Any chance of identifying the game used in this clip?

[zxbruno]

When the movie Scott Pilgrim vs The World was released years ago, I immediately recognized the loading noise used in the two coffee shop scenes. We also know the director, Edgar Wright, is a Spectrum fan. Back in 2010 I asked WOS members for help identifying the loading screen that was used in the movie, but we had no luck. I'm wondering if 12 years later we'd be able to solve this "mystery" I have the blu-ray and can extract uncompressed audio if it helps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N13WI3oVda8

A link to the old topic and some topic-related discussions:

https://worldofspectrum.org/forums/discussion/31834/
https://worldofspectrum.org/forums/discussion/34962/
https://worldofspectrum.org/forums/disc ... show-again

Links in those topics are probably broken but the subjects may be of interest to someone.

By the way, Star Trek 4 gets mentioned a lot by Spectrum fans as a movie that used Spectrum loading noise, when in reality it was ham radio data that was later decoded by someone with a Cray 2 computer.

[zx64]

If this mystery doesn't let you sleep at night, you can always:
- extract data from the loading sounds. probably best to do it manually, just by looking at the waveform. just few bytes might be enough.
- download entire WOS archive
- write a program to scan all the spectrum games / software and find the bits you extracted before. Not very hard, you can get some open source emulator and look at the code responsible for loading TAP / TZX files

[zx64]

Actually, even easier option. WOS archive has game loading screens as well. As separate uncompressed files. One of the sounds in the movie is definitely a loading screen. So first, you just try to find the bits in all the loading screens. Every decent file manager can do it.

[zx64]

I have the archive on my computer, so if you don't want to download it, I can do the search

[Ast A. Moore]

Well, it’s a wild goose chase. The snippets so tiny and clearly in a random order. I don’t see how one can even begin to arrange them on the screen (assuming they come from a loading screen), even if one manages to reconstruct all the data. On top of that, the extracted bits are not necessarily going to be byte-aligned.

[zx64]

One of them was screen attributes for sure.

Byte alignment not an issue - only 8 options to try

[zxbruno]

I'm going to get the uncompressed audio but everything else that was mentioned here is beyond my capabilities. Should have the audio ready in a few days.

Many years ago the Spanish Microhobby magazine provided a utility that could read Spectrum tape data from any part of the code block, no need to read the pilot tone nor the sync pulse. I don't remember if it would be helpful here but I remember being very impressed by it.

@zx64: Once I have the audio I'll let you know. Thank you!

[Juan F. Ramirez]

Many years ago the Spanish Microhobby magazine provided a utility that could read Spectrum tape data from any part of the code block, no need to read the pilot tone nor the sync pulse. I don't remember if it would be helpful here but I remember being very impressed by it.

I remember typing and running that program which came with Microhobby, it displayed the code in the screen while loading even when you pressed play in the middle of the loading, really impressive.

I've had a search but I unfortunately couldn't find it.

[+3code]

Many years ago the Spanish Microhobby magazine provided a utility that could read Spectrum tape data from any part of the code block, no need to read the pilot tone nor the sync pulse. I don't remember if it would be helpful here but I remember being very impressed by it.

I remember typing and running that program which came with Microhobby, it displayed the code in the screen while loading even when you pressed play in the middle of the loading, really impressive.

I've had a search but I unfortunately couldn't find it.

Not sure, maybe Copyupi? (https://microhobby.speccy.cz/mhf/045/MH045_28.jpg). Can read blocks without header.

[Juan F. Ramirez]

Not sure, maybe Copyupi? (https://microhobby.speccy.cz/mhf/045/MH045_28.jpg). Can read blocks without header.

No, I don't remember it as the one I'm looking for.

[+3code]

https://foro.speccy.org/viewtopic.php?t=607

Located, MH 81, p.26.

Edit: https://microhobby.speccy.cz/mhforever/numero081.htm

[Juan F. Ramirez]

That's it!

[zxbruno]

Ha! I completely forgot I created a topic about that routine on Speccy.org 14 years ago I also forgot it loads the code as characters, not screen data...

