Help identifying spectrum hand coded games

Y'know, other stuff, Sinclair related.
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stformatjez
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Help identifying spectrum hand coded games

Post by stformatjez »

Bit of a long shot this but I'm trying to identify some games I keyed from games programming books as a nipper (not called Jack!). Or more precisely, I'm trying to identify the games code books they're from.

All I have left are these screen shots, printed onto Speccy thermal toilet paper!

Image
Image
Image
Image

As I say, a long shot but any help would be greatly appreciated :D
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djnzx48
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Re: Help identifying spectrum hand coded games

Post by djnzx48 »

Is it time for the Friday quiz thread already? ;)

I managed to find one of them: Alien Invaders
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I'll keep looking to see if I can identify the others.
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Re: Help identifying spectrum hand coded games

Post by djnzx48 »

Here's another one, from the same book, Computer Games:
Sorcerer's Steps
Image
The others must be from some other book though.
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Re: Help identifying spectrum hand coded games

Post by stformatjez »

Fantastic! thanks very much indeed djnzx48 :D :D
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djnzx48
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Re: Help identifying spectrum hand coded games

Post by djnzx48 »

I didn't manage to find what the other ones are, but I found two games that look kind of similar. Maybe they'll at least jog a memory or something.

Dodge:
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Missile!
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Re: Help identifying spectrum hand coded games

Post by R-Tape »

Detective djnzx!

It's likely that Dodge is the correct one isn't it? With the typer displaying creativity by changing CRUNCH to CRASHHHH!?
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Re: Help identifying spectrum hand coded games

Post by stformatjez »

Genius! Thanks djnzx - I’m sure they’re both correct. As soon as I saw the cover of the book I remembered it :)

And seeing the screen shot for Missile has jogged my memory - as R-Tape suggests, I now clearly remeber trying to amend the code to make the ships longer - turning them into the oil tankers as shown on my bog-roll screen print. Like many people I’m sure, I’d often try playing with parameters and code to see what the results were and to try and tweak the game :)

Thanks again :)
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Re: Help identifying spectrum hand coded games

Post by stformatjez »

Thanks all - just spent a very nostalgic evening replaying these gems and flicking through the pdf versions of the programming books :D :D :D

Along with the self-programmed games, I also found a couple of other toilet-roll printed gems from 30 years ago! Won't be of much interest to others as they're self drawn 'art' (I was only 13!) but very nostalgic for me! I think I used the Specy 'Atrist' programme and was lucky enough to have a mouse for my birthday around '88 I think...

A rather poor attempt at copying the Outrun loading screen!!!
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and the one I was most pleased with :lol:
Image

Sorry, I'm new to these forums and there's probably an 'art / miscellaneous crap' thread elsewhere but may as well post this here. Design for a Specy mug I had made recently. How many games can you name!? (did someone mention a Friday night quiz)? Most are very easy but maybe 1 or 2 less so!?

Image
full / high quality res version: http://www.stformat.com/misc/spectrum%2 ... i_v0.2.png
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R-Tape
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Re: Help identifying spectrum hand coded games

Post by R-Tape »

Those bogroll screens are really good!

Yep we take turns to do a Friday Quiz in the Sinclair Miscellaneous forum (pics, crossword, sounds anything, usually starts Fri morning and brightens up the working day :mrgreen: ), drop me a PM if you want to take the slot.

As for the mug - nice! I'll kick off Horace goes Skiiing, Manic Miner, Rastan, Penetrator.
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Re: Help identifying spectrum hand coded games

Post by Morkin »

I can't place where the snake is from now, it's bugging me... :x

Nice artwork - I like the Iron Maiden one. Sometimes I used to try to trace pixels from blown up images in Crash, SU etc. to try to recreate graphics.
My Speccy site: thirdharmoniser.com
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Juan F. Ramirez
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Re: Help identifying spectrum hand coded games

Post by Juan F. Ramirez »

I love this thread, those printed papers and how fast they were guessed.

If you have more printed papers, please, post them!

Now I'm thinking of a new quiz thread idea... Guess the game from thermal toilet papers! 8-)
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Re: Help identifying spectrum hand coded games

Post by djnzx48 »

Nice looking images [mention]stformatjez[/mention]. Were they ever in colour originally? Maybe we could even start a colouring competition thread here. ;)

Sorry if I'm hijacking your thread, but I've had this small BASIC listing lying around for a while and I'd forgotten where it was from. I was going to post it here to see if anyone knew it, but then I finally found the original from a PET ad in the
August 1981 issue of Creative Computing. It's still a cool listing so here's a (lazily converted and very slow) Spectrum version of it.

