The comp.sys.sinclair Crap Games Competition 2021: 25th edition extravaganza!

[TMD2003]

It's written in ZXBasic - https://zxbasic.readthedocs.io
I couldn't get PAUSE to work, and the ZXBasic help is missing documentation on that command, hence the messages not staying on the screen long enough to read.

FOR n=1 TO 100: NEXT n (the length of the loop can vary, obviously...)

Such is the value of borrowing my brother's Dragon 32 back in t'old days to have a crack at programming that. While the above is usually used to create an unskippable version of PAUSE, the Dragon (and the Trash-80 before it) don't have a PAUSE command at all, and this was how the official user manual said it should be done.

The documentation may not be complete - but surely if there's nothing on the page, that's likely to mean the command or function works exactly the same way as it would on a Spectrum - or am I giving the documentation author too much credit?

[equinox]

Did you know beforehand that would make the bizarre error report, or was that just a bit of trial and error?

No, all of the errors were shamelessly half-inched from this page (@equinox is this your work?)

yes

[patters]

It's written in ZXBasic - https://zxbasic.readthedocs.io
I couldn't get PAUSE to work, and the ZXBasic help is missing documentation on that command, hence the messages not staying on the screen long enough to read.

There were a few bugs with PAUSE not working properly that I found and reported, which should have been fixed. Did you use the latest version? Boriel is quick to fix issues if you report them via Github or via the ZXBASIC forum.

[Pobulous]

It's written in ZXBasic - https://zxbasic.readthedocs.io
I couldn't get PAUSE to work, and the ZXBasic help is missing documentation on that command, hence the messages not staying on the screen long enough to read.

There were a few bugs with PAUSE not working properly that I found and reported, which should have been fixed. Did you use the latest version? Boriel is quick to fix issues if you report them via Github or via the ZXBASIC forum.

The issue is actually with Inkey - it repeats instantly unlike in Sinclair Basic where it's affected by the keyboard repeat rate sys var.
I had picked up on that and was looping checking for a change to the inkey value to get player input, but I was doing that after the PAUSE and after the CLS, so the PAUSE command was being cancelled immediately by the key repeating.

[TMD2003]

END OF WEEK 32:

Roll of the dice, take a spin on the wheel. The Angel and the Gambler regularly tops (or bottoms) the polls for Iron Maiden's Worst Mistake Ever (because any band that's been going as long as they have will always have some clangers). I don't think it's all that horrific, but it does clearly have problems that could, and should, have been fixed. And so is the case with [mention]Pobulous[/mention]' latest gambling-related CSSCGC entry, Lottery - which uses scratchcards instead of roulette. It's the only one to have been submitted this week, but a week with one game that gets a demerit point is still better than a week with nothing! Technically, this has been a week with no submissions, mainly because Google yet again threw Rob's message into the Spam folder - it should really have been part of last week's round-up - but that problem has been permanently sorted.

With 36 games in the can, a Cassette 50 style compilation isn't all that far away. However, five of those 36 are for the QL and that never used a tape (as we know it - a shrunk-in-the-wash 8-track cartridge doesn't count!)

EDIT: what's this left for me at Sinclair ZX World? It's a ZX80 game that was posted there instead of being emailed to me. There'd have been two games in this weekly round-up if it had reached me by the proper channels. Still, I won't complain...

[TMD2003]

Post deleted at request of [mention]TMD2003[/mention]

[TMD2003]

AN IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT:

I had another look at ZX80 programming myself, finally getting some machine code to work on it. It has made me rethink the Blue Challenge on this year's competition, in which the idea was to get the unexpanded 1K ZX80 to do... something, in machine code. And by that I meant entirely in machine code - fill up the memory with about 700-and-something bytes and... you've got a rudimentary version of Nim, or Noughts And Crosses, or something similar. Salvador Camacho did make Tic Tac Toe Hell, but that's a deliberately-cheaty version, and it was written in C using Z88DK and compiled, and although that qualified for the White Challenge (Salvador had never even thought of making anything for the ZX80), it wasn't suitable for the Blue as it required 16K of memory. When I came up with the challenge, I was under the impression that machine code programming on the ZX80 was similar to the ZX81, in that the code would be held in a REM statement and executed from there, and it was only after I opened this can of worms on Sinclair ZX World in mid-June that I discovered the truth.

Even at this late stage (in that there's three and a half months to go, possibly four if I'm generous in the end (which is much more likely, now that I know I've got a trustworthy host for next year lined up), I am going to revise the Blue Challenge to something that I think is more manageable, but retains the spirit of the original in some way.

