Introduce yourself!

Introduce yourself. Pimp your website, competition, event or other activity here, as long as it's Spectrum related.
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Turtle_Quality
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Re: Introduce yourself!

Post by Turtle_Quality »

Einar Saukas wrote: Fri Dec 07, 2018 11:29 pm Nice story :)

Please tell us your full name, so we can add missing author information in the Mazeball entry at https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 6&id=15606
Thomas Quillin

Mazeball was a complete ripoff of a game I played on a BBC computer which annoyingly addictive. I went home and got the game running in about 10 minutes (well it was a very simple game). Then I spent about 4 hours writing sound effects, there was quite a nice one if you get a high score, and a better one if you fail to get a high score. It's entirely compiled basic.

I got none of the royalties promised by Wildest Dreams, apparently the founder ran off with cash he'd borrowed to setup the business.
Definition of loop : see loop
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Ast A. Moore
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Re: Introduce yourself!

Post by Ast A. Moore »

Turtle_Quality wrote: Fri Dec 07, 2018 11:03 pm They had about 130 bytes spare when my code was about 200, and I spent a couple of weeks reducing the code when I should have been doing homework . . .
My kind of guy!

Welcome to the forums, Thomas!

Image
Every man should plant a tree, build a house, and write a ZX Spectrum game.

Author of A Yankee in Iraq, a 50 fps shoot-’em-up—the first game to utilize the floating bus on the +2A/+3,
and zasm Z80 Assembler syntax highlighter.
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Ivanzx
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Re: Introduce yourself!

Post by Ivanzx »

Turtle_Quality wrote: Fri Dec 07, 2018 11:03 pm Hi,
I'm Thomas. I had been doing some simple games programming as a 15 year old on friends' ZX81s and Acorn Atoms (both 1k), and was hoping to get my own computer -maybe a VIC20. Then at a computer show in April 1982 , at a crowded Sinclair stand, Clive announced the ZX Spectrum. As the flashbulbs popped and reporters asked questions about it, a spotty 15 year old shouted "What's the keyboard like ?" Clive stretches over the tables around the stand, I stretch through the crowd, to prod those rubbery keys. Late that night I persuaded my dad to loan me a massive £175 and I phoned in an order on the Sinclair hotline.

I don't remember how long it took to arrive, 6 or 8 weeks maybe, but I still got it before many of the major software houses had one. I remember being at a show in August asking ... maybe it was Quicksilver... if they would bring out Centipede because I was struggling to write my own version in basic, but they just wanted to buy my precious Spectrum from me - no way !

I got the PSS compiler by hacking it out of Light Cycles, and liked writing noisy games with nested for next loops and out commands. Sent some in for a PSS Compiler competition including a nice lunar lander (with a sprite routine written in assembly with the Spectrum manual and poke commands) and a crappy but extremely noisy game called Mazeball, that got picked up by PSS related company Wildest Dreams. You can still find Mazeball in the archives but sadly my lunar lander is lost to time. Earlier this year I tracked down my first cassette copy of Mazeball

I'd also written a short compress / decompress routine in assembly, and when I went to buy a Multiface from Romantic Robot in Kilburn, I asked if they compressed data before they dumped it all to tape. Apparently they hadn't thought of that. I offered my code for a free Multiface. They had about 130 bytes spare when my code was about 200, and I spent a couple of weeks reducing the code when I should have been doing homework, and got my free Multiface worth £40. Which went on to sell countless numbers on Spectrum then Amstrad, but I had geek cred.

So now I'm trying to push the grey cells, try to recreate that sprite code, and squeeze out an excessively noisy puzzle game - I was so taken with Sega Columns in 1990 I went home and wrote one on my Sam Coupe. Then maybe back to lunar lander.
Its always interesting to have people that were in the industry in the 80s, and also interesting to hear the stories behind them!

By the way, have you thought about remaking Mazeball in the Spectrum? There is now a compo that may interest you ;) !

http://zx-dev-mia-remakes.proboards.com/
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Turtle_Quality
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Re: Introduce yourself!

Post by Turtle_Quality »

Ivanzx wrote: Sat Dec 08, 2018 9:02 pm
Its always interesting to have people that were in the industry in the 80s, and also interesting to hear the stories behind them!

