Spider

Almost, I forgot. The loaders vary a fraction but essentially do the same job. Some of the MAD versions are a byte short, ie code length 32767 not 32768 resulting in a missing pixel or so for the Final Barrier horizontal yellow floor guardian.

There's been a JSW hardware error 😉

Impressive collection! 😮

Most welcome. I suppose I should of taken a pic of the code card and possibly hunted a bit more for JSW2 (I did not see it when going through a box as I was after other 'series' too) though, but it was more in some ways a "my JSW history" I suppose 😮 😄

Yes 🙂 I keep thinking somewhere I have the re-release version of Ted (budget not full price, says "Rack It" on that inlay) but I can't find it. Possible I am mistaken! No matter no need more than one 😮 😄

The Tech Ted topic made me think to do this. Top row: Amstrad CPC versions of MM and JSW2 . JSW1 was never released 'stand alone' on tape for the Amstrad. I do have a copy of it I extracted from my original 'Sold A Million' Speedlocked version, both 'as is' and 'Andy patched' 😄 thankfully SPL is almost identical to the ZX version and just as easy to take to bits 😉 Bottom Row: All Spectrum versions. The far left JSW was the original one I purchased back in the day, yes the same tape and yes it still loads. Same with MM but that was got a few months later. Around a decade or two later ( ! ) I then aquired the Software Projects version of MM and at the same time the MAD version too, they are actually almost identical*** , the far right JSW1 I think I purchased in about 2000 give or take a year. Finally the middle top right JSW is actually JSW2. Its a 'combi' tape of Spectrum one side and Amstrad the other. In regard to JSW2, somewhere I do have the original and re-release versions of it for the Spectrum but I cannot find them at this moment in time hence no pic, sorry. The original release was a 'new back then' purchase too, the budget re-release was acquired around 2000 to 2005 I'd say. I have no CBM or MSX or BBC tapes, as I do not posses these machines. 🙂

I meant to do this a month or three ago 😞 oops. Pic taken this afternoon. Anyway: The slightly larger 'clamshell' type case on the right, the 128K 'MegaMix' version is the very same one I brought new back in the day. The left cassette tape I purchased I think in the late 90's or early 2000's , I could be mistaken. I did at one point have the original I'm sure, although a friend did have a 'backup' ahem, but I did not copy it, I did borrow it on occasion I'll admit. Yes they still load 😉

Great 🙂 Does look better from a distance I agree ( I say that in a positive way 🙂 ) , I found standing about 2 or 3 metres*** was ideal. *** say 6ft to 10ft for those who prefer to operate with this measurement scale.

Excellent 🙂 🙂 Pleased to hear he was able to accommodate your request 😄

Thanks for the explanation Norman. That is a fair bit by the sounds of it to keep track of. I can imagine how slow said routine would be in ZXBasic if it were written, depending on how one chose to do it either with an array (slow) or endless variables. 🙂 Slightly off topic: Quite a few years back now, I tried a couple of simple routines along the same lines as my 'Basic Plotting' with a few different compilers and also if memory served wrote them in slightly different ways. Not to avoid the compiler complaining, merely to see if a more efficient piece of Basic would compile 'better' for want of a word. It did not seem to make that much of an impact, it varied more with the compiler and what you were trying to do, by that I just mean if you wanted to read a shedload of data and display it instead of say drawing endless lines on the screen a different compiler would suit better than restructuring the Basic to make it more palatable to to compile code... There are more modern ones now however some of the 'golden oldies' are still quite good enough for the very very rare occasion I use them. ST FPC3 is about the 'best of the bunch' in my opinion, its quite happy in general at least with even a badly written mess.

I like that. I first thought upon its first few seconds of running that it was (sorry) similar to just a PLOT INK RND*7 ; RND*255 , RND*175 , then I saw it did more and within a couple more seconds the explosion effect. 🎇 ^ Apparently that's a 'firework' emoticon/smile when you search for said term in the box search field.

Did you note the blue power led on the +2A/B ? 🙂 I did 'back then' have one of the very first grey +2's , complete with the sound slightly out of sync with the TV picture. It also featured 'quick snap' tape keys 😞 , a few months out of warranty, possible before that too. Used half a wooden clothes peg to operate , it was fine like that for the next few years. It was not be being a harsh hamfisted teenager then either 🙂 As I discovered much years later the thickness of the plastic keys where they 'wrap over' the metal support bar was slightly thicker, certainly I've not seen another one do it. That's where they snapped anyway on the 'bend' part. Did not have any real loading issues with the grey +2 that I recall, I'd guess just a bit of good luck in that part at least. Sorry to hear you had some issues with yours. Perhaps it was just a slightly off duplicate runoff or tape itself. I do remember the original Dynamite Dan I had, the leader tones for the speedloading part were warbling a bit, I'd assumed it was normal until I tried a few other tzx's years later! So a slightly iffy original tape even a high quality one is possible I guess. Mind you, the multipage codesheet -was- really annoying on that, the colour choices too, reminded me of the Amstrad one (no surprise there) I do have a 'one byte change only' original release, the one with the single headerless block (well its original apart from that one byte) tape file, the single and only change is to let it accept any code, avoiding any nonsense! 🙂 It was about the same time as me, I do recall as pennies had been saved for a long time and I was Speccy-less for a few months getting one from Curry's as soon as they appeared.

