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People are still making stuff for the Sinclair related machines. Tell us about new games and other software that runs on the Spectrum, ZX80/ZX81, Pentagon and Next.
Hi, I'd like to share my first ZX Spectrum release: Super Serif Bros!
Features!
ASCII graphics
No colour or sound
How to play!
QAOP to move, R to restart
Collect all the £ to open the exit
You die if you fall off the level or touch something deadly
ASCII graphics weren't much of a thing on the Speccy, but I wanted to do something I knew I would finish, and not having any graphics at all helped a lot with that.
I wrote all the code in assembly and it's quite small — most of the file size is the levels. They weigh in at about 12K because they're just full 32x24 screens of ASCII characters stored uncompressed. I figured there wasn't much point being any cleverer than that as long as it all still fit on a 48k Spectrum. I'm sure even the stupidest RLE would do great things to that file size (but of course would also make the levels load more slowly).
rogual wrote: ↑Wed Sep 19, 2018 10:16 pm
I wrote all the code in assembly and it's quite small — most of the file size is the levels.
Oh, I see. Some simple RLE decoding can be very, very quick, actually. You could have just two algorithms—one for spaces and one for the “#” signs, and then manually chose which one to use (or whether to use both) for each level.
I use it for relatively large graphics, and it can be pretty snappy if optimized well.
Still, a great game! Had a few more goes at it, but I suck at QAOP games, unfortunately. I’m a 67890 (Sinclair joystick) guy.
Every man should plant a tree, build a house, and write a ZX Spectrum game.
Love the idea. It opens a whole world of posibilities!
Ast A. Moore wrote: ↑Wed Sep 19, 2018 10:43 pm
Had a few more goes at it, but I suck at QAOP games, unfortunately. I’m a 67890 (Sinclair joystick) guy.
Great game! Haven't played the original but it's certainly a new idea on the Spectrum. And for 2K of code there's a lot of different mechanics in there.
That final screen though... I had to load a single snapshot because I accidentally fell down after escaping! Arrghh!
If you got RLE working then I'm sure it could work well as a ZX81 game
Juan F. Ramirez wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 6:40 am
Love the idea. It opens a whole world of posibilities!
Ast A. Moore wrote: ↑Wed Sep 19, 2018 10:43 pm
Had a few more goes at it, but I suck at QAOP games, unfortunately. I’m a 67890 (Sinclair joystick) guy.
Wow! That's weird!
Heh. I know. Back in the day, I didn’t have a joystick interface. QAOP didn’t stick with me, but through trial and error I figured out that if I selected the Sinclair Joystick/Interface II option, the controls were mapped to the number keys. The Spectrum was my first computer, so I hadn’t developed any preferences for game control.
To this day, even in modern games on modern platforms, I’ve been redefining controls to 67890. My fingers naturally gravitate to that position. I could very well be the only person on the planet with that particular quirk.
Every man should plant a tree, build a house, and write a ZX Spectrum game.
Instead of RLE, if I was using BASIC I'd store the levels as a series of lines or rectangles to be plotted.
That way you can still edit the data by hand but it usually works out much smaller than a screen's worth of bytes.
