+D BLUE PETER - for Spectrum 128K/+2 with +D a.k.a. BLUE BETA(DISK) - variant for Beta Disk 128 For 2020 CSSCGC by J.R. Waterman 27 September - 2 October 2020 ================================================== Loading instructions -------------------- (For the record, I *hate* the spelling of "disk" with a K, but I've left it intact in the title of the TR-DOS variant, because it forms part of the name of the device.) Assuming that this is all done on an emulator, seeing as real +Ds are as rare as a living Manchester United fan on the Kop... Reset the Spectrum, insert the +D disc, select 128 BASIC and type RUN. (Then ENTER, but you knew that anyway because you're not a brainlet.) The disc contains the five system files required to load G+DOS, and the program will run automatically. If you *have* been a brainlet and tried to do the same from 48 BASIC, you will get a "C Nonsense in BASIC" error as soon as the program encounters a graphic U where there should be a PLAY statement. If everything has gone according to plan, you'll hear my AY translation of Mike Oldfield's 1979 version of the Blue Peter theme tune in PLAY statements. The Beta Disk version is slightly more tricky in that 128K programs will not auto-run. Select 128 BASIC, and type RANDOMIZE USR 15616 to enter the TR-DOS prompt. Type RUN from here, and the game will load and run. Alternatively, if you have an emulator that handles the Russian Scorpion ZS256 clone, select the 128 TR-DOS option at the start menu, and this will auto-run the game. The same warnings apply to the Beta Disk version as for the +D - it absolutely will not work on a 48K model, and I've even put a PLAY statement in the opening screen to stop a 48K model in its tracks. Another ridiculous backstory ---------------------------- (And you thought Corona Capers and Complex Maths... WITH DRAGONS! were about as ludicrous as it could get? Dream on. Most of this has been reproduced in the game's intro, and I've added a contemporary detail to it there.) The year is 1987. You are targeting a new career at the BBC, and you think you could go all the way to the top and be the next half of the Dimbleby Brothers, or maybe the next Jimmy Savile, or Rolf Harris, or someone else whose repulsive actions haven't been unearthed yet and will not be for a quarter of a century or there abouts. With Stars In Your Eyes (oh, wait, that was ITV, wasn't it? Never mind...) you enter the BBC building, ready to impress Auntie's bosses with a presentation delivered via the latest in computer technology - a 128K ZX Spectrum armed with Miles Gordon Technology's +D floppy disc interface! (Obviously if you are playing the Beta Disk version, you have this instead - and it was two years old by 1987, even if it did get its 128K update that year. Think of it as the cheaper alternative for those who couldn't afford a +D, almost as capable, slightly less convenient to use with all those constant RANDOMIZE USR 15619 calls.) But you hit a snag. Despite the overt display of techno-joy, your dream job as a presenter of Tomorrow's World is dashed when Judith Hann resolutely refuses to depart from her position, and will have to be removed from it with a crowbar. Furthermore, you have raised the ire of the BBC technology staff by having the temerity, the bare-faced cheek, to bring in a rival computer! You argue that the floppy disc drive was recovered from a BBC Micro that blew itself up while trying to run Elite (you don't say it was a pirate copy...) but Auntie's bosses aren't having it... ...but you do notice that a researcher's position on Tomorrow's World is awarded to some herbert who was languishing in the cellar of children's television. So, undeterred, you decide this is the best way in, and apply to be a new presenter on Blue Peter. You know that your interview will test your knowledge of the presenters past and present, and the programme is so bollock-achingly ancient that sixteen of them have already passed through the hallowed halls before your arrival. Still, you have your Spectrum and your +D, and connect to Prestel to start your research, knowing you have an unfathomably enormous amount of disc space to save it all to. And then, another snag hits. Lord Yes Sir Alan "You're Fired!" Sugar is also rather teed off that you are using a rival computer to his Amstrad CPC. At this point he is still plain old Alan Sugar, but this matters not to the formidable ex-producer of Blue Peter, Biddy Baxter, who several of the previous presenters had suspected of being a witch. They were right! She conjures up a time portal, and Lord Sugar steps through it... from 2020! By this time he is extremely rich and better known for being the tough, uncompromising boss on The Apprentice - which nobody in 1987 has even heard of - rather than some bloke from the East End who'll flog any old electronic tat to the working classes with the promise that it'll work just long enough until the price of similar and better wares from Japan has come down. (Say what you like about him and his products, but you've got to admit this was a brilliant business strategy.) The future Lord Sugar points at you, the way he would point at a hapless candidate from his future TV programme who's about to be fired, and growls. "So, ya thought ya could trick yer way inta this institution with yer old Cambridge academic rubbish, did ya? I'll make yer life difficult, me old china. You'll be tested on all the Blue Peter presenters right up ter my day!" (Apologies if that sounded more like Mike Brewer, who nobody in 1987 has ever heard of. They should consider themselves fortunate.) Lord Yes Sir Alan laughs maniacally as he steps back through the time portal, which Biddy Baxter has helpfully spun on to 2022 so that the viral horror raging throughout the world in 2020 is all over (BECAUSE IT WILL BE BY THAT POINT, WON'T IT? IT HAD BETTER BE...). As he departs, a floppy disc falls out of his pocket... and it fits your drive! You fire up the Spectrum, load the disc, and to your immense surprise, it is formatted correctly for G+DOS! It contains some very low-resolution screenshots of the presenters you will be tested on... The game itself --------------- You've all worked it out, haven't you? You must identify the Blue Peter presenters, all the way from 1958 to 2020, from some low-resolution screenshots that have been swiped from whatever source