Spectrum Computing

Posted: **Wed Mar 28, 2018 9:03 pm**

**Update 28 March 2018**

As [mention]Einar Saukas[/mention] mentioned earlier, the latest ZXDB update contained a splendiferous amount of new content. The highlights are as follows:

Updates and new entries

144 +3 Text Adventures authored with ZXZVM (thanks [mention]Lady Eklipse[/mention] )
Electronic Magazines: 21 issues of X-Magazine, 4 of X-Ray, 3 of ZX Chart, 10 ZX-City, 9 ZX-Club (thanks [mention]Lady Eklipse[/mention] )
Musical utilities: 15 ZX Chip, SoftPLAY, TimexPLAY, Coldsnap audio
Scene demos: 228 ZX-Chip, 36 Wlodek’s demos, 41 ZX-Tunes (Fax, Music, Song, Triumph)
539 ZX Chip Vologodonsk compilations (thanks [mention]Lady Eklipse[/mention] )
Derby+ BASIC interpreter
Some new entries from CSS CGC 2009 & 2007 (thanks [mention]Guesser[/mention] and [mention]serbalgi[/mention])
The Retroscene best BASIC game competition 2017, 11 games
The ZX-Spectrum 2017 BASIC Game Jam, 23 games
36 scans of the card backers from 16/48 Magazine (thanks [mention]PaulJ[/mention] ). We had to reduce the file size but the originals will be put onto archive.org
All screens from The Complete Machine Code Tutor (thanks [mention]Nomad[/mention])
2009 CSS CGC Screenshots (thanks [mention]Guesser[/mention])
2007 CSS CGC Screenshots and corrections (thanks @[mention]serbalgi[/mention]

Apologies:

Ralf’s latest new/old games, Guesser's CGC corrections

A database does not contain the actual content (just links to it), so a huge amount of effort goes on quietly behind the scenes to upload all the content to the server in the right locations Thanks to everyone who contributes to this task (you know who you are!), and this week a special thanks to those of you who have taken on the task of the CSS CGC Screenshots.

If you want your name in lights next week, then help [mention]R-Tape[/mention] by picking a year.

Just a reminder that this update and the previous ones (at least for the last few weeks) are available on our new updates page:

app.php/site-updates

I think I need a lie down....

Posted: **Wed Mar 28, 2018 9:40 pm**

Incredible stuff!

Good to see that you started to add Russian demos and magazines. It's a mammoth task that even Martijn at the time of glory of WOS was afraid of

But now it seems that the work is progressing really nice.

Okay it may be not important for some people but there are also people (including me

) who will appreciate that.

Posted: **Wed Mar 28, 2018 10:06 pm**

PeterJ wrote: ↑Wed Mar 28, 2018 9:03 pm
[*]Electronic Magazines: 21 issues of X-Magazine, 4 of X-Ray, 3 of ZX Chart, 10 ZX-City, 9 ZX-Club (thanks @Lady Eklipse )

BTW, how can I find these magazines via search engine on the site?

Posted: **Wed Mar 28, 2018 10:10 pm**

Good point [mention]pavero[/mention] I need to add on to advanced search categories an entry for 'Electronic Magazines'. You can use the simple search (the main search box) to search for a magazine such as 'X-Magazine' in the meantime. I will check with [mention]R-Tape[/mention], but the actual files will hopefully be included on the next update.

Peter

Posted: **Wed Mar 28, 2018 11:50 pm**

Murphy's Law: We just added new files for over a thousand titles, but people only asks questions about the few files we didn't receive yet!

We should get these files in a few days, as part of our joint effort with ZX Pokemaster. They will be included soon, in one of the next ZXDB updates.

Posted: **Thu Mar 29, 2018 4:38 pm**

Okay, I click on button UPDATE on the website top.

And get redirected to this:

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.php?cat=301

Which doesn't show any of thousand new added titles.

Am I doing something wrong?

EDIT: I noticed it shows presumably titles by their release date. But if you add to the database something from let's say 1989 it will be buried deep and
you'll never see it, right?

Should it be sorted by addding to database time and not release time?

Posted: **Thu Mar 29, 2018 4:42 pm**

[mention]Ralf[/mention] I will need to check, but I think the updates page is just games.

Peter

Posted: **Thu Mar 29, 2018 4:44 pm**

Hi Peter, just if you didn't notice:

I noticed it shows presumably titles by their release date. But if you add to the database something from let's say 1989 it will be buried deep and
you'll never see it, right?

Should it be sorted by addding to database time and not release time?

By the way, there was a lot of text games added recently.

Posted: **Thu Mar 29, 2018 5:22 pm**

Ralf wrote: ↑Thu Mar 29, 2018 4:44 pm I noticed it shows presumably titles by their release date. But if you add to the database something from let's say 1989 it will be buried deep and
you'll never see it, right?

Correct.

Ralf wrote: ↑Thu Mar 29, 2018 4:44 pm Should it be sorted by addding to database time and not release time?

I don't know. Since there's now a page in SC detailing updates, wouldn't it be redundant? I suppose most users would be more interested to check "what are the most recent Spectrum games released?" instead of "what are the games most recently added to ZXDB?"

Perhaps SC should simply rename button "UPDATES" to something else, like "LATEST".

Anyway if SC wants to change this behaviour, then technically it's just a matter of ordering games by ID, somewhat like this:

Code: Select all

select ... from entries e
...
where e.id < 1000000
...
order by e.id desc;

Ralf wrote: ↑Thu Mar 29, 2018 4:44 pm By the way, there was a lot of text games added recently.

Correct!

Posted: **Thu Mar 29, 2018 5:30 pm**

I suppose most users would be more interested to check "what are the most recent Spectrum games released?" instead of "what are the games most recently added to ZXDB?"

