Any chance of identifying the game used in this clip?
Any chance of identifying the game used in this clip?
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.
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.
Re: Any chance of identifying the game used in this clip?
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
- 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
Re: Any chance of identifying the game used in this clip?
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.
Re: Any chance of identifying the game used in this clip?
I have the archive on my computer, so if you don't want to download it, I can do the search
- Ast A. Moore
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Re: Any chance of identifying the game used in this clip?
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.
Every man should plant a tree, build a house, and write a ZX Spectrum game.
Author of A Yankee in Iraq, a 50 fps shoot-’em-up—the first game to utilize the floating bus on the +2A/+3,
and zasm Z80 Assembler syntax highlighter.
Author of A Yankee in Iraq, a 50 fps shoot-’em-up—the first game to utilize the floating bus on the +2A/+3,
and zasm Z80 Assembler syntax highlighter.
Re: Any chance of identifying the game used in this clip?
One of them was screen attributes for sure.
Byte alignment not an issue - only 8 options to try
Byte alignment not an issue - only 8 options to try
Re: Any chance of identifying the game used in this clip?
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!
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
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Re: Any chance of identifying the game used in this clip?
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.zxbruno wrote: ↑Tue Apr 19, 2022 3:47 am
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've had a search but I unfortunately couldn't find it.
Re: Any chance of identifying the game used in this clip?
Not sure, maybe Copyupi? (https://microhobby.speccy.cz/mhf/045/MH045_28.jpg). Can read blocks without header.Juan F. Ramirez wrote: ↑Tue Apr 19, 2022 6:55 amI 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.zxbruno wrote: ↑Tue Apr 19, 2022 3:47 am
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've had a search but I unfortunately couldn't find it.
- Juan F. Ramirez
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Re: Any chance of identifying the game used in this clip?
No, I don't remember it as the one I'm looking for.+3code wrote: ↑Tue Apr 19, 2022 8:01 am
Not sure, maybe Copyupi? (https://microhobby.speccy.cz/mhf/045/MH045_28.jpg). Can read blocks without header.
- Juan F. Ramirez
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Re: Any chance of identifying the game used in this clip?
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
Re: Any chance of identifying the game used in this clip?
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
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Re: Any chance of identifying the game used in this clip?
If you’re on Twitter, you could ask Edgar Wright to see if he remembers or knows.
Re: Any chance of identifying the game used in this clip?
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.
Re: Any chance of identifying the game used in this clip?
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.
Re: Any chance of identifying the game used in this clip?
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.
Re: Any chance of identifying the game used in this clip?
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.
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.
Re: Any chance of identifying the game used in this clip?
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.
Edgar Wright never replied btw.
zxbruno wrote: ↑Wed Apr 20, 2022 7:07 am 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