Chromatrons Attack—a Turbo Loader Version

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Ast A. Moore
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Chromatrons Attack—a Turbo Loader Version

Post by Ast A. Moore »

Recently, a few people have been asking questions about hooking up their Spectrums to various TVs, and, naturally, [mention]Guesser[/mention] weighed in on quite a few of them. While musing over the advantages and disadvantages of the composite video vs. RGB, I mentioned his Chromatrons Attack, a game that takes advantage of the delayed chrominance signal present in the composite video signal on the 128K Spectrum.

I love to use it to showcase the difference between composite and RGB signals on a real Spectrum. The only problem is that it takes too long to load (I don’t own any fast-loading interfaces for my Speccy), about 2:13 min. Since I recently developed and perfected my own Turbo Loader, I thought I’d use it to shave off a few seconds of loading time from Chromatrons.

It now loads in just 44 seconds, which isn’t too shabby, if I do say so myself. ;)
(Yes, I tested it on real hardware.)

Long story short, if anyone’s interested in adding this version to the database—provided Guesser doesn’t mind, of course—that’ll be swell. I’m temporarily hosting the archive with the TZX and WAV files on my server, but once it’s in the database (or, if there’s no interest in it), I’ll delete it. This post should also be then deleted (or at least the link to the archive, which will be dead.)

Cheers!
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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R-Tape
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Re: Chromatrons Attack—a Turbo Loader Version

Post by R-Tape »

That's a whopping reduction in loading time, well done.

I'll put the 89 seconds it saves to good use by adding it to the list for the next update.
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Guesser
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Re: Chromatrons Attack—a Turbo Loader Version

Post by Guesser »

Too long to load? Pffft, it loads instantly on my spectranet :lol:
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Ast A. Moore
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Re: Chromatrons Attack—a Turbo Loader Version

Post by Ast A. Moore »

Guesser wrote: Fri Mar 23, 2018 12:36 pm Too long to load? Pffft, it loads instantly on my spectranet :lol:
Spectranet-schmectranet . . . You rich kids and your fancy toys. :roll:
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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