Little bugs in the database 4

[Einar Saukas]

If you put all the "data" in and then have to take out 99% of the cruft then it's "dumping". It just makes a mockery of having the little bugs posts, where we have provide evidence for every little change and wait for up to 2 years to have it implemented when you come along and add hundreds of completely unchecked comments without any scrutiny.

This is not a fair comparison. Nobody worked on adding ZXSR comments instead of bugfixes.

I can understand if you care about [mention]druellan[/mention] working on bugfixes a lot more than you care about [mention]Vampyre[/mention] and myself working on ZXSR integration, [mention]wallyweek[/mention] working on indexing Load'n'Run magazines, [mention]Andre Leao[/mention] working on adding new magazines, etc. But if everybody else stopped, this would not make [mention]druellan[/mention] work any faster.

Saying this content was "dumped" is not fair either. You make it sound like we made a mess out of it, just putting everything together. On the contrary, this new content was integrated but not mixed. If users don't want to see ZXSR comments, we can simply turn them off and keep everything else. As a matter of fact, that's exactly what I did right now for the main SC site. From now on, I will just keep them visible in the alternate view, so anyone interested in helping with feedback can still see them. I hope this change solves everyone's concerns!

[PeterJ]

It's a pity that the main site no longer has a whole view of the database based on one or two users views.

This site has always previously been a good testing ground for exciting new features in ZXDB.

Thank you for making the update though [mention]Einar Saukas[/mention]. It's appreciated.

Peter

[Vampyre]

[mention]@Peter[/mention] [mention]Einar Saukas[/mention]

Can we please remove the ZXSR Notes table altogether please and I won't bother to include it in any further updates.

Can I just make one thing very clear for those who are upset by the opinions and inaccuracies. These were added a long time ago (some decades) and were just a little bit of fun for myself and only really meant for myself. In hindsight I should never have provided them for ZXDB - I hadn't even looked at any of them for many years so I completely forgot the content.

I also believe some of the notes also came from the pre-Infoseek database that Martijn created. I forget what that database was called now but looking at some of the things Alessandro mentioned (the SU MISER password for instance) - that's not something I can recall ever knowing so would almost certainly have come from there.

Yes, it's all probably wildly inaccurate (20-odd years ago there wasn't the wealth of info we have on each title now) and has opinions that no-one else agrees with. I don't much care so can we get rid of them, please, and I'll never bother to have an opinion on anything again unless I pass it through the bastions of all knowledge first.

[Einar Saukas]

@@Peter @Einar Saukas

Can we please remove the ZXSR Notes table altogether please and I won't bother to include it in any further updates.

Can I just make one thing very clear for those who are upset by the opinions and inaccuracies. These were added a long time ago (some decades) and were just a little bit of fun for myself and only really meant for myself. In hindsight I should never have provided them for ZXDB - I hadn't even looked at any of them for many years so I completely forgot the content.

I also believe some of the notes also came from the pre-Infoseek database that Martijn created. I forget what that database was called now but looking at some of the things Alessandro mentioned (the SU MISER password for instance) - that's not something I can recall ever knowing so would almost certainly have come from there.

Yes, it's all probably wildly inaccurate (20-odd years ago there wasn't the wealth of info we have on each title now) and has opinions that no-one else agrees with. I don't much care so can we get rid of them, please, and I'll never bother to have an opinion on anything again unless I pass it through the bastions of all knowledge first.

OK, they are now removed from both main and alternate pages.

I originally kept ZXSR comments because some of them contain useful information (again Lightforce music was a good example) and I was hoping user feedback would help sort them out. I had no idea they would cause so much discomfort and backlash... My apologies!

[Vampyre]

Maybe because, differently from ZXDB and the WoS database, the ZXSR is much more recent and could take advantage of previously gathered data. The WoS database was compiled mainly from magazine references, and some of these references, especially those about soon to be released titles, have been found to be inaccurate during the following years. There was little or no way 20 years ago to have so many instruments and references at your disposal like those we can take advantage of in this enlightened era

What about my suggestion of adding Lightforce as an alternative title for the game?

The ZXSR data, at least initially, predates ZXDB by a long way, predates SPOT and possibly predates even the first Infoseek! I first started it in Access 95 cataloguing games from four floppies - one at a time - manually - then in 1997 from a CD. There were no mag scans, WOS was in its infancy and I had no means to access it anyway so a lot of it was built purely from memory (got rid of the mags years before). This is why so much in Notes is wildly inaccurate, as they were made off pure memory. It has been a VERY long time since I looked at them. Think of them more from a hilarity rather than an accuracy point of view! The main data (Titles, Publishers etc) is now accurate though thanks to the sterling work from the ZXDB guys.