BLUE CHALLENGE V2.0:
Write a game for the ZX80 (anything up to 16K) which uses all eight of the Integral Functions: CHR$, STR$, TL$, PEEK, CODE, RND, USR, ABS.

Given that USR is involved then this will involve machine code, but it can be something as simple as, say... changing decimal into hex or binary. You know, like I just did. And in order to read the hex output from my program, both CHR$ and PEEK have to be used in combination with each other. So that's three functions dealt with already - the other five shouldn't be too much of a problem.


Incidentally, if your name is @PROSM and you were working on an entry for Blue Challenge V1.0, if you can accomplish it, I'll still consider it as part of the challenge, and I might even cut a piece off the Jewel of Ankhel.

[TMD2003]

END OF WEEK 33:

It's been a busy week, this one, mainly because it's harvest time. I may not be a farmer, but some of the locals who are farmers took great pleasure in covering me with clouds of dust and husks from their not-at-all-brand-new combine harvesters (although the tractor that rumbled alongside it was a 20-plate, so not brand new but still only a year old) as I was gathering my own harvest. And I give you exhibit A (that's about a third of the total) and exhibit B (also about a third of what I'm going to need when I've got hold of it all). It's all going to be worth it, soon enough. There will be jam, and there will be wine, and if we have another Zoom meeting at the end of the year, that is as good an excuse as any to open the wine and enjoy it. You have been warned!

Anyway, back to business: Crap Games! I've had a fourth game from Andy Jenkinson, a.k.a. [mention]uglifruit[/mention], which is - yet again - the polar opposite of the Crap Scale from the abomination I was forced to remind you about just above. Codenames is a card-based board game you may have come across; Andy was playing it with his friends over Zoom during the terrible house arrest period of April-May 2020, and this is the (very long overdue) result. I've never played the card game so it took a bit of working out - the on-screen instructions are far clearer than the Wikipedia article on the original. The game doesn't decide on your codewords for you and it doesn't keep track of who is playing at that point - that's for the humans to do, while the Spectrum acts as the game board. Think of it like the huge rotating-disc display from Family Fortunes that Bob Monkhouse, Max Bygraves and Les Dennis stood in front of and said "Our survey said..." followed by generic TV quiz show noises.

Anyway, if you've got any friends, get on Zoom and play this. I have a slight problem with doing the same...



Post edited at request of [mention]TMD2003[/mention]

[TMD2003]

Post deleted at the request of [mention]TMD2003[/mention]

[TMD2003]

END OF WEEK 34:

Joy of all joys, it's a blank week. That was sarcasm.

This is the last weekly round-up for August, the month in which the Issue 2 Nexts were supposed to be delivered. Henrique and co aren't Nostradamus, they were unlikely to have seen the worldwide silicon chip shortage happening, and with the dilemma of "do we get the Next built in China and have an inferior product, or build it in the UK and delay it by anything up to another year?", I suppose I should abandon any hope of getting any Next entries in. It's the only counter I have on the front page of the 2021 CSSCGC website that has remained steadfastly at zero. If anyone does want to have a bash at some rudimentary NextBASIC to make a Crap Game that actually works, at least do me a favour and provide some instructions on how best to set up and use CSpect. In fact, if there's someone who could do that anyway, it'd help me because I do intend to make some kind of Crap Next Game myself for next year's competition; it'll be in the vein of Resistance is Futile, in that it'll be piled with as much non-standard-Spectrum stuff as I can reasonably manage. The SAM Coupé was, at least, easy to understand.

Post edited at request of [mention]TMD2003[/mention]

[TMD2003]

Is it considered bad form to submit two versions of the same game to the CSSCGC in the same year? Maybe, because this is supposed to involve Crap Games, it should be encouraged, whereas anywhere else, it wouldn't be. However, your chances of having the double-entry accepted are vastly increased if it's done on an obscure machine.

@Jbizzel saw his own Z88 Boggle from earlier in the year, and he saw that it was good - but not quite good enough. So, in a bout of self-education about learning C to be run through the Z88DK compiler (which is a bit of a running theme this year, I find), there's a new version of Parker Bros.' famous dice-based word game. It's now called Zoggle, and though it's still little more than an electronic version of the grid of 16 dice - it doesn't actually play the game - it does at least look better now, as much as it can on the Z88's tiny screen.



Full instructions on how to get the game working on both OZvm and ZEsarUX are provided. As is this brief demonstration, made by the man himself, of what the game looks like on a real Z88:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1W5QdL43KE

Post edited at request of [mention]TMD2003[/mention]

[Jbizzel]

Great to see it's ZOGGLE launch day

For anyone looking for crap game inspiration, the publisher has made the pdf versions if these basic game coding books free in their website...