I could find on the internet, converted with BMP2SCR and saved on the disc. Fortunately, Biddy Baxter has decided that her meddling with the laws of time and space was a step too far, and agrees to help you. She was the one who conjured up the disc in Lord Yes Sir Alan "You're Fired!" Sugar's pocket, and has saved some text files to it, containing the names of the presenters. But just to make sure you don't get complacent, and in keeping with Blue Peter's permanent seafaring theme, the names are all shown in nautical flags. If you can read nautical flags, this shouldn't be too hard. If you can't, be eternally grateful you don't live in 1987, and you have access to the internet and can look them up. There are four skill levels, which I will leave you to discover. Identify enough presenters, and you will win the greatest prize of all to go with your new job - the BLUE PETER BADGE! Fail in your quest, and Lord Sugar will travel back through time and fire you. Or maybe you'll be dragged into Operation Yewtree, or Jeremy Clarkson will punch you in the face, or you'll be locked in a cupboard with Graham Norton, or you'll be relegated to a late-night graveyard slot on a digital radio station that nobody has ever listened to. Avoid these fates at all costs! Why I did this -------------- We start in 2017 with GReW's (ultimately unfinished) 2017 CSSCGC, which had a challenge called "Such an Auntie-Climax": "To qualify for this challenge, your game must be based on, inspired by a BBC One (or the BBC Television Service) programme shown on the day you were born according to http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk, if there is no listing for the day you were born - then choose a programme from the next available day. If you were born during World War II or before 1936 then choose a radio programme from the BBC Home Service or BBC National Programme. If your birth predates the invention of broadcast radio then you are excused this challenge." I suppose I was cheating in choosing Jigsaw to base my game on - it was in the middle of its first series in July 1979 but wasn't aired on the day that I burst forth into the world (why I chose to be born on a Friday instead of a Monday I will never know). The Jigsaw-based game I started in 2017 was never finished, and for reasons that might be obvious to anyone who watched its earlier series, an version of the Blue Peter theme in PLAY commands was needed for it. Also, Blue Peter *did* air on the day I was born, with a "Special Assignment: Twin Towns", that started when I was 50 minutes old. So you might say this counts as a genuine challenge entry, albeit three years late. Then, I found a CSSCGC entry in 2014 - Brad: The Game - which was a Spectrum conversion of an online "Choose Your Own Adventure" (similar to what Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone were famous for in the 1980s, just without the wizards, goblins and fantasy settings). I was achieved by 588-odd Character Arrays all stored on tape, and I found myself wondering why it wasn't contained on a disc format. It might have been possible to do it with a +3e, but that's not something I've ever looked into - and at 1,476 KB, Brad: The Game would have needed two .MGT images to get it to fit! As for using it on a real Spectrum, good luck - the total length of the "tape", if we can call it that, is 3 hours and 33 minutes. Maybe there was a tiny market out there for saving Spectrum games to VHS tape... This investigation of the CSSCGC archives was because it seems inevitable that I'll be hosting next year's competition, and I needed to analyse the entire output of the CSSCGC from 1996 to the present day, to see what formats were submitted and when, and discover any rarities that I might want to encourage. And I found that nobody has ever submitted an entry on a +D disc - so I thought I would be the first. To make it worth my time, I had to find some flimsy concept that would contain too much data to fit on a standard +3 disc (otherwise, what would be the point?), and 42 screenshots at 6,192 bytes each is a very cheap way to do it - perfect for a Crap Game! Furthermore, there has only ever been one submission for a Russian clone in .TRD format, way back in 2008, and after recently investigating and comparing the various outputs from the CAT command with as many Spectrum mass-storage devices as I could find, which involved learning how to handle TR-DOS properly (as opposed to loading a Russian game, selecting 48 TR-DOS and typing RUN), I thought there would be no harm in converting the game for TR-DOS as well. It was a bit convoluted, as 128 BASIC didn't want to convert the LOAD and SAVE statements after the REM into keyword tokens, so it all had to be done in 48 BASIC, reloaded in 128 BASIC and tested that way. Photos were swiped from Wikipedia, the BBC website, one helpful article on the Daily Mail ("OH MARRRR GOD THE DAILY MAYULLLLL!" - Andy Parsons, or possibly not), or wherever else I could find them, bearing in mind they had to be in a high enough resolution to survive the BMP2SCR process. The people who took the photos in the first place retain the copyright for them, whoever they are, but if any of them come after me for royalties, bear in mind that Crap Games are never, ever sold and this isn't making me a penny (and if you think about it, all I'm really doing is running up the electricity bill higher than it would otherwise be). As for infringement... put it this way. This is a game in the loosest sense of the word, that a handful of people will play for a few minutes at most - and the Russians who will be more familiar with TR-DOS than the rest of us will never have watched Blue Peter when they were kids, mainly because it was still the Soviet Union in those days and anything Western would be banned by the state. So, I suggest that anyone who has a problem with copyright infringement gets a life and worries about some more pressing problems instead. All jabs aimed at the BBC are not entirely unintentional, and that includes the one in the loading screen that you all missed. Although no malice is aimed towards Tomorrow's World, because I rather liked that when it was on. Also, seeing as I featured "God-Emperor" Donald Trump in Corona Capers, it was only fitting that there should be an equally tenuous reference to his equivalent on this side of the Atlantic.