Spectrum Computing

Ast A. Moore wrote: ↑Mon Feb 26, 2018 3:22 pm Smooth, 50 fps masked sprites...

How do you know it's 50fps? Can you tell just by looking, or is there some other way you'd know that?

Thanks! The music is mostly fixed now, I believe.

Great! Actually I believed that it was intended

dfzx wrote: ↑Wed Feb 28, 2018 9:04 am

Ast A. Moore wrote: ↑Mon Feb 26, 2018 3:22 pm Smooth, 50 fps masked sprites...

How do you know it's 50fps? Can you tell just by looking, or is there some other way you'd know that?

Both. (Trust me, I know a thing or two about writing games for the Spectrum, which run at 50 fps. )

P.S. You use Fuse, right?

Ast A. Moore wrote: ↑Wed Feb 28, 2018 9:23 am

dfzx wrote: ↑Wed Feb 28, 2018 9:04 am How do you know it's 50fps? Can you tell just by looking, or is there some other way you'd know that?

Both. (Trust me, I know a thing or two about writing games for the Spectrum, which run at 50 fps. )

OK, so for those of us without that experience, what's the other way?

dfzx wrote: ↑Wed Feb 28, 2018 9:26 am

Ast A. Moore wrote: ↑Wed Feb 28, 2018 9:23 am Both. (Trust me, I know a thing or two about writing games for the Spectrum, which run at 50 fps. )

OK, so for those of us without that experience, what's the other way?

1. The intuitive way (requires experience, though): Slow your emulator down to 2 percent of the original speed.
2. The tedious but informative way: Break into the running program using your favorite debugger/monitor and single-step for the duration of one frame (approximately). (Most emulators have debuggers that display the current T state. Fuse, does, anyway.)

I loved the carton game style

How do you know it's 50fps? Can you tell just by looking, or is there some other way you'd know that?

Actually there is some hidden feature in Spin emulator which enables it. I don't remember the details but you have to press some obscure shortcut and extra buttons will appear. One of them is "advance emulator by one frame". So you pause the emulator first, then press the button, game advances by one frame and you see if something moved or not

Interesting.
Maybe someone knows which shortcut activates this option.
Does SpecEmu have such a feature?

Maybe someone knows which shortcut activates this option.

Found it:
https://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/ ... ent_141012

There's also the option to "frame advance" whilst paused - pause the emulation, then right click the pause button. The buttons will be replaced with a new set - debugger, full speed and frame advance. Clicking frame advance will emulate one frame and then stop.

Ralf wrote: ↑Fri Mar 02, 2018 10:09 am Maybe someone knows which shortcut activates this option.

Found it:
https://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/ ... ent_141012

There's also the option to "frame advance" whilst paused - pause the emulation, then right click the pause button. The buttons will be replaced with a new set - debugger, full speed and frame advance. Clicking frame advance will emulate one frame and then stop.

I'm trying to think what "frame advance" actually means. Does it mean "run as far as the next HALT instruction"? Or until the next interrupt fires? What actually would a frame advance be, in Spectrum terms?

It could be as simple as 'run until 20ms (simulated) has passed'.