Search found 100 matches

by Hikaru
Tue Dec 26, 2017 5:16 pm
Forum: Graphics
Topic: Screen switching, does it happen?
Replies: 6
Views: 3077

Re: Screen switching, does it happen?

As people have pointed out, this setup is fairly awkward to work with, and most of the time it's not even really necessary (unfortunately, there are exceptions). Regardless, I think it might be interesting to hear opinions on how to plan out things across the pages etc for such a game. Personally I'...
by Hikaru
Sun Dec 24, 2017 4:39 pm
Forum: Games/Software
Topic: Poll: Raffaele Cecco's Best Game
Replies: 7
Views: 2261

Re: Poll: Raffaele Cecco's Best Game

Exolon for me, not much to say there it's practically Spectrum-defining, and that melody is just like hnnng being back home and all. :)

I also like Solomon's Key a lot, excellent playability, easily a close second.
by Hikaru
Sat Dec 23, 2017 10:44 am
Forum: Emulators
Topic: Emulator with debugger which updates screen on single step
Replies: 8
Views: 2564

Re: Emulator with debugger which updates screen on single step

If you mean like masked sprites and whatnot, you won't be able to see the individual steps of AND and OR that way, since typically each byte is only written back once with the combined result: pop de ld a,(hl) and e or d ld (hl),a inc l ... Think of it like this: masking puts the 'black' parts of th...
by Hikaru
Fri Dec 22, 2017 1:20 pm
Forum: Games/Software
Topic: The best classic Speccy game beginning with A: discussion
Replies: 10
Views: 2983

Re: The best classic Speccy game beginning with A: discussion

Subjectively, one more game that deserves a mention is Ano Gaia. Probably my go-to game starting with 'A'. Illegally blasphemously hackered to make that drill level playable since ages, it just needs a loading screen now. |: Probably will vote ATF though, in large part because I love the somewhat-un...
by Hikaru
Mon Dec 18, 2017 4:14 am
Forum: Games/Software
Topic: The A-Z of the best Speccy games (modern: post-1993)
Replies: 50
Views: 10827

Re: The A-Z of the best Speccy games (modern: post-1993)

T is for Twilight: The Land of Shadows. I'm amazed I even have to spell it out!

Star Heritage was massive in our time, but now I love the Sword of Ianna just as much. :) And yes I don't think it ever got the translation it deserves.
by Hikaru
Sun Dec 17, 2017 8:06 am
Forum: Programming
Topic: Write binary data to TRD from ASM
Replies: 34
Views: 14608

Re: Write binary data to TRD from ASM

The whole 'leaving gaps' issue is normal in a sense, and is expected of programs that operate on the file level. Notice that, as long as the file you're working with is the last file on the disk, no gap would be left if it is deleted and subsequently saved back. On the other hand, doing a MOVE withi...
by Hikaru
Sat Dec 16, 2017 12:47 pm
Forum: Announcements
Topic: ZX Dev Conversions
Replies: 28
Views: 7354

Re: ZX Dev Conversions

I invited many people, and made it public in WoS, Tweeter, and even Spectrum Facebook groups with near 10.000 members and where 90% of the people are british, and nobody looked excited about it, so... :( I have the feeling that they prefer playing Manic Miner over and over again than paying attenti...
by Hikaru
Thu Dec 14, 2017 1:12 pm
Forum: Programming
Topic: Write binary data to TRD from ASM
Replies: 34
Views: 14608

Re: Write binary data to TRD from ASM

I now have an asm loader that loads everything except $6000-$7FFF (and updates my progress bar). Loading this block is breaking TR-Dos, so I need to debug to see what's going on. I don't really want to rearchitect the game because the codebase is shared with the non-Pentagon version (and space in u...
by Hikaru
Thu Dec 14, 2017 6:47 am
Forum: Games/Software
Topic: The A-Z of the best Speccy games (classic: 1982-1993)
Replies: 58
Views: 12307

Re: The A-Z of the best Speccy games

Juan F. Ramirez wrote: Thu Dec 14, 2017 6:43 am
5MinuteRetro wrote: Wed Dec 13, 2017 10:13 pm
And I think S needs to be Sir Fred. Controversial, perhaps, but such a great game.
Noooo! Sabre Wulf! Sabre Wulf!
What's wrong with you people, S is clearly Starquake.

