uMIA: Smoog

Whether it's Mire Mare or a BASIC tape you found in the attic, it needs to be preserved digitally. Post here and experts can help to do so.

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R-Tape
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Re: uMIA: Smoog

Post by R-Tape »

Cheers Ast, and all.
Ast A. Moore wrote: Sat Jun 22, 2019 8:30 am (and, frankly, I’m not sure of the source of the loading screen itself, either)
What aren't you sure about? Do you think it's been tinkered with? The naff* loading screen and cursive effect fit an early 80's game perfectly for me. It's certainly not the kind of thing I'd expect from a Slavic crack.

*=skillo
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Re: uMIA: Smoog

Post by R-Tape »

The game is actually pretty good too!
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Ast A. Moore
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Re: uMIA: Smoog

Post by Ast A. Moore »

R-Tape wrote: Sun Jun 23, 2019 9:08 pm Cheers Ast, and all.
Ast A. Moore wrote: Sat Jun 22, 2019 8:30 am (and, frankly, I’m not sure of the source of the loading screen itself, either)
What aren't you sure about? Do you think it's been tinkered with? The naff* loading screen and cursive effect fit an early 80's game perfectly for me. It's certainly not the kind of thing I'd expect from a Slavic crack.

*=skillo
You may be right. It’s just that I worked off the version djnzx48 had found on a compilation tape. It didn’t have a loading screen to begin with, so I thought maybe someone had added the one that was later used in the TR-DOS version. I wouldn’t put it past whoever was doing the disk conversion, too. Maybe that’s just me being paranoid. WAIT, WHO SAID THAT? :shock:

Yeah, the game is pretty cute. I got stuck on the second raising pillar screen, though.
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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Re: uMIA: Smoog

Post by R-Tape »

I'm really surprised a game like this is uMIA, and resurfaces only as a crack. Still—great to be able to add it.
Ast A. Moore wrote: Sun Jun 23, 2019 9:36 pm You may be right. It’s just that I worked off the version djnzx48 had found on a compilation tape. It didn’t have a loading screen to begin with, so I thought maybe someone had added the one that was later used in the TR-DOS version. I wouldn’t put it past whoever was doing the disk conversion, too.
Aye it's not impossible, but the cursive effect fits it and that uses full-on old-school ROM routines. There's a chance the load screen was just nabbed from an after-load intro screen; the style does fit pretty well with the original authors' other work though.

I'm a naturally suspicious chap too, but in this case it'd take something like this to get my spidey senses twitching :mrgreen: :

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Re: uMIA: Smoog

Post by djnzx48 »

By the way, I checked both disk versions of the game and they were identical. But I don't know if they were both obtained from the tape or if one was based on the other.

The loading screen is probably legit. The handwriting is part of the game itself, and I doubt that it was added on later. It looks like compiled BASIC, as does the rest of the game.
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Re: uMIA: Smoog

Post by Ast A. Moore »

R-Tape wrote: Sun Jun 23, 2019 10:12 pm the cursive effect fits it and that uses full-on old-school ROM routines.
The cursive effect was one of the reasons I rewrote the loader and made all the blocks headerless. The effect doesn’t seem to force the attributes, so you need to leave that area unchanged. The loader on the compilation tape forced black ink on black paper to hide the block names, which left a black stripe running though the cursive after the load.
R-Tape wrote: Sun Jun 23, 2019 10:12 pmthe style does fit pretty well with the original authors' other work though.
Jeepers, that’s quite some naïve art! :o
R-Tape wrote: Sun Jun 23, 2019 10:12 pmI'm a naturally suspicious chap too, but in this case it'd take something like this to get my spidey senses twitching :mrgreen: :

Image
Heh, yeah, that’s more like what they’d do.
djnzx48 wrote: Sun Jun 23, 2019 11:24 pm It looks like compiled BASIC, as does the rest of the game.
I came to the same conclusion. I even had to set the RAMTOP to the same value as the original BASIC; otherwise the game would crash, even though it never technically returns to BASIC while loading or before running.
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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