By the way, have you thought about remaking Mazeball in the Spectrum? There is now a compo that may interest you ;) !

http://zx-dev-mia-remakes.proboards.com/
Thanks Ivan ZX

I never really considered myself "in the industry", just knew a few people who were... Now if I'd got past that interview at Bubble Bus in '84 ...

On a Mazeball remake, to be fair the game looks tedious now, I'd have to find a way to make it interesting to play. There's a few Atari VCS games I'd love to remake in expanded Spectrum format - Combat, Adventure, Maze Craze, Warlords.. I still play those with my 8 year old son (except Warlords, searching for a paddle alternative). What I love about these and many Spectrum games is that playability is the core not flashy graphics.
Definition of loop : see loop
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oblo
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Re: Introduce yourself!

Post by oblo »

Greetings from Spain!

Long-time ZX Spectrum user, I started borrowing/using 48ks from friends/school and learning from programming books that were on the public library, until I could afford a +2A. Since then, I like to "mess" with anything about our speccys (gaming, harware and software) but after all this time I still considered myself a "seasoned amateur", mainly because I barely can read assembler :roll:

I discovered yesterday this forum so I decide to register to share what I can and to ask what I (still) don't know. Anyway, here are a few links with some of the games I developed until now:

O-trix
O-cman
2x1 Depthcharge/Escape
O-Puzz Attack!

... and in a few days I hope to release a new one :)

Later!
Cheers.
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Juan F. Ramirez
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Re: Introduce yourself!

Post by Juan F. Ramirez »

¡Bienvenido, oblo! 😃
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Ivanzx
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Re: Introduce yourself!

Post by Ivanzx »

oblo wrote: Mon Dec 10, 2018 9:35 pm Greetings from Spain!

Long-time ZX Spectrum user, I started borrowing/using 48ks from friends/school and learning from programming books that were on the public library, until I could afford a +2A. Since then, I like to "mess" with anything about our speccys (gaming, harware and software) but after all this time I still considered myself a "seasoned amateur", mainly because I barely can read assembler :roll:

I discovered yesterday this forum so I decide to register to share what I can and to ask what I (still) don't know. Anyway, here are a few links with some of the games I developed until now:

O-trix
O-cman
2x1 Depthcharge/Escape
O-Puzz Attack!

... and in a few days I hope to release a new one :)

Later!
Welcome here too, Oblo! Looking forward to seeing your new game! ;)

It is a pleasure to have more Spectrum classic members over here :)
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Ast A. Moore
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Re: Introduce yourself!

Post by Ast A. Moore »

oblo wrote: Mon Dec 10, 2018 9:35 pm Greetings from Spain!
Hey, [mention]oblo[/mention]! Fancy seeing you here. Welcome!
Every man should plant a tree, build a house, and write a ZX Spectrum game.

Author of A Yankee in Iraq, a 50 fps shoot-’em-up—the first game to utilize the floating bus on the +2A/+3,
and zasm Z80 Assembler syntax highlighter.
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PeterJ
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Re: Introduce yourself!

Post by PeterJ »

Welcome @[mention]oblo[/mention]

Just to let you know that the first two games are available on the main Spectrum Computing website without the need to go elsewhere:

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... l_id=15743

I'm sure [mention]R-Tape[/mention] will add the other two, if that is OK with you?
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oblo
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Re: Introduce yourself!

Post by oblo »

PeterJ wrote: Tue Dec 11, 2018 7:19 pm Welcome @@oblo

Just to let you know that the first two games are available on the main Spectrum Computing website without the need to go elsewhere:

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... l_id=15743

I'm sure @R-Tape will add the other two, if that is OK with you?
Of course, no problem at all and thanks for the link.
Cheers.
Nick
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Re: Introduce yourself!

Post by Nick »

Good afternoon.

I'm Nick McLelland, a fairly regular contributor/rambler on the World Of Spectrum forum, mainly reviewing games in the 1980's to 2010's threads and I thought it was about time I registered on this forum as well so I can waffle away here also. :)

My first experience with a Speccy was playing Manic Miner on my uncle's back in 1983 and was instantly hooked and I badgered my parents for one that Christmas. I have recently been trying to get to grips with such utilities such as PAW and AGD but this irritating thing called real life keeps getting in the way. ;)

So, hello again and I hope to have just as much fun reading and posting on this site as I do on WOS.
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R-Tape
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Re: Introduce yourself!

