Spectrum Computing

I'm pleased to let you know that on-line emulation has been rolled out throughout the site. We have decided to use JSSpeccy internally and QAOP externally. Any game pages which have a downloadable TAP file will also have playable links (This is indicated by the Joystick Icon).




A good example is:

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 6&id=32228

We encourage all authors to provide .TAP versions of their files.

Thanks to [mention]pavero[/mention] for the coding, and Ricardo [mention]4thRock[/mention] for the styling.

Online emulation is never the same as playing on real hardware or a dedicated downloaded emulator, but it gives you a good feel for the game.

This is awesome!
One minor niggle is that if you choose JJSpeccy in a wide browser window it clips off the bottom of the screen. (It can be fixed by narrowing the browser window (or running the QAOP version, which scales so that the screen fits on both x and y).)

Thanks!

Styling looks like this on my tablet

PeterJ wrote: ↑Sat Apr 28, 2018 9:31 pmWe encourage all authors to provide .TAP versions of their files.

Or TZX!

Although Spectrum Computing doesn't provide TZX emulation right now, I'm sure it can be worked out. There's no need to flood ZXDB with TAP versions of existing TZX files!

Einar Saukas wrote: ↑Sat Apr 28, 2018 10:24 pm

PeterJ wrote: ↑Sat Apr 28, 2018 9:31 pmWe encourage all authors to provide .TAP versions of their files.

Or TZX!

Although Spectrum Computing doesn't provide TZX emulation right now, I'm sure it can be worked out. There's no need to flood ZXDB with TAP versions of existing TZX files!

TAP files are always needed. DivIDE/DivMMC, etc. can't handle TZX format at all.

This is really a cool feature.

I forgot to mention that following feedback that we received a few months ago, the image of the tape has been rotated 180 degrees.thanks Ricardo!

Did some minor changes to the layout that should fix the Download listing on the iPad portrait display.
Also made JJSpeccy smaller on landscape view (all devices). Not perfect but should work with no clipping or scrolling.

Thanks all for feedback, I just hope I didn't break anything else in fixing this

4thRock wrote: ↑Mon Apr 30, 2018 4:04 pm Did some minor changes to the layout that should fix the Download listing on the iPad portrait display.

Indeed,thanks

however emulator links do not fit on portrait on smaller devices
an easy fix could be placing joystick links first, to the left of tape links

What device are you using [mention]hikoki[/mention]? I have an old Samsung S5 Android phone and it displays fine in I'm using Chrome on mobile. What are you using, and can you post a screen grab? If it's a modern browser it should resize due to the use of Bootstrap.

This is the problem nowadays with so.many different devices and each browser handles pages separately. It's anightmare!

A shot on Chrome from my Huawei Ascend Y530

[mention]hikoki[/mention], sorry so are you meaning it goes into two lines? You must have a very small screen?

Fantastic feature! To everyone involved: thanks for all the hard work.

PeterJ wrote: ↑Mon Apr 30, 2018 6:40 pm @ hikoki, sorry so are you meaning it goes into two lines? You must have a very small screen?

It's a 4.5 inch device
I suggested to place emulator links on the leftmost side before tape links or..maybe leave more space between tape and joystick links so they fall on different lines

Spud wrote: ↑Mon Apr 30, 2018 6:49 pm Fantastic feature! To everyone involved: thanks for all the hard work.

Thank you for your kind words. That's the sort of comment that keeps us all pushing forward!

Thanks for the feedback. It's hard to get it right on all devices because there are many variations. I always simulate a few but it's never 100% accurate. I'll sort it out no problem

No problem. One amateur tip to test the layout from the PC is just resizing the browser window in many wild ways

Yes, that works but it's not 100% accurate.
On a PC you still have the scroll bar, the screen DPIs are different, fonts are rendered differently and orientation doesn't change.
So it's OK to release with minor bugs and correct as needed

Regarding this feature, there are games that will never work with the online emulators, like: https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... id=0027394
Of course you can't tests everything to ensure it will work, but in cases like this one, when we KNOW is not going to work, perhaps worth have a blacklist?

Good idea, if you find anymore just PM me.

Very nice feature ...

However, for me JSpeccy is too slow (Firefox).
QAOP runs fine (Firefox).

RMartins wrote: ↑Mon May 14, 2018 9:04 pm Very nice feature ...

However, for me JSpeccy is too slow (Firefox).

JSpeccy don't works as an applet. You are using another emulator, I guess...

zx81 wrote: ↑Mon May 14, 2018 9:49 pm JSpeccy don't works as an applet. You are using another emulator, I guess...

Obviously a typo for JSSpeccy...

Incidentally I notice that the results pages also have a (different) typo, 'JJSpeccy'.

Hello [mention]Guesser[/mention]

Good spot. We will get that sorted.

Peter

zx81 wrote: ↑Mon May 14, 2018 9:49 pm

RMartins wrote: ↑Mon May 14, 2018 9:04 pm Very nice feature ...

However, for me JSpeccy is too slow (Firefox).

JSpeccy don't works as an applet. You are using another emulator, I guess...

Obviously not, it's a Javascript emulator that runs on the browser.
Applets, also run on the browser, when the required Java plugin is available, but most browsers no longer support it, or support is sketchy.