Code: Select all

        10         ORG 40000
        20         DI
        30         LD HL,#53F
        40         PUSH HL
        50         LD DE,#4000
        60 LBYTE   LD A,#7F
        70         IN A,(#FE)
        80         RRA
        90         RET NC
       100 NBYTE   LD L,1
       110         LD BC,#B201
       120 LBITS   CALL #5E3
       130         JR NC,LBYTE
       140         LD A,#CB
       150         CP B
       160         RL L
       170         LD B,#B0
       180         JR NC,LBITS
       190         BIT 7,L
       200         JR NZ,LBITS
       210         LD A,L
       220         CP " " <SPACE
       230         JR NC,OK
       240         LD L," " <SPACE
       250 OK      LD H,0
       260         ADD HL,HL
       270         ADD HL,HL
       280         ADD HL,HL
       290         LD BC,15360
       300         ADD HL,BC
       310         LD C,D
       320         LD B,8
       330 PCHAR   LD A,(HL)
       340         LD (DE),A
       350         INC HL
       360         INC D
       370         DJNZ PCHAR
       380         LD D,C
       390        INC E
       400         JR NZ,NBYTE
       410         LD A,D
       420         CP #48
       430         LD D,#50
       440         JR Z,NBYTE
       450         LD D,#40
       460         JR NC,NBYTE
       470         LD D,#48
       480         JR NBYTE

[zxbruno]

I have the archive on my computer, so if you don't want to download it, I can do the search

If the offer's still available, please do the search. I extracted the audio, saved as 16-bit PCM mono, and kept only the tape loading noise. I was very careful not to cut anything important

[redballoon]

If you’re on Twitter, you could ask Edgar Wright to see if he remembers or knows.

[zxbruno]

I suspect he wouldn’t be able to say, even if he knew. I just noticed some of the samples can be amplified further without clipping. May or may not be needed. And I’m not on Twitter.

[zxbruno]

Looks like I did have a Twitter account but hadn’t used it in years. Question sent! Now I’m going to sit down and wait for an answer, like Scott waited for the package in the movie.

[zx64]

I have the archive on my computer, so if you don't want to download it, I can do the search

If the offer's still available, please do the search. I extracted the audio, saved as 16-bit PCM mono, and kept only the tape loading noise. I was very careful not to cut anything important

Will do. I think the easiest way to extract the bit stream is to open it in some audio editor and look at the waveform.

[zxbruno]

Thank you. I'm not familiar with bitstream extraction or what it means

After capturing the audio from the DVD I opened the waveform in Audacity, zoomed in, cleared the voice parts and left just the Speccy audio bits with a few seconds of silence between each one. Because of the need to work in sections it took about an hour to do the whole thing. After that I amplified it without clipping and saved the end result in one single mono WAV. I can provide individual WAV files if necessary. I can also re-capture if the WAV needs to be saved in a very specific way.

[zxbruno]

Little bump. Based on the routine below, could someone adapt it or write something similar but make it save the data to RAM instead of displaying characters? I know graphics won't look right if we don't know exactly where to load them in the screen area, but if we could import the data into into Speccy RAM in an emulator, we could use a sprite search tool and examine the code sample to see if it resembles something familiar...

Edgar Wright never replied btw.

Ha! I completely forgot I created a topic about that routine on Speccy.org 14 years ago I also forgot it loads the code as characters, not screen data...

Code: Select all

        10         ORG 40000
        20         DI
        30         LD HL,#53F
        40         PUSH HL
        50         LD DE,#4000
        60 LBYTE   LD A,#7F
        70         IN A,(#FE)
        80         RRA
        90         RET NC
       100 NBYTE   LD L,1
       110         LD BC,#B201
       120 LBITS   CALL #5E3
       130         JR NC,LBYTE
       140         LD A,#CB
       150         CP B
       160         RL L
       170         LD B,#B0
       180         JR NC,LBITS
       190         BIT 7,L
       200         JR NZ,LBITS
       210         LD A,L
       220         CP " " <SPACE
       230         JR NC,OK
       240         LD L," " <SPACE
       250 OK      LD H,0
       260         ADD HL,HL
       270         ADD HL,HL
       280         ADD HL,HL
       290         LD BC,15360
       300         ADD HL,BC
       310         LD C,D
       320         LD B,8
       330 PCHAR   LD A,(HL)
       340         LD (DE),A
       350         INC HL
       360         INC D
       370         DJNZ PCHAR
       380         LD D,C
       390        INC E
       400         JR NZ,NBYTE
       410         LD A,D
       420         CP #48
       430         LD D,#50
       440         JR Z,NBYTE
       450         LD D,#40
       460         JR NC,NBYTE
       470         LD D,#48
       480         JR NBYTE