Spider

Frank N Stein - Bugfix.tzx Zero modifications other than the patch applied. Note there's very very little room in the Basic to insert any cheats (there's no space to insert the patch this way as pokes) due to ramtop location. Are ways around it such as sticking them into the screen and calling it but that's a 'mod' I suppose. NB: May need loading in 48K mode only. I could 'fix' this but that would be a modification lol.

Frankenstein is an interesting platform game. Get the bug fixed version as otherwise it will falter at about level 8 or so (had this back then when it was new) Surprisingly good perhaps one of the best compiled Basic games actually. Although one post long ago along with others on the WOS forum helped spur the author into an updated version , I still sometimes prefer the original for its simplicity. https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/1849/ZX-Spectrum/Frank_N_Stein

I wonder if the NCB had any words with Gremlin Graphics about this , thinking about it: https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/5617/ZX-Spectrum/Wanted_Monty_Mole Actually saw a bit of an old TV clip of a mini interview with the author, for some reason I'd assumed (even then) he was much older. He was about the same age as me back then...

Thank you as always for these extra details

Welcome / Welcome Back

Congratulations on the anniversary and thank you for both the hard work and the future plans! 🙂

I'm not -that- clear on what/where you want. The screen is easily thought of as (I do anyway) four parts: Pixels top third , 2048 bytes Pixels middle , 2048 bytes Pixels lower , 2048 bytes Attributes , 768 bytes Its very easy to 'copy' pixel data to one third or two thirds or all of it and/or copy attribute data as needed too. Although I tend to think of the attributes as 'one lump' there's no reason why you can't simply copy the middle or lower third along with the accompanying pixels etc. You could experiment with either Basic (FOR/NEXT to copy, works but extremely slow) or LDIR which is not the fastest assembly way but hugely faster than Basic and very easy to use too. Note it is 'copy' not 'move' so the original source data stays there until you erase it. Very crude examples (untested) for Basic / Z80 10 LET S=xxx (source address) 20 LET D=xxx (destination address) 30 LET L=xxx (bytes to copy) 40 FOR A=0 TO L 50 POKE D, PEEK S 60 NEXT A ^^^ About 85 to 90 bytes, could get it to 40 or 50 maybe LD HL , (source address) LD DE , (destination address) LD BC , (bytes to copy) LDIR RET (otherwise it will carry on) ^^^ About 14 bytes , put somewhere sensible and USR it from Basic or CALL it from already within assembly. Hard to give specific examples without knowing what you wanted.

Excellent work and thank you! 🙂

If you don't need the title screen 'as is' you could simply remove the code for it and then (having stored it elsewhere) simply LDIR the 'new' one in, leaving space for the message etc as required. Depending on how much space you have for the 'full screen' perhaps but a lot of 6912 byte screens will compress down to about 4000 bytes (maybe)

Yes its planned. 🙂 The newer software versions (which we'll need to upgrade to sooner rather than later) have this built in, the usual '3 way' toggle , light/dark/system (browser I suspect) preference. Screenshots from elsewhere but the core software is the same:

That really does bring MM to the 'small screen' 🙂 I'm impressed.

I note emulators support varies. Spin does have that 64 colour mode (This is I think Spectra). I don't have anything else aside Spectaculator at the moment installed, I think either Fuse and/or Zero had some other interface capabilty emulation too. Spectra is this (you probably know!) I was thinking of ULA plus as well , not sure if that's the same thing. One of them was dead easy to swap colours via a simple OUT (both in Basic or assembly) as / when needed. I was thinking about that at the time too , if careful timing of colour switching during blanking could get even more out of it, similar to how now its possible to 'cheat the beam' a bit and get what appears to be more colour than intended. IIRC ByteDelight site has this availble. I'm not up on the specifics of each interface (and having internet connectivity issues as I write) so I'm unable to investigate further. I expect there's a Next emulator or two around by now too (not looked!) 🙂 , as I think the cost of real hardware and space needed mean a great many these days are emulator based. Myself I sold my +2A ( too cheaply 😞 ) a few months ago as I'd not used it properly for about a decade, so it made sense to clean it up, new belts and pass onto someone who would enjoy it rather than me starting at a cardboard box. Back to the original question and sorry for going off on a tangent (no pun) it probably would be , perhaps a Manic Miner type game however you're then relying on having people code it too. It would likely be a lot better than one of the video interfaces I mentioned however they themselves lend to ease of colour manipulation.

There's also the ULAPlus and similiar devices, I do recall some games (not specific to here) being altered to support this. I can vaguely remember trying it on emulation and aside from being able to change the base colours around I wasn't able to figure out how to use it but it had potential. I'll confess I'm not even fully aware of the Next's specifications, I'm assuming it will support something similar to what the Sam Coupe offered ? I do realise these days that's a niche item however compared to the Next which is 'available' as such albeit at a cost.

Not at all suspicious 🙂 We do require that in this forum area (and only this one) to pre-approve 'news' type posts that's all, it gives us the chance to either approve them where they are or move them to another forum section if that suits better. 🙂