A YT review is here , not yet watched myself.

Another YT review is here , at the time of posting this I've not (yet) watched said review but the reviewer has done several videos of our 'creations'

Following on from the recent YT review of Geoff's creation " Willy Does the Great Pyramid! " , the same reviewer also had a video on this title too here At the time of posting, I've not yet watched this.

@geoff, its a good review well deserved. 🙂 Top work. I do note the reviewer does have reviews of some other games here, three at least from a cursory search so I'll add the links (not watched them, could be good or bad!) to each relevant topic too. @jetsetdannyYour joke sort of reminds me of "Fork Handles" by The Two Ronnies. You may wish to check out a YouTube or similar video of this if you've not seen it. 😉 Back on topic: Once again, top work Geoff. Could not find a 'Pyramid' smilie quickly so I thought the 'triangle' one and a camel (desert/pyramids) would suffice: 🐫🔺

Do have a couple more although not posting just yet. I did try compilation too, but the speed increase was not actually great say 20%.

Just another quick one 😉 "Quarter Graphics" Using the built in graphics codes for a quarter 8x8 cell fill: 129 = Upper Right 130 = Upper Left 132 = Lower Right 136 = Lower Left Routine firstly chooses a random block from the choice of four above, then picks a random colour ink. At this stage a further test is made. If a random number between 0 and 10 is higher than 7 then the ink is set to black to 'blot out' the cell to be printed. Next, a small loop is entered with a random number of iterations, between 1 and 3 (to determine how many of which colour to draw) and then in the loop itself a location on screen (0-23 / 0-31) is chosen at random and a further check is done, if the x column is higher than 21 a separate printing routine is called, otherwise its printed simply with AT x,y as normal. The loop then repeats for 1-3 cycles with that same random colour, then the whole code runs again. Note: This was written quickly, without thought to much speed or efficient Basic. I could write it much neater and with probably a bit more execution speed and certainly without such an untidy layout, however it "does do the job" I do realise its only pseudo random. The method used to 'print' on lines 22 and 23 does tend to work fine unless certain pieces of addon hardware are present and its far 'safer' than setting 23659 to zero temporarily as well as a risk of a crash that only really allows you to use 22. Preview pic and tape file: quarter_attributes.tap

Only three, potentially two. ? 🙂 Quite possible have missed one out, I'm -sure- there was some early text adventure with this title, but it may well of been on another platform entirely. Spellbound (Beyond) the QBert type of game Spellbound (Mastertronic) Magic Knight etc Spellbound Dizzy (CodeMasters) platformy game. Never tried it! Not really other than its a bit of harmless fun. No routine in this topic would be laughed at for being too crude or poorly written, if it works it works. The topic died a death on WOS, eons ago. I did consider a new one on SpectrumComputing but thought "what the hell, I might as well have one here" as it is chat for both on and off topic subjects, plus it gives those who may not frequent too many other forums the chance to see/comment on things here. 🙂 Oh it does. I like it! 🙂 I did consider doing something a bit larger but gave up on it.

Have vague memories of it from the arcade. I did find Spellbound (Beyond Software) which is a similar clone and not a bad game all-in-all. On topic: 10 BORDER 0 : PAPER 0 : INK 7 : CLS 20 LET T=0 30 LET X=RND*255 : LET Y=RND*175 40 IF (RND*10) > 3 THEN LET T=1 50 PLOT INK RND*7 ; INVERSE T ; X,Y 60 GOTO 20 Preview: Tape: stars.tap Not efficiently written. Wrote it in a moment while thinking what to put after my opening sentence as I wanted to 'add something'. Will be better in assembly by a long margin (plus that means ease of lower screen plotting via direct altering of 16384-22527) however for now run emulation at high speed perhaps. 🙂

That's actually very impressive @JianYang, I was not expecting (from a cursory read of the Basic) it to be 'that good' 🙂

Both excellent. Does make my head spin a bit though 😄 I have one too that is a modified version of something I found on a Blog (but I can't find it again and I was not using my own computer I mailed myself a text copy of it!) , so I'll see about posting that tomorrow, once I've 'fixed' it. Its vaguely similar to Norman's 'Shape' , except its written in Basic.

Excellent 🙂 Been exceptionally busy with "other things" both here and in real life so not had any time to rewrite a new routine or two for this topic yet.

I did have something I whipped up the other day but the snapshot (z80) crashed in all emulators 😞 I was annoyed enough to bin it. I'll sort a few things out when I can. 😄