I know it's how I got started age 10.


https://usborne.com/gb/books/computer-and-coding-books

[Jbizzel]

Jim,

re the Zoggle bugs you found: I've fixed both of these.

The double X thing -Well spotted indeed. If you notice, the right most of line 3 and the left most of line 4 are always the same letter! That issue is to do with a mistake in the method that draws the board. That was also masking another minor bug that caused the draw method to never draw the last boggle die face. So that has been corrected too. Also the issue with the game ending at the start, I've moved a variable to a more sensible place. That should have fixed it.

I'll upload everything to Gitlab now.

[Nitrowing]

Great to see it's ZOGGLE launch day

For anyone looking for crap game inspiration, the publisher has made the pdf versions if these basic game coding books free in their website...

I know it's how I got started age 10.


https://usborne.com/gb/books/computer-and-coding-books

Great find! I'm downloading all of these now
Usborne will also get some pennies from me - this looks like a good start for my boy...
https://usborne.com/gb/look-inside-how- ... 1409599043

[TMD2003]

Right - I'd better take a look the updated version!

Incidentally, within about two hours of me posting the review of Zoggle, I'd challenged the QL Forum to make a version of Boggle that actually plays the game - seeing as the QL's extra memory can hold a lot of words to search through, and I'd made a rudimentary program myself to define the 16 dice and throw them into the grid. That took an hour, and about 40 minutes of that was getting the screen right.

Then I thought I could do the same for the ZX80, and spend an entire day just trying to get a machine code routine to shuffle 16 letters to work. Working with machine code on the ZX80 is about as frustrating a job as trying to solve a Rubik's Cube blindfolded. What I wouldn't give for a ZX80 assembler, preferably one that's built into an emulator, like Spin! It's easier on the ZX81, but still not by much.

I am at the age where I'm somewhat grateful nature hasn't taken its toll on my hairline the way it does for others. The last thing I need is to tear all my hair out with rage when the ZX80 crashes yet again.

However, I have now made it work... so I may go ahead, make my own Boggle, and keep it aside for next year's competition. It's probably something that could be done on a Jupiter Ace, as well. Does anyone know any FORTH?

[Jbizzel]

I learnt forth for the z88 (by Garry Lancaster) this is coming full circle.

Love the discussion on the QL site about this too. I'm going to do a version for the spectrum too. The once that exist can definitely be improved upon.

[TMD2003]

I learnt forth for the z88 (by Garry Lancaster) this is coming full circle.

You do realise I'm now expecting something for the Jupiter Ace, right?

MUSH!

I have also MUSHED myself and updated the Zoggle review, so the new bugfixed version is included in the package - alongside the original, because otherwise, anyone who reads the review will be wondering why I've picked up on what Doug DeMuro would call "quirks and features" that aren't there.

Talking of Doug DeMuro:

*POUT* (again, and this is a big one)

...I've had one Red Challenge entry in the entire competition, and that was from [mention]equinox[/mention] back in JANUARY. I really thought that one would have attracted a lot more attention than it has. Do you lot not have favourite YouTubers or something, or are you all concerned that it may not be one that I'd want to watch? If you're concerned but have an idea, at least run it by me first. Although, if it's anything in the realms of Big Clive / VWestlife / Techmoan (generally "old technology and/or tearing it to bits") channels, or HubNut / PetrolBlog / idriveaclassic / Tofer's Car Tales / Big Car / Not2Grand / Regular Car Reviews (generally anything automotive from either side of the Atlantic), I am very unlikely to object.

Also, let me introduce you all to John Kirkwood - a 70-odd-year-old Geordie who's showing us all how to make no-nonsense pies and gravy. Howay, it's reet canny, divn't y'kna. Is there also inspiration for a Crap Game in those YouTubers who never take their camera out of the kitchen? (Atomic Shrimp is another good one. I've probably eaten half of his "Weird Stuff In A Can" and don't think it's all that weird... mostly.)

In further less *POUT*-like news: as it is now September and the competition is more than two-thirds of the way through, there might be a couple of extra pages on the website. This is going to mean editing every single page so far, which could be a right royal pain, but I'll MUSH and get it done before I get another flurry of entries.

And I will get a flurry of entries, right?

[TMD2003]

END OF WEEK 35:

It seems I was slightly wrong about waiting to break another record: this week's sole entry, Zoggle, actually did it. As the second Z88 game to be submitted this year, that means this year's competition has more Z88 entries than ever before - seeing as only 2008 and 2020 ever saw any Z88 entries at all, and only one each at that. And hence, this year's competition has had as many Z88 entries as the entire rest of the competition history all put together. There may even be one more to come...