Just jumping back a bit to the Lightforce Music award in the Crash Readers Awards. I never did get to the bottom of it but I have a vague recollection of a thread on WoS many years ago. Someone thought it might have been the C64 version and Newsfield just buggered up the votes somewhere.

[Vampyre]

@@Peter @Einar Saukas

Can we please remove the ZXSR Notes table altogether please and I won't bother to include it in any further updates.

Can I just make one thing very clear for those who are upset by the opinions and inaccuracies. These were added a long time ago (some decades) and were just a little bit of fun for myself and only really meant for myself. In hindsight I should never have provided them for ZXDB - I hadn't even looked at any of them for many years so I completely forgot the content.

I also believe some of the notes also came from the pre-Infoseek database that Martijn created. I forget what that database was called now but looking at some of the things Alessandro mentioned (the SU MISER password for instance) - that's not something I can recall ever knowing so would almost certainly have come from there.

Yes, it's all probably wildly inaccurate (20-odd years ago there wasn't the wealth of info we have on each title now) and has opinions that no-one else agrees with. I don't much care so can we get rid of them, please, and I'll never bother to have an opinion on anything again unless I pass it through the bastions of all knowledge first.

OK, they are now removed from both main and alternate pages.

I originally kept ZXSR comments because some of them contain useful information (again Lightforce music was a good example) and I was hoping user feedback would help sort them out. I had no idea they would cause so much discomfort and backlash... My apologies!

No problem at all Einar. Hopefully I've made it clear now why they are so hugely inaccurate and why some comments probably shouldn't have been seen by anyone other than me I'd honestly forgot what was in there so my mistake in not going through them and removing the, er, combustible opinions (god, I was barely in my 20's when I made some of them).

[Stu]

The Light Corridor
Light Force

According to this, these games were never released for the Sega Master System -- Sega XS magazine mistakenly printed tips for them and from there they made their way into various lists of Master System games. They certainly don't appear on any of the main sites (which have cover scans and other concrete release info)

✓ Reviewed

[Einar Saukas]

The Goonies is incorrectly marked as turn-based. It should be cooperative/simultaneous. Am I right?

✓ Reviewed

[Frankie]

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/3 ... c_Animator

About this uMIA provided by me, I would suggest to change the Original Publisher to:

Individual Software Service

as the inlay states, and move

Ionis Software International

to Authors.

Don't think it was released in any other way, than by Individual Software Service

✓ Reviewed

[Stefan]

The Goonies is incorrectly marked as turn-based. It should be cooperative/simultaneous. Am I right?

Correct.

Additionally, from the credits:

Game Programming by Scott Spanburg
Computer Graphics by Kelly Day
Game Design by Scott Spanburg, Kelly Day, John Ludin, Roy Langston
and Terry Shakespeare
Documentation by Kathi B. Tremblay
Translated by Paragon

Scott Spanburg seems a C64 guy, so his role in Goonies should be design. Additionally he should be removed from team Paragon Programming Ltd since they did the Spectrum conversion.

✓ Reviewed

[patters]

Some months ago I bug fixed my game Artillery to version 1.4.4. I didn't post an update here because usually it's sod's law that something else needs fixing shortly afterwards. However, I haven't touched it in a while so please can you refresh the files (inc listing and variables CSV) in ZXDB from my itch.io page? The link is in my sig. Thanks.

✓ Reviewed

[mention]Einar Saukas[/mention] - I have these files for the next update (Dave)

[Mort]

Hi ,
New version of Pro Boxing simulator has been scanned, it will be included in this months update , the version without the fair means or foul text

[Frankie]

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/1 ... um/Inferno

About this game, first it needs to be renamed from:

Inferno

to:

Towering Inferno

The file might be named Inferno, and ZX Computing used Inferno as the headline for the game, but the game itself clearly says 'Towering Inferno'

Besides that it doesn't work properly even though the listing is as it is in the mag. When it is supposed to ask if you want to play another game, it skips that question and jumps directly to line 6600 where there is a STOP statement. This is due to that it remembers the last keypresses from when you were playing, which are either 1 or 0, and therefore skips the question because the last keypress isn't Y. I've fixed that by changing line 6580 from:

6580 LET x$=INKEY$

to

6580 INPUT x$

I might be a man of simple taste, but another great and entertaining Type-In game

