What are your current Spectrum projects?

Show us what you're working on, (preferably with screenshots).
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Joefish
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Re: What are your current Spectrum projects?

Post by Joefish »

Got bored with slow progress and started instead on a simple shoot-em-up starting with this sprite:

Image

I couldn't come up with a decent player ship so instead I've gone for something like Hikaru / Akane from Parodius - :D :lol: :D

I've written a display routine that uses a mask to change the colours of the paper-coloured parts or the ink-coloured parts of a sprite as it's drawn, so I can make waves of enemies in different colours, or change the player colours depending on power-ups.

It's all going to be done with character graphics, no multicolour or anything, and I'm not making a huge fuss over optimising it - it'll run at whatever rate it ends up at. It's just for a bit of fun, so there'll be shots all over the place and probably occasional frame slowdown too! I want to try out a few different weapon types / modes so a slightly less-than-serious setting will do fine. I plan on having the player turn round and shoot backwards when you hold FIRE (if you've ever played Raiga: Strato Fighter, that has a dedicated button to turn around, and Side Arms has dedicated left/right fire buttons, which work great with a mouse on the ST conversion). Other weapon pick-ups will do different things when you hold FIRE, but will all present some way of shooting in a general backwards direction.

The fiddly bit I find with character movement is a lot of things need artificial delays added in so they don't move or animate too fast. And I'm using 4x character positions so I can make the shots and other things move in quarter-character steps (for shallow diagonals), even though they're rounded down to whole characters for displaying. I suppose I could draw the enemy shots as 4x4 pixel dots, then could actually draw them in half-character positions. Not sure if I can afford 8 frames of animation per sprite though or just 4. Trying to keep it 48K. And I've no idea what to do about boss battles.

What I do want to do is add a few extra tricks to the enemy movement patterns, so that it can do things like R-Type II, where if you shoot a ship it turns into a kamikaze diver, or make sprites in a chain react to their neighbours being destroyed and change behaviour, or have enemies that are shielded and can only be shot from the back.
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R-Tape
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Re: What are your current Spectrum projects?

Post by R-Tape »

Sounds great. You could go nuts with some massive screen filling colourful bosses.

Long delays could be an opportunity for some proper in game beeper FX too.
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PeterJ
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Re: What are your current Spectrum projects?

Post by PeterJ »

I'm learning Python and trying to make a desktop front end for ZXDB with Tkinter which is a Python binding to the Tk GUI toolkit. Not Spectrum development I know, but hopefully close enough to be included in this thread?
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Re: What are your current Spectrum projects?

Post by kolbeck »

I’m working on bringing ZXDB to AppleTV using the API. Probaly conpletely waste of time, but it’s a fun way to smoke test the API in order to improve it :-)

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druellan
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Re: What are your current Spectrum projects?

Post by druellan »

Ok, this is going to sound like a lot, but it is not, it's just that I'm lazy and start things that I never finish, but...

I'm recovering some text adventures and software I wrote end of eighties/start of nineties (mostly, the tape loaders I wrote for them, I have the software preserved on disk) and other tech programs by my father. In the meantime I'm hunting some software distributed in Argentina, so I can take pictures of the inlays, I'm categorizing maze games (perhaps also take a look at "vector graphics" games), also testing images from the Outlet Magazine, and someone convinced me to open my own Youtube channel on where I'm streaming all this, plus, I'm checking Spectrum games, one by one, alphabetically, for my own personal collection.

Oh, and I have a small Telegram bot that connects to the amazing [mention]kolbeck[/mention] API for quick searches on the ZXDB, and it is also capable of search on WOS, NewSpectrumGames, maps.speccy.cz, and converts you in Hulk(tm) if you bite your lip! :D
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Joefish
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Re: What are your current Spectrum projects?

Post by Joefish »

R-Tape wrote: Tue Jul 10, 2018 8:39 pm Sounds great. You could go nuts with some massive screen filling colourful bosses.
Long delays could be an opportunity for some proper in game beeper FX too.
Thing is, a big screen thing is still a lot of memory out of 48K. What I might go for is one boss that I can recolour and give it different ways of attacking or defending on different levels. Maybe even just have it show up at arbitrary times rather than definite levels.
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Re: What are your current Spectrum projects?

Post by ZXDunny »

My current project (SpecBAS) is still ongoing :)
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Re: What are your current Spectrum projects?

Post by Climacus »

By now, I dont have any time for coding. Perhaps after summer.
The last Ive done for Spectrum is a video-series (in Spanish) analizing the code of Martianoids in this blog.
Perhaps it can be useful.

https://analisiscodigomartianoids.blogspot.com/
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Re: What are your current Spectrum projects?

