The ZX Spectrum 40th Birthday Charity Mix tape! :D

[Quantum Sheep]

Hey everyone, hope you’re well!

I’m putting together an itch.io bundle to celebrate our beloved Spectrum’s 40th Birthday next month!

The bundle will run for two weeks, from April 16th to April 30th, with the big day (the 23rd of course!) bang in the middle of that.

I have made some inroads in acquiring games for the bundle, with generous donations from around 10 Speccy game developers so far with lots of room for more!

All proceeds will go to the charity Special Effect (https://www.specialeffect.org.uk) - they are brilliant, and certainly worthy of some attention imho!

I thought, seeing as some of the Spectrum’s best and brightest converge here, I’d post a call to arms of sorts

I want to encourage as many developers to donate as many games as they want to the cause, but there are some rules!

1. Your game must be on itch.io as that’s where the bundle will be hosted.
2. You can donate ONE free game if you don’t have any paid games. Some people apparently look down on bundles with lots of free games, but I don’t want to *not* include free games as a celebration of the Speccy wouldn’t feel quite complete with some games left out. So one free game per developer, I think, is a good compromise.
3. Tools and/or books can also be included if you want to donate something like that, as long as it's available via itch.io.
4. ZX Spectrum Next games can also be donated if you like!


Any questions, please reply to this and I’ll fill you in as much as I can.

Alternatively, you can contact me via email: quantum dot sheep at me dot com (hope that's clear!)

It’s my first time doing this, but how hard could it be, eh?

*panics*

Thank you for your kind attention!

QS =D

[merman]

Best of luck with this!

[Daveysloan]

Fantastic idea, a great way for folks to get a taste of all the great homebrew that's been floating about recently & for a great cause.

[Quantum Sheep]

Hey all, thank you for your support!

Just a quick update - after a few emails back and forth with the kind folks at itch.io and Special Effect, details have been sorted and it looks like we are full steam ahead!

Currently we have about 20 games donated, but we could certainly do with more! If you're a Speccy Developer (or know one!) do please get in touch!

There's plenty of time to get involved, and we can even add games while the bundle is live. I just like to have all my ducks in a row!

You can contact me directly via email: quantum dot sheep at me dot com

Thanks for the support everyone!

QS =D

[cmal]

Great idea and good cause, @Quantum Sheep !! I'd buy the bundle even if I had most of the games in it.

[Quantum Sheep]

Great idea and good cause, @Quantum Sheep !! I'd buy the bundle even if I had most of the games in it.

Thank you, that's very kind and very cool of you!

The community can be pretty supportive of developers making new games, so I imagine a lot of people here will already have some of the paid games on offer.

I know I do!

Having said that, I will still save money on the games I haven't bought by buying the bundle. Hopefully that will be the same for many others, and for those new to the scene, I'm hoping it will represent even better value too while contributing to a good cause.

I've had just one rejection from a developer and that's totally fine. They felt that as their games are free, it would upset people to get free games in the bundle.

I understand that, but the bundle is a celebration of the Speccy, and as I mentioned, I would feel bad not including free games as it would exclude some developers who make excellent games and kindly make them free. I'm hoping to represent the totality of the Speccy scene!

Additionally, I think the way to go is to perhaps focus on the monetary value as opposed to the number of games included.

Hypothetically speaking: Rather than say 'You get 30 games for $10' and then get people annoyed that a quarter are free games anyway, you could say "You get $30 of games for $10"

Does that make sense?

Anyway, the bundle's shaping up nicely! Some developers have actually set up itch accounts for their games for the first time just to be part of this, and one developer even made a special version of their game mentioning the charity for this very purpose!

I should have the page up and running on itch this week for those developers that would like to contribute!

Thanks everyone for your support!

QS =D

[Nitrowing]

"You get $30 of games for $10"

I'm sure that's how Humble Bundles are advertised

[Lee Bee]

Please excuse me being a dummy but is this about games or music? Isn't Itch a games retailer, so where does the "mix tape" part come in? Apologies again, I can be kind of dumb a lot of the time.

[Quantum Sheep]

Please excuse me being a dummy but is this about games or music? Isn't Itch a games retailer, so where does the "mix tape" part come in? Apologies again, I can be kind of dumb a lot of the time.

You're not dumb at all for asking a question!

And you're right, Mix Tape is usually associated with music, but I've kind of appropriated it for games. So it's a games bundle (to be clear) and you could also have books/tools/music if people wanted to contribute that.

A 'Mix' of sorts. It's also not a tape of any sort!

It's just a name I thought might be clever, but if it's confusing for a lot of people I'll certainly consider changing it!