When Martijn made updates to WOS he showed stuff recently added to the site.

If there is a "new" game added to the site, it doesn't matter that much if it is from 1988 or 2018. Most of people didn't see it before so it's new for them even if it's old

And it's interesting to see it.

Posted: **Thu Mar 29, 2018 6:50 pm**

OK. But you have to convince Peter, not me.

Posted: **Thu Mar 29, 2018 7:04 pm**

I agree with Ralf. An update page should be an update page regardless of age of content.
WOS was lambasted for not updating the 'update' page and to a casual user it seemed the site had folded.
Yes, if you dig deep enough into the forums, you could see something was happening.. but with no instant visual queue a site was active, the chances of that were slim.

The page noted in this thread was excellent, and I had not seen it before. I think it should be linked from the home page. It shows the brilliant and hard work being done by you guys and community to keep the Speccy alive. It may even encourage more contributions and permissions if the site is seen to be really active in ALL areas and not just a dumping ground for games.

Database updates, uploads, new games, MIAs.. everything should be included.

Posted: **Thu Mar 29, 2018 7:18 pm**

Good point!

Thus perhaps it would work even better if the UPDATES button from homepage linked directly to this page instead:

app.php/site-updates

Posted: **Thu Mar 29, 2018 7:34 pm**

I agree with the points, but if an existing title gets updated for example the ID stays the same. Unless [mention]Einar Saukas[/mention] can think of a way to identify titles where anything has changed I'm not sure how the could be done. I suppose a database compare could be run, but we would need a volunteer for that at each update.

The Site Updates page is linked from the home page, and the latest update ZXDB date is also printed (although I don't think I changed the date for last night).

I'm very happy to consider changes as long as it's possible in ZXDB and isn't going to take days of manual work each time an update arrives. I would rather the team spent their time currently on stuff like screens and getting permissions.

On the site updates page I do spend a lot of time providing hyperlinks to the new titles. This latest update is unusual because of the huge numbers of updates.

Practical suggestions most welcome. I'm happy to make changes.

Posted: **Thu Mar 29, 2018 8:12 pm**

PeterJ wrote: ↑Thu Mar 29, 2018 7:34 pm Practical suggestions most welcome. I'm happy to make changes.

The updates tab on the home page seems to be causing more confusion than it's worth, I agree with the suggestion of it linking to the site updates tab we have at the top of the forum and removing that page altogether - latest releases can be found easily enough in the "advanced search", and will be even easier when we have "more advanced search".

IMO that would be an easy solution with no extra site coding for Peter & Ricardo. I could have given a more detailed list this time, but as pointed out this has been an atypical update - we can't expect 1000s of new entries every update.

Unless it's every update from now on

I'll give more info on the text adventures etc later or tomorrow.

Posted: **Thu Mar 29, 2018 8:17 pm**

Am I the only one that gets confused whenever PaulJ posts on the forum? I keep thinking it's PeterJ.

There's only one solution - one of you will have to change your name by deedpoll.

Posted: **Thu Mar 29, 2018 8:27 pm**

I agree with the points, but if an existing title gets updated for example the ID stays the same.

Is there something like LAST_MODIFIED column of date type in ZXDB?

Or eventually we could do something like SELECT * FROM GAMES ORDER BY ID DESC
I would show the games in order of being added to database. It would ignore updates like an instruction being
added to existing title but still would be very useful for me.

At this moment we have a descrpion saying for example:

144 +3 Text Adventures authored with ZXZVM (thanks Lady Eklipse )
But it's not clickable, you cannot actually see these games easiliy.

Posted: **Thu Mar 29, 2018 8:30 pm**

Ralf wrote: ↑Thu Mar 29, 2018 8:27 pm
Is there something like LAST_MODIFIED column of date type in ZXDB?

Posted: **Thu Mar 29, 2018 8:37 pm**

At this moment we have a descrpion saying for example:

144 +3 Text Adventures authored with ZXZVM (thanks Lady Eklipse )
But it's not clickable, you cannot actually see these games easiliy.

I can't comment on the site coding but this is an example where I could and should give more info/links.

Posted: **Thu Mar 29, 2018 8:39 pm**

[mention]Ralf[/mention]

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 6&id=21817

I don't see an issue in doing a descending order ID page for the last 100 entries.

Posted: **Thu Mar 29, 2018 8:50 pm**

Ralf wrote: ↑Thu Mar 29, 2018 8:27 pm Is there something like LAST_MODIFIED column of date type in ZXDB?

Nope.

Ralf wrote: ↑Thu Mar 29, 2018 8:27 pm Or eventually we could do something like SELECT * FROM GAMES ORDER BY ID DESC

That's exactly what I wrote a few posts earlier

Ralf wrote: ↑Thu Mar 29, 2018 8:27 pm At this moment we have a descrpion saying for example:

144 +3 Text Adventures authored with ZXZVM (thanks Lady Eklipse )
But it's not clickable, you cannot actually see these games easiliy.

This one is easy, all of them are listed here:

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 6&id=21817

Posted: **Thu Mar 29, 2018 9:04 pm**

[mention]Ralf[/mention] This gives you the last 1,000 entries added to ZXDB (IDs starting with '3':

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.php?cat=100

Posted: **Fri Mar 30, 2018 9:24 pm**

Thanks! Exactly what I needed.

Actually it should be available somewhere from the main website menu, I believe

Posted: **Fri Mar 30, 2018 9:32 pm**

Thanks [mention]Ralf[/mention]

We are looking at the placement of the updates pages over the next week.

Posted: **Mon Apr 02, 2018 4:00 pm**

On the advanced search options under 'Type' there is a entry for 'Electronic Magazines'

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