Post by MatGubbins »

Climacus wrote: Wed Jul 18, 2018 10:25 am By now, I dont have any time for coding. Perhaps after summer.
The last Ive done for Spectrum is a video-series (in Spanish) analizing the code of Martianoids in this blog.
Perhaps it can be useful.

https://analisiscodigomartianoids.blogspot.com/

Nice!!
way back in 2002, I wrote a map editor for Martianoids
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 6&id=16646
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Re: What are your current Spectrum projects?

Post by Seven.FFF »

On top of all my other unfinished projects, this for the Next. Both client (Next) and server (Windows/linux).

Image

https://youtu.be/V9lhEi3sHtE
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Joefish
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Re: What are your current Spectrum projects?

Post by Joefish »

R-Tape wrote: Tue Jul 10, 2018 8:39 pm Long delays could be an opportunity for some proper in game beeper FX too.
Thinking about this, I don't want to add a big artificial delay in there. But I could do the sort of thing I did with Buzzsaw+, and integrate the beeper loop with the screen copy loop (in Buzzsaw+ a beeper 0/1 was generated after each line of multicolour was copied).

The screen copy loop takes around 1.4 frames. If the game can run in 3 frames then that's nearly a 50% duty cycle for sound effects. I suppose I could artificially extend that period of speaker control, but I doubt I could do anything else productive with that extra time other than twiddle the speaker. If I entered a different loop to do something else then the sound frequency would shift (unless the loop had exactly the same timing as the screen copy). And I wouldn't want to extend it so the game goes any slower than 4 frames.

Come to think of it, the timing of a screen copy is going to be all over the place as it goes in and out of contention, so maybe that's not the best idea I've had...
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Re: What are your current Spectrum projects?

Post by Climacus »

MatGubbins wrote: Wed Jul 18, 2018 11:02 am
Climacus wrote: Wed Jul 18, 2018 10:25 am By now, I dont have any time for coding. Perhaps after summer.
The last Ive done for Spectrum is a video-series (in Spanish) analizing the code of Martianoids in this blog.
Perhaps it can be useful.

https://analisiscodigomartianoids.blogspot.com/

Nice!!
way back in 2002, I wrote a map editor for Martianoids
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 6&id=16646
Great!!!
Very interesting!!!!!
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R-Tape
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Re: What are your current Spectrum projects?

Post by R-Tape »

Joefish wrote: Wed Jul 18, 2018 10:00 pm Come to think of it, the timing of a screen copy is going to be all over the place as it goes in and out of contention, so maybe that's not the best idea I've had...
You're more of a perfectionist than me! I'd be happy with a (slightly clunky) nearly but not quite constant framerate. I think some decent sounds could be achieved just by 'animating' the speaker twiddles/calculated delays during the spare 2 or so frames every loop.
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Re: What are your current Spectrum projects?

Post by R-Tape »

Image

Finally some bad weather! Managed to get plenty of coding done on Bean Brothers.
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Re: What are your current Spectrum projects?

Post by reidrac »

I'm working on a new game for the Speccy (Castaway was my previous one, that feels ages ago!).

Shot from my ZX Spectrum+ with a Sony Trinitron TV:
Image

Regular screenshoot from emulator:
Image

I'm still not 100% sure what is the game about, but I think it may turn out the game I couldn't make when I released Escape from Colony 8.

A bit of adventure exploring a space base, with puzzles type of use object X with Y. The story may be a continuation of Castaway (not that it is too important).

I'm targeting 48K, but this time I started with my own routines from scratch using SDCC (if I'm not using the SP1 sprite library, it doesn't make sense using the Z88DK compiler). I'm implementing basic 1 char multi-directional scroll, and so far not using SP1 is paying off because I have lots of memory :D

In case you don't know, I usually tweet about 8-bit gamedev (inc. this game): https://twitter.com/reidrac

EDIT: the game title (for now) is Starblind.
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Re: What are your current Spectrum projects?

Post by dfzx »

reidrac wrote: Wed Dec 26, 2018 3:16 pm I'm targeting 48K, but this time I started with my own routines from scratch using SDCC (if I'm not using the SP1 sprite library, it doesn't make sense using the Z88DK compiler).
I can't agree with that! Z88DK provides over 1,000 library routines, all hand coded in Z80 assembler. The SP1 sprite library is just a very small part of it, maybe a couple of dozen routines at most. Nothing in Z88DK forces a programmer to use SP1, or any other part of of the libraries. There's an awful lot of good stuff there, all ready to use!