Post by R-Tape »

Hello!
Nick wrote: Fri Dec 28, 2018 2:59 pm I have recently been trying to get to grips with such utilities such as PAW and AGD but this irritating thing called real life keeps getting in the way. ;)
Have you made a Speccy game before? If not, make 2019 the year!
Nick
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Re: Introduce yourself!

Post by Nick »

Back around 1987 time myself and mate made a couple of games using Argus Press' Arcade Creator and sent them off to Alternative Software. My mate was convinced that we were on our way to being millionaires , the games got rejected. :oops: :D

If I remember right, one was a shoot-em-up called Solar Fire and other was a platform affair called Attack Of The Killer Space Hoppers and no I do not have any copies of them floating around.

I am hoping that finally I will get round to creating at least one game this coming year, but don't hold your breath everyone. ;)
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Juan F. Ramirez
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Re: Introduce yourself!

Post by Juan F. Ramirez »

Welcome, [mention]Nick[/mention] !
SUPERMORITZ

Re: Introduce yourself!

Post by SUPERMORITZ »

Hi, my name is Sebastian.

I am addicted to the speccy, but i still can't do any coding in machine code (which i want to learn since ages...)
Most of the time i am getting on the nerves of experienced users (sorry Dave!) to create some games with AGD or other tools.
I am kind of obsessed to build a 8 bit monument of my dog, who is seriously ill.
Slowly approaching my 50s i am still feeling like 13 years old, when it comes to 8-bit fever.
Collecting all kinds of speccy stuff, i have regularly arguments with my wife (she don't live in the 8-bit world and can not understand, why it is supercalifragilisticexpialidocious to touch a rubber key...she wants me to do a day job, to pay the bills and put all the "old rubbish" in the dustbin...when she was young she owned a C64, so i can't blame her to be so cruel ;) )

Long live the speccy!!!!
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Ast A. Moore
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Re: Introduce yourself!

Post by Ast A. Moore »

SUPERMORITZ wrote: Fri Dec 28, 2018 9:28 pm when she was young she owned a C64
And you . . . married her? :o
You’ve brought it on yourself, man.


:lol:
Every man should plant a tree, build a house, and write a ZX Spectrum game.

Author of A Yankee in Iraq, a 50 fps shoot-’em-up—the first game to utilize the floating bus on the +2A/+3,
and zasm Z80 Assembler syntax highlighter.
SUPERMORITZ

Re: Introduce yourself!

Post by SUPERMORITZ »

Ast A. Moore wrote: Fri Dec 28, 2018 11:33 pm
SUPERMORITZ wrote: Fri Dec 28, 2018 9:28 pm when she was young she owned a C64
And you . . . married her? :o
You’ve brought it on yourself, man.


:lol:
She knows nada about 8-bit computers, but she has a good taste in men :lol:
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CaptainKrenon
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Re: Introduce yourself!

Post by CaptainKrenon »

Hi!

I'm new to this forum. My name is Alberto, I've been more-or-less following the internet Spectrum community for 20 years or so but I haven't participated that much in online forums.

In the 90s I used to have a page (in Spanish) with my favourite games, emulators and links to some of the websites that already existed back then (WoS, Planet Sinclair, El Mundo del Spectrum ...). I even wrote a simple tool for DOS and Linux called ZXSEE that allowed the user to display .SCR files and convert them to/from other formats.

I'm also a long time Linux user and occasional contributor to the Fuse emulator, my main responsibility is to make Fuse available in Debian (and indirectly Ubuntu and other related distributions) and more recently Flatpak.

And I think that's all, I don't know if I'll participate much here but I'm glad to see the Spectrum community still going strong.

See you around!
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Ast A. Moore
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Re: Introduce yourself!

Post by Ast A. Moore »

Welcome aboard, [mention]CaptainKrenon[/mention]!

Image
Every man should plant a tree, build a house, and write a ZX Spectrum game.

Author of A Yankee in Iraq, a 50 fps shoot-’em-up—the first game to utilize the floating bus on the +2A/+3,
and zasm Z80 Assembler syntax highlighter.
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Juan F. Ramirez
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Re: Introduce yourself!

Post by Juan F. Ramirez »

¡Bienvenido, Alberto!
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PeterJ
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Re: Introduce yourself!