Meanwhile, my attention is going to have to be refocused for a week or so - although if I get an entry in week 36, I will review it. And I'm hoping I do - there hasn't been a blank week for a while and I'd like that to continue. The extra website pages, though, are going to have to wait until mid-September.

EXTRA POTENTIAL BONUS:

Here's something to look forward to: if this competition reaches 50 entries, I'll throw in an EXTRA BONUS REVIEW of a program I've had hanging around for a while that isn't part of the competition but is still intrinsicallly related to it. Do you want to know what it is? Then put fingers to keyboard and wrote Crap Games. I need ten more at this stage. MUSH!

[Jbizzel]

I updated ZOGGLE quite a bit, with a new timer (that uses the little diamonds, pictured) And I made a number of other cosmetic changes too, like having the ZOGGLE board in the centre of the screen.



I really need to stop with this now

[TMD2003]

END OF WEEK 36:

What's this? A blank week? Well, that's just brilliant, isn't it? Actually, just this once, I won't grumble because I've got a lot of much-needed work done on the house, and had a day at the coast eating fish and chips, two ice creams, and wandering around on the beach wondering why there are some people out there who would never, ever lower themselves to this level, liberally dropping words beginning with "B" and "G" into their lame excuses. You know the words I mean.

I would like things to change on the No Crap Games front, though. Unless I get 50 submissions, there won't be the Extra Special Bonus! That is a promise... it is also a threat. And I will update Zoggle to its MkIII state in the CSSCGC archive.

[TMD2003]

END OF WEEK 37:

Another blank week in the CSSCGC - I haven't had a single entry in the whole of September - and just to really put the biscuit crumbs in the bed, Our Glorious Creator departed this realm. All in all, a monumentally rubbish week - eased only by my 14-year-old Honda sailing through its MOT earlier today, and the production of another ten jars of apple and blackberry jam to keep me going through the winter months and so that I can genuinely convince myself that I didn't waste the opportunity of a bumper harvest.

With the competition three-quarters of the way through, I'm going to be making a few changes to the website over the weekend, with a couple of extra pages. As frames are so massively frowned upon, this has meant editing every single page of the website. I am now going to have to do so again, but it's for a very obvious good cause.

In the meantime, can I have something this month? Any kind of tribute game for Sir Clive would be welcomed, even if he didn't welcome the presence of games himself, if Micro Men is to be believed.

"It taught a generation how to code", sang MJ Hibbett. Let's show the evidence.

[TMD2003]

INTERLUDE:

The CSSCGC website has been expanded slightly.

There is an Awards page, but that's only going to be activated once the competition is done and dusted. For now, it's heavily guarded...

The main addition is the RZX page, in which I've played right the way through all the games that it's possible to record an RZX for, up to the end of February. In cases like Pixel Perfect Shot, where there is no ending, I've played it until you've seen as much as I think you need to see, whereas for games that have a defined end point, such as Horace and the Vikings, you'll get to see it. Some games have more than one RZX file if I think it requires it - Cretans has two, one showing a maze that has a clear route through the game and one that doesn't, and Mono-Rail Simulator has three skill levels, of which I've shown them all.

More of these will follow in October - I'll probably update the RZX page every couple of weeks until we're up to date - and the second package will be one Spectrum game and four on the ZX81, for which I remind you it is possible to make an RZX if you know what you're doing!

Now, how about some new submissions? MUSH!

[equinox]

There is an Awards page, but that's only going to be activated once the competition is done and dusted. For now, it's heavily guarded...

Why would one heavily guard a corned beef sandwich?

[TMD2003]

The beef is Wagyu, I personally mined the salt that preserved it, also grew and milled the wheat that formed the bread by myself, brought Maurice Escoffier back from the dead to bake it, and brought Arthur Dent out of the realms of fiction to make the sandwich. It turns out that corned Wagyu beef isn't a million miles away from perfectly normal beast meat.

This is a very special corned beef sandwich, so much that I've had it put in stasis for preservation, and the guard is there to protect the stasis booth rather than the sandwich itself.

[TMD2003]

END OF WEEK 38:

*FUME*

Three weeks with nothing to show for it!

I can understand some things - those of you with kids putting them back to school, being traumatised by the demise of Our Revered Creator, being depressed by the end of summer - but I'd have thought I'd get one entry from someone, somewhere...

Who wants to know what the extra bonus to the competition will be?

Ten more entries and I'll reveal it.