If you're writing in C for the Spectrum, it makes perfect sense to use Z88DK. In fact, since Z88DK uses SDCC as its C compiler, by using raw SDCC you're really just restricting yourself to a subset of Z88DK anyway.
Derek Fountain, author of the ZX Spectrum C Programmer's Getting Started Guide and various open source games, hardware and other projects, including an IF1 and ZX Microdrive emulator.
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Re: What are your current Spectrum projects?

Post by Ralf »

Regular screenshoot from emulator:
I'm still not 100% sure what is the game about, but I think it may turn out the game I couldn't make when I released Escape from Colony 8.
The graphics looks like they are inspired by Laser Squad ;) Am I true about it?
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Re: What are your current Spectrum projects?

Post by reidrac »

Ralf wrote: Wed Dec 26, 2018 7:12 pm
Regular screenshoot from emulator:
I'm still not 100% sure what is the game about, but I think it may turn out the game I couldn't make when I released Escape from Colony 8.
The graphics looks like they are inspired by Laser Squad ;) Am I true about it?
Yes, they look similar, but I didn't look at Laser Squad for inspiration until someone said it looked like Laser Squad.

It is just top-down. As I mentioned, I made Escape from Colony 8 (4 years ago): https://www.usebox.net/jjm/colony8/
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Re: What are your current Spectrum projects?

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dfzx wrote: Wed Dec 26, 2018 6:45 pm
reidrac wrote: Wed Dec 26, 2018 3:16 pm I'm targeting 48K, but this time I started with my own routines from scratch using SDCC (if I'm not using the SP1 sprite library, it doesn't make sense using the Z88DK compiler).
I can't agree with that! Z88DK provides over 1,000 library routines, all hand coded in Z80 assembler. The SP1 sprite library is just a very small part of it, maybe a couple of dozen routines at most. Nothing in Z88DK forces a programmer to use SP1, or any other part of of the libraries. There's an awful lot of good stuff there, all ready to use!

If you're writing in C for the Spectrum, it makes perfect sense to use Z88DK. In fact, since Z88DK uses SDCC as its C compiler, by using raw SDCC you're really just restricting yourself to a subset of Z88DK anyway.
I've used both SDCC and Z88DK and I think SDCC is a more advanced compiler (I can use C99!). To be honest, other than SP1, input and some very specific runtime support, I always code everything else myself. I use SDCC for my CPC projects, so using it for the speccy wasn't too difficult.

I'm writing a lightweight library in ASM for SDCC, and that's what I'm using for the game (being almost everything else C).
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Re: What are your current Spectrum projects?

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reidrac wrote: Thu Dec 27, 2018 8:19 am I've used both SDCC and Z88DK and I think SDCC is a more advanced compiler (I can use C99!).
But Z88DK uses SDCC!* If you build Z88DK yourself you have to apply a small patch to the SDCC source and rebuild the compiler in order to enable a couple of things Z88DK needs. Other than that tweak, Z88DK is SDCC, C99 included.

[*] Z88DK actually provides 2 compilers, SDCC and the older sccz80. You can choose which one you want to use. Nowadays SDCC is the obvious choice unless your project needs some legacy feature support.
reidrac wrote: Thu Dec 27, 2018 8:19 am To be honest, other than SP1, input and some very specific runtime support, I always code everything else myself.
Yes, fair enough. All coders will recognise the fun and satisfaction in that approach. It was just that your original post suggested that SP1 was the only sensible reason to choose Z88DK, which is very far from the truth. :)

Your game looks great so far, way better than anything I'm ever likely to produce!
Derek Fountain, author of the ZX Spectrum C Programmer's Getting Started Guide and various open source games, hardware and other projects, including an IF1 and ZX Microdrive emulator.
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Re: What are your current Spectrum projects?

Post by bob_fossil »

dfzx wrote: Thu Dec 27, 2018 12:37 pm [*] Z88DK actually provides 2 compilers, SDCC and the older sccz80. You can choose which one you want to use. Nowadays SDCC is the obvious choice unless your project needs some legacy feature support.
SDCC is more standards compliant and generates smaller and faster code but I still use sccz80 as my workflow compiler as I've found it's much faster for my projects - SDCC was a bottleneck in my edit / compile / run cycle.

I only use SDCC to do a final build after getting it into shape with sccz80. I've also had SDCC generate completely the wrong assembly for my C code on a couple of occasions which caused my program to crash. sccz80 generated the correct code without issue.
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Re: What are your current Spectrum projects?