Post by PeterJ »

Welcome to the forums [mention]CaptainKrenon[/mention]

Can I take the opportunity to ask you a couple of questions about the Ubuntu packaging of Fuse, and about Flatpak?

The version in Bionic (18.04 LTS) is 1.5.1, in 18.10 we have 1.5.6, and in the forthcoming 19.04 release we have the latest version 1.5.7. Is there a way (without using Flatpak or building from source) that you can still run 1.5.7 whilst still on the LTS version of Ubuntu? So can you run 19.04 packages on 18.04 LTS or are you likely to come up with dependency issues?

Finally, I like the idea of Flatpaks, AppImages, and Snaps to make it easy to be on the latest versions without going down the Arch route, but because of their structure they don't take on the theming of the host machine (For example I use the Arc GTK Theme). Do you know if there are any plans to make this possible?

Apologies for asking so many questions!
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Ivanzx
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Re: Introduce yourself!

Post by Ivanzx »

Bienvenido!!

Now I am curious to see what your old webpage was?!! What was the name? :)

And by the way, where did you get your avatar from? :)

Un saludo!

CaptainKrenon wrote: Tue Jan 08, 2019 4:41 pm Hi!

I'm new to this forum. My name is Alberto, I've been more-or-less following the internet Spectrum community for 20 years or so but I haven't participated that much in online forums.

In the 90s I used to have a page (in Spanish) with my favourite games, emulators and links to some of the websites that already existed back then (WoS, Planet Sinclair, El Mundo del Spectrum ...). I even wrote a simple tool for DOS and Linux called ZXSEE that allowed the user to display .SCR files and convert them to/from other formats.

I'm also a long time Linux user and occasional contributor to the Fuse emulator, my main responsibility is to make Fuse available in Debian (and indirectly Ubuntu and other related distributions) and more recently Flatpak.

And I think that's all, I don't know if I'll participate much here but I'm glad to see the Spectrum community still going strong.

See you around!
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CaptainKrenon
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Re: Introduce yourself!

Post by CaptainKrenon »

PeterJ wrote: Tue Jan 08, 2019 8:10 pm Welcome to the forums @CaptainKrenon

Can I take the opportunity to ask you a couple of questions about the Ubuntu packaging of Fuse, and about Flatpak?
Hi Peter,

if you want to use packages from a more recent version of your distribution you typically need to rebuild them. This is not always easy or even possible but Fuse uses pretty standard libraries so the process is straightforward.

In brief:

1) Open /etc/apt/sources.list and add a deb-src line for the distribution you want to get your packages from. In your case, disco (19.04). I'm a Debian user so this might be inaccurate but it should be something like this:

Code: Select all

deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu disco universe
2) Download the libspectrum sources from 19.04:

Code: Select all

$ sudo apt-get build-dep libspectrum
$ apt-get source libspectrum
3) Build and install libspectrum (you may need the 'fakeroot' package):

Code: Select all

$ cd libspectrum-1.4.4
$ dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot
$ cd ..
$ sudo dpkg -i libspectrum8_1.4.4-1_amd64.deb libspectrum-dev_1.4.4-1_amd64.deb
4) Repeat step 3 for fuse-emulator and (if you want) for fuse-emulator-utils

That should be it!

About the Flatpak question, I believe this post answers it:

https://blog.tingping.se/2017/05/11/fla ... eming.html

I hope that helps!
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CaptainKrenon
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Re: Introduce yourself!

Post by CaptainKrenon »

PeterJ wrote: Tue Jan 08, 2019 8:10 pm Is there a way (without using Flatpak or building from source) that you can still run 1.5.7 whilst still on the LTS version of Ubuntu?
I forgot to add: I guess you can try to simply install the binary packages from a more recent distribution. Change temporarily the deb entry in your sources.list, then apt-get update followed by apt-get install fuse-emulator-gtk (or -sdl).

If APT only tells you that it needs to install newer versions of Fuse and libspectrum then it should be safe to proceed, otherwise I'd rather rebuild from source as I explained earlier. APT will give you the chance to cancel the upgrade if it needs to install extra packages.
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PeterJ
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Re: Introduce yourself!

Post by PeterJ »

Thank you [mention]CaptainKrenon[/mention]
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