Code: Select all

10 PAPER 0: BORDER 0: INK 7: CLS
20 LET P=160: LET Q=100
30 LET XP=144: LET XR=1.5*PI
40 LET YP=56: LET YR=1: LET ZP=64
50 LET XF=XR/XP: LET YF=YP/YR: LET ZF=XR/ZP
60 FOR A=-Q TO Q-1
70 IF A<-ZP OR A>ZP THEN GO TO 150
80 LET ZT=A*XP/ZP: LET ZZ=A
90 LET XL=INT (.5+SQR (XP*XP-ZT*ZT))
100 FOR B=-XL TO XL
110 LET XT=SQR (B*B+ZT*ZT)*XF: LET XX=B
120 LET YY=(SIN XT+.4*SIN (3*XT))*YF
130 GO SUB 170
140 NEXT B
150 NEXT A
160 STOP
160 LET X1=(XX+ZZ)*22/25+P
170 LET Y1=(YY-ZZ)*22/25+Q
185 IF x1<0 OR X1>255 OR Y1<0 OR Y1>175 THEN RETURN
190 PLOT X1,Y1
220 RETURN
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Re: Help identifying spectrum hand coded games

Post by ZXDunny »

djnzx48 wrote: Wed Jul 18, 2018 11:05 am Sorry if I'm hijacking your thread, but I've had this small BASIC listing lying around for a while and I'd forgotten where it was from. I was going to post it here to see if anyone knew it, but then I finally found the original from a PET ad in the
August 1981 issue of Creative Computing. It's still a cool listing so here's a (lazily converted and very slow) Spectrum version of it.
That's pretty neat - though you have a couple of errors. You have two line 160s, and you're not doing hidden surface removal as in the original - though that would slow things down a lot more on the Speccy.
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Re: Help identifying spectrum hand coded games

Post by stformatjez »

djnzx48 wrote: Wed Jul 18, 2018 11:05 am Nice looking images @stformatjez. Were they ever in colour originally? Maybe we could even start a colouring competition thread here. ;)

Sorry if I'm hijacking your thread, but I've had this small BASIC listing lying around for a while and I'd forgotten where it was from. I was going to post it here to see if anyone knew it, but then I finally found the original from a PET ad in the
August 1981 issue of Creative Computing. It's still a cool listing so here's a (lazily converted and very slow) Spectrum version of it.

Image
Wow dude, that's pretty cool for the ZX Spectrum!

The only other bog-roll print I have is a poor attempt at the Star Wars loading screen, which I always drooled over as a kid (far better than the actual game itself :lol:)

The print itself is also in a bad way, but then I'm actually amazed any of them have survived 30 years!

Image
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Re: Help identifying spectrum hand coded games

Post by djnzx48 »

ZXDunny wrote: Wed Jul 18, 2018 11:53 am That's pretty neat - though you have a couple of errors. You have two line 160s, and you're not doing hidden surface removal as in the original - though that would slow things down a lot more on the Speccy.
Whoops! Well that makes more sense now - it looks like GMODE 2 is basically like INVERSE 1 and erases all the pixels that have already been drawn behind it. You can fix it with:

Code: Select all

195 IF Y1 THEN INVERSE 1: PLOT X1,Y1-1: DRAW 0,1-Y1: INVERSE 0
but you're right about the speed issue. Surely it can't have been that much faster on the PET? There are a few methods that could be used to improve it - for example XP/ZP and XP*XP always remain constant. ZT*ZT is also needlessly calculated over and over.
stformatjez wrote: Wed Jul 18, 2018 10:22 pm The only other bog-roll print I have is a poor attempt at the Star Wars loading screen, which I always drooled over as a kid (far better than the actual game itself :lol:)

The print itself is also in a bad way, but then I'm actually amazed any of them have survived 30 years!
Nice! It is impressive that they've lasted for so long when you consider the print quality of some of the book/magazine listings at the time! Were these all done in a single session and then printed out?
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Re: Help identifying spectrum hand coded games

Post by Seven.FFF »

djnzx48 wrote: Wed Jul 18, 2018 11:05 am I finally found the original from a PET ad in the
August 1981 issue of Creative Computing.
I remember the PET hat!!
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Re: Help identifying spectrum hand coded games

Post by ZXDunny »

Yep, that's the ticket. I modified it slightly for SpecBAS:

Image

Image

Which is now a new demo for my archive - many thanks :)
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Re: Help identifying spectrum hand coded games

Post by Seven.FFF »

Nice, Dunny.

I looked up MTU (the guys who ran the original PET graphics card ad) for the heck of it, and they’re still going!

http://www.mtu.com/support/mtufounders.htm
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