handedly revolutionise the way that the average person thinks of and interacts with technology is simply incredible. Yet to him, the computers were just a side-business. He applied his ingenuity to many other fields, with a palpabl...
- Wed Sep 15, 2021 9:47 pm
- Forum: Music
- Topic: Best samples for digitised speech
- Replies: 5
- Views: 461
Re: Best samples for digitised speech
1 - make it sound cleaner/better when digitised to TAP. For this, you can try applying a compression filter on the audio. In simple terms, this will alter the audio so that all parts of it are at around the same volume - all of the quiet bits and the loud peaks will be brought to the same level. Yo...
- Mon Sep 13, 2021 8:58 pm
- Forum: Programming
- Topic: Disassembly of Horace Goes Skiing - any co-operators out there?
- Replies: 5
- Views: 465
- Mon Sep 13, 2021 7:35 pm
- Forum: Preservation
- Topic: Was the Spectrum demo used by Margaret Thatcher in Japan ever preserved?
- Replies: 9
- Views: 719
Re: Was the Spectrum demo used by Margaret Thatcher in Japan ever preserved?
A comment from a copy of the video on YouTube : It is not a real chess game (I was that young guy in the background). It is simply a graphics demo I coded up in Basic. It did not play, it just showed a board. It would seem to be a legitimate comment since a search for John Mathieson (the commenter) ...
- Sun Aug 29, 2021 8:29 am
- Forum: Showcase your work!
- Topic: ZAD Adventure System - Progress
- Replies: 57
- Views: 18133
Re: ZAD Adventure System - Progress
Version 1.0 of the engine (for Postie's Peril) is finished. Is it available somewhere? I would like to add it to our archive! :) Wow, this is quite a necropost! ;) I must admit that I stopped working on ZAD after December 2019, due to a lack of motivation. It was going to be a lot of work, since th...
- Wed Aug 25, 2021 4:24 pm
- Forum: Programming
- Topic: The definitive masked sprite routine
- Replies: 18
- Views: 1586
Re: The definitive masked sprite routine
This (and the linked article) got me thinking... could the stack be used to fetch the horizontal row addresses? If you point SP at the applicable row address in a table then just POP each time you need the next one... and add the horizontal displacement. Yes, you can do that. In fact, that's what m...
- Fri Aug 20, 2021 11:56 am
- Forum: Programming
- Topic: The definitive masked sprite routine
- Replies: 18
- Views: 1586
Re: The definitive masked sprite routine
If you define "best" as "fastest", then no doubt the "best" routine will probably be something like a compiled sprite routine (where the sprite data is actually baked into the code), with optimisations to account for the reuse of values already within registers, and pop...
- Thu Aug 19, 2021 8:01 am
- Forum: Announcements
- Topic: Cassette 16 Summer Jam Vol2
- Replies: 43
- Views: 2156
- Fri Aug 13, 2021 7:37 am
- Forum: Games/Software
- Topic: Sir Lancelot turboloading issue - request
- Replies: 5
- Views: 246
Re: Sir Lancelot turboloading issue - request
Thanks for the reply, mate! I hadn't realized that... So sad and frustrating news for me... Anyway the loading time is limited, even with standard speed, but I'd like to also have a turbo one, for fun purposes... So, you mean that turbo CANNOT AT ALL be done on the 16k due to technical limitations ...
- Fri Aug 13, 2021 7:04 am
- Forum: Games/Software
- Topic: Sir Lancelot turboloading issue - request
- Replies: 5
- Views: 246
Re: Sir Lancelot turboloading issue - request
I'm afraid turbo-loading is not possible on the 16K machine, due to memory contention (the CPU will sometimes have to wait when accessing the first 16K of RAM to allow the ULA to gather data for the television picture). The 48K can handle a turbo-loader because the extra 32K of RAM is exclusive to t...
- Wed Jul 28, 2021 1:27 pm
- Forum: Announcements
- Topic: Cassette 16 Summer Jam Vol2
- Replies: 43
- Views: 2156
Re: Cassette 16 Summer Jam Vol2
Actually - genuine offer to the first person to complete Tardigrade and post a screenshot - a box of Quality Street with all the nice ones taken out. My less impressive screenshot: https://i.postimg.cc/zLqptx6S/Screenshot-2021-07-27-at-23-23-43.png You'll note I didn't post this earlier. Enjoy, PRO...
- Wed Jul 28, 2021 12:59 pm
- Forum: Announcements
- Topic: Cassette 16 Summer Jam Vol2
- Replies: 43
- Views: 2156
- Mon Jul 26, 2021 11:05 pm
- Forum: Announcements
- Topic: Cassette 16 Summer Jam Vol2
- Replies: 43
- Views: 2156
Re: Cassette 16 Summer Jam Vol2
Wow! Tough game, but with a good difficulty curve. Tight controls, and big, smooth animations for a 16K program. Up to level 15 so far - I like to start over when I hit your "master" limit of 30 fails, so as not to rush through the game too quickly. I really like how you keep layering more...
- Thu Jul 15, 2021 8:12 pm
- Forum: Emulators
- Topic: Running IF2 cartridges in MacOS Fuse
- Replies: 4
- Views: 172
Re: Running IF2 cartridges in MacOS Fuse
It works for me on Windows if you drag and drop the .ROM file onto Fuse (though it must have the extension .ROM to be recognised). No need to fiddle with the ROM selection dialog. Whether it works on MacOS is a different matter, but it should, since all versions of Fuse are derived from the same code.
- Mon Jul 12, 2021 7:01 pm
- Forum: Other Retro Stuff
- Topic: Anyone got a sealed copy of Super Mario N64?
- Replies: 15
- Views: 654
Re: Anyone got a sealed copy of Super Mario N64?
I find it absolutely ridiculous that anyone would pay that much for a copy of the N64's most common game, sealed or not. Hopefully the market remains impervious to these cynical fiddlers... ...then again, if they could be persuaded to bump up the value of, say, Make-A-Chip , then I might not think t...
- Sun Jul 11, 2021 11:00 pm
- Forum: Sinclair Miscellaneous
- Topic: Spectrum memes
- Replies: 1235
- Views: 205361
- Fri Jul 09, 2021 10:28 am
- Forum: Programming
- Topic: The ULAplus noobs' thread
- Replies: 13
- Views: 636
Re: The ULAplus noobs' thread
IIRC, Woody's SpecEmu has ULAplus support: https://keybase.pub/woodywoodster/specemu/
- Thu Jul 08, 2021 8:37 pm
- Forum: Website
- Topic: New security question
- Replies: 41
- Views: 1821