Spider

Huge congrats on the 10th anniversary 🙂

It can freeze gameplay (usually at a critical moment!) , at least for me due to disk writing/caching. If I just want a quick video of play normally I'd do an .rzx, then play it back and record the playback as an .avi. Regarding rzx's in general: I'm the opposite, I record in Spectaculator and otherwise generally use ZXSpin. In this case I needed to record in ZXSpin because I could disable contention*** , but for .rzx the reason I use Spectaculator is simply as taking a snapshot doesn't pause the action something ZXSpin seems to do which is annoying. 🙂 *** I think I'm capable (just) of doing it for real but its a fair bit of work.

I only have (and use) ZXSpin and Spectaculator. There are reasons mainly boring ones why these two, I think it was also either Fuse or Zero I had before the reinstallation a few months back as that had very advanced breakpoints which I needed (break on value increasing or break on register change etc) It refused to 'accept' full frames to record an .avi despite retrying it the next day too. It has its quirks.

I wanted to try something else , although I (don't plan yet) on doing it. Attached are two three very short videos. Not going to record a 'standard' game First video is the standard game, I just chose to start recording in Master Bedroom, to try to emulate reasonably near the other two videos. The second video is the JSW 2024 game The third video is also the JSW 2024 game but this time without any lower memory contention. Video 1 was recorded in Spectaculator (last) , video 2 and 3 were recorded in ZXSpin. Also I noted that Spectaculator seems to playback at a higher speed, or its an optical illusion. There is a difference however the differing recording platforms (as ZXSpin decided to have a bit of a hissy fit about recording anyway) should be noticeable. Care was taken before recording to ensure that the setting were the same aka same 'later ULA timing' and 100% emulation speed at standard CPU cycles (3.54Mhz) Video 1 (The original standard game) Video 2 (The 'as released' JSW2024 game) Video 3 (The 'as released' JSW2024 game but without any contention) EDIT... Decided to include a standard game anyway. EDIT2... Sorry about the video quality (or lack of) and the fact they don't start properly, that's likely the avi to mp4 conversion going astray. Further examination shows that the standard game with the original copy routines but without contention is also not far off comparable to the newer speed, that is they both seem to gain by an equal amount. A rewrite is needed to properly do it. 😉 🙂

I had a look at my .rzx from 7th December (before it's release to be fair! a 'final pretest' run) with a 'best time' of 11:34pm , I had no doubt you'd beat this though 😉 🙂

MM is fine if set at say 125% or 150% , its still not "that" fast 🙂 I think for both of these on that platform the programmers did well to squeeze it all in.

Thank you @jetsetdanny I've read through the description and details on your site and its perfectly fine to me too. I hope the speed boost was OK too, I have found (with standard or near standard game layouts) its not insane. It could go faster*** but that might be a lot of work. All good and thank you for playing, the ending time is also quite impressive. I knew you'd beat my time by a fair margin though. 🙂 *** Moving room data out of contended memory = another boost + changing to stack copy method (I need to look into it) = another boost

The link in the first post , the site no longer exists or the owner has perhaps changed URL. I'm not sure exactly what you're asking for with the new forum, unless there's a lot of events ? We do have a calendar here but I've never enabled it. 🙂

Ah yes I was aware of that , and the 'upgraded' (updated?) versions make use of this, the Electron Manic Miner is a good thing too. Regarding the newer JSW and MM as you know he took the opportunity to add more colours too which is a good thing. I do rate them quite highly.

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?p=166858 Must admit, I had never heard of this before...

To be fair the 'rebuilt' Manic Miner and JSW1 for these are much improved and have a 'spectrum' feel to them.

I look forward to seeing this 🙂

Thank you from me too. They also have (for me at least) some other interesting 'Spectrum themed' platform games, namely Frankenstein , Automania and then things like Pyramid et al...

No problems. That's a good point. I have found it best to work with a .tap file personally but others may prefer a snapshot.

I'm surprised it opens the .zip properly. Extract the .zip and place the game file inside the JSWED folder/directory, then open that from there. 🙂 There's no issue with W7 (or W10 at least) with JSWED, it is not an OS concern that's for certain. I'm not 100% sure what else that file has for fixes, IIRC that one has something like a renamed Bathroom perhaps. I do have a fixed standard one somewhere on site, with the four official fixes applied as well as another one to 'fix' the Swimming Pool rope if needed.

Have to agree (as a pet cat owner and also a carer of a feral colony) lovely. 🙂

Yes but vs 8 (well 16 I suppose) ... Not a fan of its styling though or colour. The hardware I do like very much. Reminds me that I need to ask about (elsewhere) tape input as it doesn't work on the emulators I have to hand.

The specs are OK... Sound is a SA1099 chip similar but higher spec than the AY chip found in the 128 Spectrum and Amstrad CPC ranges, amongst others. In particular its six channel , with stereo*** *** Technically the Spectrum is too but its been joined internally as I recall. Here: https://www.worldofsam.org/products/sam-coupe-specifications

Now you've mentioned it, yes I see the similarity... https://homepridebaking.co.uk/

Sorry its the same resolution in that mode as the Spectrum 256x192 , I mixed the numbers up. 🙂 The listing: Note I've tried to name the loops with easy to follow conventions. The linelength I did try with a conditional if it was in a high res mode set it higher however I couldn't recall the specifics and had no online access to the manual. So its there doing nothing really. Yes it will go larger so the high res low colours mode only fills a portion of the screen. You can see my experimentation in the video below, note unforuntately captured at half res so the text is not always readable sorry. You'll see the Basic (from the Sam) is virutally identical the Spectrum too: listing.mp4 Its worth watching , despite what some say I do rate this machine highly however (don't lynch me) I hate the styling of it, the hardware I like a lot. IMO it should of been in a case like the Amiga 500 , or the Sinclair PC200 , drive on the side etc and keypad. You'll see one mode is a single attribute line per row so 8 lines of colour per block as such, plus first the normal speccy mode , that one , then a high res low colour (like maybe 4 only selectable) then the high colour mode, 256x192

The Spectrum one will run 'as is' on the Sam Coupe. I can't get a video at the moment. Running it in Mode 0 is the same as the Spectrum. Running it in Mode 4 (iirc I think its 4) , is the same resolution 192x256 however there's zero colour clash as each pixel in the 8x8 block has its own attribute value too. Cost=24kb vs 6.75kb

Output video (BBC version) inc minor adjustments. My VDU 23 code is to just hide the cursor flash... Note late on I've used higher colour numbers to induce flash effect. listing.mp4 Spectrum version , again adjusted a bit. Top lines only to set bright white ink black paper properly. And the video... listing_s.mp4

@Jet Set Willie I did try the BBC one and edited it sadly not saved. This was actually something I'd saved the page from long ago (dated 24/02/22 I'd saved it for some reason, just this page)

It would have to be assembly then. Small steps to start with , maybe adding routines to call from Basic etc. AFAIK this is how FrankNStein was done, its compiled Basic but has a few pure assembly routines to call.

Saw on Instagram feed earlier: (not JSW related) VID_27000822_144826_237.mp4