Spider

Thank you. 🙂 I was going to replay it, but upon thought I'd rather leave it a day or so, to give others the opportunity to create their own .rzx Failing that I'll do a recording of it on the 26th all being well.

😅🤣 Its fine. I half wondered if it was purposely missing. Ah yes you can see I like to run on faster speed. Although I did this in Spectaculator, my preferred emulator is ZXSpin, simply as I can 'fine tune' the speed. I tend to have everything run at about 110% , Spectaculator only offers large jumps. I do appreciate the speed bar however as it made it more fun on the easier rooms/caverns and allowed me to slow it down on ones I find a bit tricky timing wise. It was also good to note the sound was disabled on 'max speed' If I am completely honest here, I would not object if it ran a bit faster than that at 'full warp' either. I don't think it is too fast. If however the speed option was only possible on the title screen it would be different, it does need I think to remain 'in game' to allow adjustment as I'd of never completed Cuckoo's Nest or Nightmare Room at full speed. No issue to code mistook 😉 My route, well the third Attic visit was accidental due to forgetting the Front Door item. It was as mentioned not a speed-run and I did not take an efficient route at all, I was simply wanting a very leisurely game, if that meant I revisited rooms again, so be it. I did enjoy it, and I think that's one of the primary factors. 😇😊 In regard to maximum speed and efficiency I think you'll likely find jetsetdanny is about at the top of this. It;s a quandary, my first thought was "well that is simple enough, simply add a couple of POKE's into the Basic loader before the USR" , but if you're going to do that, and it is as simple as it seems (assuming that section is not compressed) then another minute would 'fix' it. Hmm. Maybe something to mull over for a day or so, assuming the 'codes' are being released tomorrow maybe that would be the ideal time, unless you wish to hold those back to New Year...

Seasonal Greetings everyone Apparently (around my area) risk of a bit of snow tomorrow, which will be interesting if it does happen. Seems rare 'on the day' The other 'card files' are excellent. 😄 Talking of Red Dwarf, I once had the full DVD set and one of the bonus items it contained was their 'full' musical they only showed a part of in one episode. I can't recall offhand which one it was now, sorry. But it was a good 5 odd minutes of 'song and dance' compared to about half a minute or so in the episode. Must of taken ages to do that. Regarding PC's , well I still have my Mesh tower (brought new about 10 or 12 years go now) a Athlon Phenom x6 , its still quite a pleasant machine all in all. Sadly the mainboard limits it to 8GB ram iirc, which it had in when new. Not terribly cheap then. My main machine is an 'ex office' HP XW6600 workstation , its very old (came with XP64!) but with a pair of 4 core Xeon's and 32GB ram, the highest spec it came in at an eye watering cost new, its still very much up to the job indeed. It was a fraction of its new price when I brought it about 5 years ago. The only downside really aside from not being terribly quiet and needing EEC (server spec) RAM, its not terribly power efficient. I'm not up on modern PC's , my sort of knowledge stops at the last of the Pentium 4's before they all went CoreDuo and then onto the i3,i5,i7 stuff. Mentioning briefly CRT monitors @MtM , A few friends have had the CBM CM8833 (I think it was) without major issues. It does sometimes command a price premium which is a bit unjust. However the Acorn Archimedes monitors aside from being beige work very well, I've had two different ones in the past and they are fine. They also benefit from having audio (mono) in and as well as a (wired a bit odd) DIN RGB input have an RGB scart socket too, note there's no composite in signal in these though, its RGB or bust! Biggest issue with them is the annoying power switch that is a push on/off latch and it tends to fail "off" resulting in it being bypassed. Oh that and the small stand to raise it up can collapse on your hands (hurts as its heavy) , otherwise they are dead good. 🙂

This morning, I playtested and completed v1-04 🙂 Aside from some very silly 'schoolboy errors' in the JSW part resulting in me forgetting to collect the item on Front Door meaning I had to go through the Attic three times*** , it was quite good. I played at full speed most of the time aside from a couple of rooms/caverns where a slightly slower pace was necessary. I appreciate the slow falling of Kong in Manic Miner. I am not 100% that the Cold Room timings in that are 100% accurate with the original as I could not do my usual right / jump / left / jump / jump without colliding with the top nasty. In theory and speed its possible do this but its a minor (no pun) concern. The only other thing I noted, and if memory serves the BBC Micro version also does this, if you jump into the flashing Portal at the same time a nasty guardian is in there, you lose a life. In the original as you know if you fall into this from Cold Room, you'll survive. On the JSW part, I found Cuckoo's Nest very tricky indeed. I'm not sure why as the original is a bit timing critical but perhaps it was me. I'll not say more and merely attach the .rzx , please bear in mind its a long one as I was not really doing this in a speed efficient manner, it was more a bit of a relaxed play. Recorded in Spectaculator. Sometimes ZXSpin has issues playing these back, your miles may vary as they say. It should play OK in the former and in Zero and/or Fuse however. Any issues and I'll build a mp4 from it if needed. Thanks @Norman Sword mjsw v1-04.rzx