Maybe 'Games Mix Tape' would work?

Hope that clears things up?

QS =D

[Lee Bee]

Thanks for the clarification Makes sense now!

[Quantum Sheep]

Hi all, hope you're well!

Just a quick update! I've got some great responses from developers who have generously agreed to donate games to the bundle! I feel a lot better about how it's looking now.

(It's looking fab, btw!)

I tried setting up a bundle page over the weekend but ran into some problems - the most pertinent being that I don't seem to be able to add more games to it once it's set up!

This just means I have to have everyone 'in' before I make the bundle page!

If you're a Speccy developer for either games or tools or even books, with whatever you have available on itch.io, then do please get in touch! I'm going to try and set the deadline for the end of the week so that I can get the page up a week before it goes live (16th!)

Thanks for reading and for your support!

*sheepyhugs*

QS =D

[firelord]

Very good news!
Are there any emulators in the bundle? (I don't know if there are any in itch.io)

[Quantum Sheep]

Very good news!
Are there any emulators in the bundle? (I don't know if there are any in itch.io)

This is an excellent point! I can't find any emulators on itch for the Speccy, which is a shame as I would have asked if they could be included in the bundle so everything's nice and tidy!

Instead, at the end of the bundle description, I'll add links to a few emulators for people to try out.

I've already got ZEsarUX in mind as it was made by chernandezba who is generously donating his Cursor Draw Reborn tool to the bundle

I know there's Fuse and Retro Virtual Machine 2 and ZXSP so I'll include links to those too.

Any other recommendations?

Cheers,

QS =D

[PeterJ]

@Quantum Sheep,

There are loads on my emulator comparison spreadsheet. The ones with green highlighting at the bottom of the sheet have been updated recently.

viewtopic.php?p=89424#p89424

[firelord]

Any other recommendations?

I don't want to be greedy but I find it quite difficult to find ZX games in itch.io with just searching .
It would be nice to have as many free ZX games as possible -not only paid ones.
I mostly discover games through forum posts.
So I would suggest even the developers of free zx games to add their games to the bundle to be even more tidier!

What would be the final price?

Thanks

PS. Also, a list of the games in DOS SGD .dat format would be even better - I could just import them to my SGD (Joking )

[Quantum Sheep]

@Quantum Sheep,

There are loads on my emulator comparison spreadsheet. The ones with green highlighting at the bottom of the sheet have been updated recently.

viewtopic.php?p=89424#p89424

Thank you Peter, I will certainly take a look at that!

Any other recommendations?

I don't want to be greedy but I find it quite difficult to find ZX games in itch.io with just searching .
It would be nice to have as many free ZX games as possible -not only paid ones.
I mostly discover games through forum posts.
So I would suggest even the developers of free zx games to add their games to the bundle to be even more tidier!

What would be the final price?

Thanks

PS. Also, a list of the games in DOS SGD .dat format would be even better - I could just import them to my SGD (Joking )

With regard to free games, they currently make up around 25% of the titles included. That may go up or down in the next few days depending on who else wants to be involved!

Additionally, when you go to download a game as part of the bundle you can click on the 'see all by...' button on the top right to see what else they've made. Some developers (like myself!) have free game games along with paid games, so you may find a bunch of free Speccy games that way!

My current thinking is that the bundle will be $9.99 - you'll be getting around $50 worth of games for that, and I hope it's seen as a fair price. I'll make a separate thread on here in the build up to going live to highlight what developers are involved and what games they've donated and people can decide whether to support it or not!


Just in general, I'm in daily contact with a lovely guy called Spencer from itch.io who is helping me sort the bundle out - big thanks to him for his assistance.

And also a huge thank you to all the developers who have been so kind, generous and just generally nice in donating games for the bundle. You lot are awesome, and this couldn't happen without you! Thank you!

*sheepyhugs*

QS =D

[Quantum Sheep]

Hi all, another quick update!

Well, we're nearly there! I had a concern that I couldn't give revenue directly to Special Effect, but we got round this by making the charity add a project page on their account.

This means I can treat their project as a 'game', add it to the bundle, and give all the money directly to them!

Hurrah!

It's a work-around - itch hasn't got back to me on how to do it 'officially' yet, so we're going ahead with this - they may make us change it if it's frowned upon!

But what this means is that I'm ok to go (I think) putting the bundle together - this is the last call for any developers who'd like to add something as each developer will have to approve their game inclusion before the bundle can go live! I imagine that will take a few days to get everyone as people are busy/may miss the notification/etc etc.