:lol:
by Hikaru
Tue Dec 12, 2017 1:03 pm
Forum: Programming
Topic: Write binary data to TRD from ASM
Replies: 34
Views: 14608

Re: Write binary data to TRD from ASM

I've made a little progress. The error returned in $5D0F was 1 No file . i wasn't padding my filename with spaces in the file descriptor. Now I get error 12 The channel is not open in $5D0F. But I have already been using TR-DOS - the code this is running from is loaded from basic with a TR-Dos call...
by Hikaru
Mon Dec 11, 2017 6:05 pm
Forum: Programming
Topic: Write binary data to TRD from ASM
Replies: 34
Views: 14608

Re: Write binary data to TRD from ASM

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...
by Hikaru
Mon Dec 11, 2017 5:43 pm
Forum: Brand new software!
Topic: Woot! ZXMAS Tape Magazine 2017
Replies: 46
Views: 11311

Re: Woot! ZXMAS Tape Magazine 2017

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 ...
by Hikaru
Sat Dec 09, 2017 8:37 am
Forum: Games/Software
Topic: Friday Night Quiz: Nathan Barley
Replies: 41
Views: 8351

Re: Friday Night Quiz: Nathan Barley

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... :|
by Hikaru
Sat Dec 09, 2017 8:33 am
Forum: Programming
Topic: Write binary data to TRD from ASM
Replies: 34
Views: 14608

Re: Write binary data to TRD from ASM

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...
by Hikaru
Fri Dec 08, 2017 7:45 pm
Forum: Programming
Topic: TRD boot loader
Replies: 7
Views: 2152

Re: TRD boot loader

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...
by Hikaru
Fri Dec 08, 2017 7:11 pm
Forum: Games/Software
Topic: Friday Night Quiz: Nathan Barley
Replies: 41
Views: 8351

Re: Friday Night Quiz: Nathan Barley

3. Soldier of Fortune
5. R-Type
6. Lightforce?
9. Cobra
10. Dan Dare 3
by Hikaru
Fri Dec 08, 2017 6:12 pm
Forum: Programming
Topic: TRD boot loader
Replies: 7
Views: 2152

Re: TRD boot loader

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...
by Hikaru
Fri Dec 08, 2017 5:47 pm
Forum: Programming
Topic: 128k paging BASIC loader
Replies: 24
Views: 6582

Re: 128k paging BASIC loader

USR0 it with fire!
by Hikaru
Fri Dec 08, 2017 5:45 pm
Forum: Programming
Topic: Write binary data to TRD from ASM
Replies: 34
Views: 14608

Re: Write binary data to TRD from ASM

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...
by Hikaru
Fri Dec 08, 2017 5:44 pm
Forum: Programming
Topic: Pentagon Russian character set
Replies: 2
Views: 1252

Re: Pentagon Russian character set

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 ...
by Hikaru
Fri Dec 08, 2017 1:34 pm
Forum: Programming
Topic: Write binary data to TRD from ASM
Replies: 34
Views: 14608

Re: Write binary data to TRD from ASM

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 ...
by Hikaru
Fri Dec 08, 2017 6:22 am
Forum: Games/Software
Topic: 'Dixel' scrolling... Ghosts 'n' Goblins
Replies: 58
Views: 12325

Re: 'Dixel' scrolling... Ghosts 'n' Goblins

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)...
by Hikaru
Tue Dec 05, 2017 1:50 pm
Forum: Programming
Topic: Short beeper routines in assembly
Replies: 55
Views: 32338

Re: Short beeper routines in assembly

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...
by Hikaru
Tue Dec 05, 2017 8:00 am
Forum: Programming
Topic: Short beeper routines in assembly
Replies: 55
Views: 32338

Re: Short beeper routines in assembly

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...
by Hikaru
Sun Nov 26, 2017 9:53 am
Forum: Programming
Topic: Missed Interrupts with DI+IM2 in assembly
Replies: 12
Views: 4130

Re: Missed Interrupts with DI+IM2 in assembly

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...