Thanks @Norman Sword🙂 That's very good. The border effects remind me (without giving it away) of the JSW2 keypad entry screen in one way. Mine took me about half an hour to construct, then about the same time today to sort the 'slightly different' loader out 🤣

Also, I've repaired (I'll speak to them 'over there' at Spectrum Computing later) a Carol selection and Music of various types. This was an R.D.Foord creation but the tzx is slightly askew, rectified in the attached files: Please note: Given they use the original 128K ram-disk commands ( "!" vs "M") they will -only- "as is" work on the original 128K 'toastrack' and the grey +2 , they won't run in the +3 or the black +2 , or a 48K machine for that matter, unless said 48K has an AY addon that supports the PLAY command and a ramdisc! Attempting them on these machines or the black Amstrad 128's will result in a "Nonsense In Basic" or similar error. Otherwise, enjoy! 🙂 128 Music.tzx 128 Carols.tzx

And I have. That was not as easy as I remember it! I've updated the post above to contain the 'alternative' one. Its the same screen. Please try it out. 😉

Most welcome. I half wish I'd rewritten the loader a bit now, instead of it doing attributes first then pixels later (to colour it in as it goes along) I should of used my custom loader that loaded from both start and end of the screen at the same time. Oh well.

Thanks for the update 🙂 I had actually noticed something (here) , guests could not download from this area nor from chat. I've since rectified this.

xmas.tap xmas better loader.tap

I was thinking about a ZX81 or a Multiface for my CPC464 (but that's having a long rest at the moment) , I'm not sure. Or perhaps +D for my +2 🙂

I've not seen it for about 20 or more years! 😮 If it had been 60's I would of suggested perhaps influences of various substances but I don't think that's the case 😄

I appreciate the updates. 🙂 Its sometimes the smaller things cosmetic that upon reflection later we think "I could tweak that a bit more" I'm not sure if any playtesting is pending as such, I do plan on doing one tomorrow or Thursday as soon as all the erm chaos in "real life" dies down a bit. 🙂

I can remember Mr Benn 🙂 Did he ever pay for this wares at the fancy dress shop ? 😮

Thanks. 🙂 I don't mind the game speed, it was the platform and conveyor actions 😄 If it means anything I tend to play JSW and MM emulated at about 110% to 150% , as they are playable at that, if competing I use the lower end of it. Spectaculator only offers CPU MHZ not ideal but Spin gives option to alter the speed without changing the it in such brutal steps directly, also games relying in 'frames' timing will usually work properly at higher speeds too! Will check update version later 🙂

Ooh that looks good. Almost a 'Driller' Freescape style but much better 😄 On topic, thanks for the window option. Works fine. A little short but quick positive feedback: I love the sound effects and tune. I like the effect when you collect a key it moves across up the screen. It plays a bit fast for me but its OK 😄 , if there was a speed option that would be good (and this from someone who likes to play JSW and MM at more than their original speed) I'd noticed the crumbly cells, if you walk along the lower right ones, you have to jump or you fall through too quickly even if constantly moving. The conveyor seems a bit fast in its action in moving Willy along. Otherwise , all very good! 😄

Looks good. I also see other games of interest 😄 Sent you a quick PM about the readme. 🙂 Unrelated: I could not get it to function properly GoDot engine is not responding. Also, is there a key to run it in a window ? I may try it later via virtualisation actually instead. For reference (this might be the issue) I'm using W7x64 with the ESU (so its still updated) EDIT... I was running FS-UAE at that time but minimized, I wonder if that had any effect as its crashed its display driver from the excitement 🤣😞

Ah yes we were down for a few months, hosting issues amongst other things. See here I like your ideas so far and am looking forward to reading more in this topic about them and their progress 😄

Welcome back ! 😮 😄 😄 Good to see you again. An excellent idea. I was actually toying a few months ago of a better 'bug fixed' game as my attempt in 2015, well it worked fine but I -have- learned a lot more since then. Be interesting to see what you decide to come up with or post for ideas 😉 😄

Thanks Norman for the video. 🙂 Steve , its not there anymore unfortunately (afaik) and it was a few years since I last did use it. I'm half confident others on here will know the site I mean, I'm not 100% it was Ovine but hopefully you'll get a response.

I'm slightly reminded of the 'Ovine' (if I recall correctly) online games where you could have many multiple players and have different JSW style levels. Its an excellent idea @SteveSmith and I look forward to seeing 🙂 EDIT... I will concur its best if possible to have multiple sets of items, because in say MM if one player reaches it, the others will not be happy! , JSW could be similar as if its object totals players may run for The Off Licence immediately for an instant topup of items. Not sure how you're coding it and what language but in theory at least an array of some description if possible should assist with multiple items, as in can define the objects for each player.

Thanks again for the updates 😄 🙂

It does sound to me like a worthwhile change. 🙂 Plus you also have a bit of 'free space breathing*** room' if you decide to use it. *** No Manic Miner pun intended.

Thanks for this and the other files Danny 🙂

Those pesky SkyLabs 🤣 😮 🙂 Final Score: 24,133