Having said that, Itch has told me they can manually add a game once the bundle is live (I think I mentioned that before) so there'll be at least one title added after launch, and I put together a new game myself that will launch on April 23rd and will go straight into the bundle. These two games alone will raise the value of the bundle at least another $5

And having said all that, I'd much rather not bother itch directly to put games in after the fact (they've been brilliantly helpful and I don't want to bother them unduly!) so if you have something to contribute, speak up!

This is all terribly exciting! Just one week to go!

Thanks for reading, for the support, and a massive thank you to the participating developers!

Stay tuned!

QS =D

Edit: just heard back from the developer of the 'other' game to be added once we're live, and they want to go in with the rest - so, so far, it'll just be my game added in the middle of the bundle's run! Just to be transparent. Also, if others do want to join later, they will still be able to according to itch. Cheers!

[Quantum Sheep]

Hey everyone!

Today (about an hour ago!) I set up the bundle

It's looking awesome! There's over $50 worth of games in there (it's about $55 but it fluctuates due to exchange rates as the bundle is in dollars but some of the games are sold in Euros and Sterling as well).

Here's a sneak peek:



I'm trying to work out how everyone approves their individual games (first time hosting a bundle here), and having done that, we should be good to go for Saturday!

Very exciting (and stressful on my end, but hey, them's the breaks!)

Cheers!

QS =D

[Daveysloan]

Very exciting project. I think I've bought quite a few of these already on itch but will definitely be supporting it. It's for a great cause & it'll be worth picking up the ones I've missed!

The Pat Mortia games are worth the entrance fee alone!

[Quantum Sheep]

Very exciting project. I think I've bought quite a few of these already on itch but will definitely be supporting it. It's for a great cause & it'll be worth picking up the ones I've missed!

The Pat Mortia games are worth the entrance fee alone!

I am in exactly the same boat! It's for a great cause, and though I've got a bunch of these games already, the Pat Morita Team games I have criminally missed make it worth it for me too!

There's so much more though, including a recently made game (that is being kept secret till day of release), a new game by me on the 23rd (that's included in the bundle) and a version of an adventure game that was put up on itch specially for this bundle!

I'm happy to report that all the generous game developers have approved the relevant games for the bundle, and we are go for launch on Saturday!

For those who want a look at what's in store, here's a peek at it via my Twitter:

https://twitter.com/Quantum_Sheep/statu ... 9549714438

I personally can't wait!

The bundle will be available from Saturday 16th of April till the 30th.

It's (currently) worth $55, and it's yours for just $10

Thanks everyone for your support!

QS =D

[lfaria]

@Quantum Sheep,
I went to itch.io to get your Lava Birds game (as part of the bundle I bought last Saturday) and noticed that the other newly added games are not available for me to download?
Do I need to buy the bundle again? Or am I missing something (beside the newly added games, that is)?

[Quantum Sheep]

@Quantum Sheep,
I went to itch.io to get your Lava Birds game (as part of the bundle I bought last Saturday) and noticed that the other newly added games are not available for me to download?
Do I need to buy the bundle again? Or am I missing something (beside the newly added games, that is)?

I don't know what the problem is there, and that shouldn't happen!

Make sure you're logged in and go to the bundle page:

https://itch.io/b/1343/the-zx-spectrum- ... e-mix-tape

Try refreshing the page.

If that doesn't work,there should, above the title of the bundle be a message like: "You already bought this bundle" - next to that is a 'download' button - click that and you get a list of all the games available for download.

Planet of Death is the very first game on that list (for me anyway)!

If that doesn't work you can try going directly to the new games by clicking on them on the bundle page - there should be a notification at the top of the bundle page saying 'You already own this game' with a 'download' button there.

My Lava Birds game went live today, so you should be able to download that now too!

Many thanks for supporting the bundle! Hope that all helps!

QS =D

[lfaria]

Make sure you're logged in and go to the bundle page:

Logged in... I see. I can't do that because I have no account there.
It was a purchase without creating any account. Hhmmmmm...

The mail I received after purchase contains the links to all the originally included games (Lava Birds is there, too) and a link to the whole package,
but by following the latter, only the original list appears for download.
I see that these are missing there:
Robot 1 in.... THE PLANET OF DEATH!!
Multi-Platform Arcade Game Designer
Albatrossity
Chez Maxime ZX
Ooze : The Escape

So, I've created an account with the same e-mail address as the purchase and...voilá!
Every time I now check one of the included games (even the ones I don't have a link to), it says on top "You own this game" followed by a download button.
Gotta get them all! (What? No Pokemon titles included? )

Thanks for the help and for organizing this on the first place!

[Quantum Sheep]

I'm so glad you got it sorted and thanks for the support! \o/


QS =D