FIXED FILE: https://www.dropbox.com/s/iw9b1ih7j25vn ... o.zip?dl=0

✓ Reviewed

[Frankie]

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/1 ... um/Inferno

About this game, first it needs to be renamed from:

Inferno

to:

Towering Inferno

The file might be named Inferno, and ZX Computing used Inferno as the headline for the game, but the game itself clearly says 'Towering Inferno'

Besides that it doesn't work properly even though the listing is as it is in the mag. When it is supposed to ask if you want to play another game, it skips that question and jumps directly to line 6600 where there is a STOP statement. This is due to that it remembers the last keypresses from when you were playing, which are either 1 or 0, and therefore skips the question because the last keypress isn't Y. I've fixed that by changing line 6580 from:

6580 LET x$=INKEY$

to

6580 INPUT x$

I might be a man of simple taste, but another great and entertaining Type-In game

FIXED FILE: https://www.dropbox.com/s/iw9b1ih7j25vn ... o.zip?dl=0

Just realised that the game is already online as Towering Inferno, so just need to move infos from Inferno to Towering Inferno, as it seems some are missing

✓ Reviewed

[Ersh]

Aliens (US Version) has the wrong text instructions. Not only is it for the wrong game (it's actually for Aliens) but it's not even a proper transcription. Since the latter game already has a valid text file I suggest deleting the offending article. Hopefully someone can transcribe or scan the instructions for the former in the future.

✓ Reviewed

[Einar Saukas]

Just realised that the game is already online as Towering Inferno, so just need to move infos from Inferno to Towering Inferno, as it seems some are missing

Do you mean Inferno and Towering Inferno are exactly the same game?

[Frankie]

Just realised that the game is already online as Towering Inferno, so just need to move infos from Inferno to Towering Inferno, as it seems some are missing

Do you mean Inferno and Towering Inferno are exactly the same game?

Yes

[+3code]

This game:
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 96&id=3838
isn't 1987 but 1989.

✓ Reviewed

[Rorthron]

7152|Valhalla
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 96&id=7152

Inlay contains additional credits not mentioned in the archive:

"Production team - Graham Asher, Richard Edwards, Charles Goodwin,
James Learmont, Jan Ostler, Andrew Owen, John Peel."

Note: we do not have a scan of the instructions in the archive, but there is one here:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source= ... 6JXO9MmyRu

Could this be added to the archive?

✓ Reviewed

[Einar Saukas]

I suppose RUN [IT] was founded and owned by Aquarius Edizioni. Correct?

Right now ZXDB says the opposite (just like Martijn's WoS).

[Stu]

The Fourth Protocol

This was also released for MS-DOS. It isn't on Abandonia that I can see (as the PC/DOS games currently in ZXDB are) but it's available at archive.org, I don't know if that's an alternative URL worth using?



A Guide to Playing the Fourth Protocol

This has been given an 'also known as' entry of "The Fourth Protocol: Playing the Game", however looking at a scan of the book https://www.mocagh.org/miscgame/4thprot ... ntbook.pdf its name does seem to be "The Fourth Protocol: Playing the Game" -- I can't see any reference to its name being "A Guide to Playing the Fourth Protocol" anywhere.

Incidentally, the book mentions an Apple II conversion of the game, which according to an article in Retro Gamer 61 was finished and released; however I can't find any trace of it online. So I don't know if it's worth adding Apple II to the list of other platforms or not?

✓ Reviewed

[Stu]

A Guide to Playing the Fourth Protocol

Can't edit my post to add these but the following magazine references currently listed for the game apply to the guidebook -- since they also relate to the game they probably want to be listed for both:

https://archive.org/stream/computer-vid ... 7/mode/1up
https://archive.org/stream/Computer_Gam ... 6/mode/1up
https://archive.org/stream/popular-comp ... 0/mode/1up
https://archive.org/stream/sinclair-use ... 9/mode/1up (This one is already listed in the book's ZXDB entry)
https://archive.org/stream/YourSinclair ... 0/mode/1up

✓ Reviewed

[Andre Leao]

Alexandre Cunha is portuguese, not spanish.

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/2 ... /Recover_3

✓ Reviewed

[Ivanzx]

This french game should be called Le Manoir du Dr Genius instead of just Dr Genius:

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/6 ... /Dr_Genius

✓ Reviewed

[PeterJ]

[mention]rogerjowett[/mention] has let me know that Delta Wing from creative sparks includes fuller box (
G1-AY-3-8912) support.
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 96&id=1337

It's listed in the Spanish instructions:

https://archive.org/download/World_of_S ... lS.A.).pdf