Post by reidrac »

dfzx wrote: Thu Dec 27, 2018 12:37 pm
reidrac wrote: Thu Dec 27, 2018 8:19 am I've used both SDCC and Z88DK and I think SDCC is a more advanced compiler (I can use C99!).
But Z88DK uses SDCC!* If you build Z88DK yourself you have to apply a small patch to the SDCC source and rebuild the compiler in order to enable a couple of things Z88DK needs. Other than that tweak, Z88DK is SDCC, C99 included.

[*] Z88DK actually provides 2 compilers, SDCC and the older sccz80. You can choose which one you want to use. Nowadays SDCC is the obvious choice unless your project needs some legacy feature support.
reidrac wrote: Thu Dec 27, 2018 8:19 am To be honest, other than SP1, input and some very specific runtime support, I always code everything else myself.
Yes, fair enough. All coders will recognise the fun and satisfaction in that approach. It was just that your original post suggested that SP1 was the only sensible reason to choose Z88DK, which is very far from the truth. :)

Your game looks great so far, way better than anything I'm ever likely to produce!
You misunderstood my post. The only reason why I was using Z88DK was SP1. If I'm going to use the SDCC compiler in Z88DK, I rather use SDCC directly.

I know Z88DK reasonably well (this is my game: https://github.com/z88dk/z88dk/tree/mas ... /BlackStar), thanks for the tips!
Last edited by reidrac on Thu Dec 27, 2018 2:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What are your current Spectrum projects?

Post by reidrac »

bob_fossil wrote: Thu Dec 27, 2018 1:01 pm
dfzx wrote: Thu Dec 27, 2018 12:37 pm [*] Z88DK actually provides 2 compilers, SDCC and the older sccz80. You can choose which one you want to use. Nowadays SDCC is the obvious choice unless your project needs some legacy feature support.
SDCC is more standards compliant and generates smaller and faster code but I still use sccz80 as my workflow compiler as I've found it's much faster for my projects - SDCC was a bottleneck in my edit / compile / run cycle.

I only use SDCC to do a final build after getting it into shape with sccz80. I've also had SDCC generate completely the wrong assembly for my C code on a couple of occasions which caused my program to crash. sccz80 generated the correct code without issue.
Yes, I had that same issues with SDCC (bugs in the optimizer I believe). It has improved over the time (although there are regressions every now and then), but there are still few issues. I have to say that Z88DK has crashed few times while compiling, but it never generated broken code :lol:

Sorry, we hijacked this thread to discus SDCC vs Z88DK.
Last edited by reidrac on Thu Dec 27, 2018 2:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What are your current Spectrum projects?

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bob_fossil wrote: Thu Dec 27, 2018 1:01 pm SDCC is more standards compliant and generates smaller and faster code but I still use sccz80 as my workflow compiler as I've found it's much faster for my projects - SDCC was a bottleneck in my edit / compile / run cycle.
I'm aware that the SDCC optimiser can be painfully slow, but I have no speed problems with optimisation turned off. But then I use makefiles for anything greater than trivial, so maybe that helps? My biggest project is about 5000 lines of code in 14 C files and 10 ASM files. With 12 concurrent compiles/assemblies and SDCC optimisation off, my 6 year old PC (8 core CPU) builds it from scratch in about 4 seconds, including a handful of housekeeping and information extraction scripts.
bob_fossil wrote: Thu Dec 27, 2018 1:01 pm I've also had SDCC generate completely the wrong assembly for my C code on a couple of occasions which caused my program to crash. sccz80 generated the correct code without issue.
That surprises me. I've never seen it do that. Did you manage to isolate and report the problem? Compiler developers are normally all over incorrect code generation like a rash.
Derek Fountain, author of the ZX Spectrum C Programmer's Getting Started Guide and various open source games, hardware and other projects, including an IF1 and ZX Microdrive emulator.
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Re: What are your current Spectrum projects?

Post by dfzx »

reidrac wrote: Thu Dec 27, 2018 2:15 pm I know Z88DK reasonably well (this is my game: https://github.com/z88dk/z88dk/tree/mas ... /BlackStar), thanks for the tips!
:lol: Talk about my teaching Granny to suck eggs. (An expression for non native English speakers to look up!)

Apologies. Blackstar is the definite reference work for Z88DK/SP1 development, although I'm very slowly trying to change that. :)
Derek Fountain, author of the ZX Spectrum C Programmer's Getting Started Guide and various open source games, hardware and other projects, including an IF1 and ZX Microdrive emulator.
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