Spider

Not had chance (read: no 'free time') to look myself yet Geoff. 🙂 I wonder, why this happens ? Genuine question. Is it just coding habits and the way some may write instructions "one way" and others "another way" ? For instance I tend to change colours in Basic with pokes now rather than ensure all the attributes are set as its a bit quicker (and uses a bit less space) although its not as easy to read by a long margin.

If anyone else has any very small 'simple automated display' routines, would love to see. Really needs to be ones where no interaction is required and they continue to run.

Going back to 'Ted for a moment (sorry) Small vid, sorry audio did not record for some reason! 622kb / 1m20s , "Search Loader" 🔨 broken 😮 🙃 😉 😄

To clash or not. Post contains two video's both 4.2mb and approx 40s in length. They are old and were recorded with the (free) Screencast app at the time. But worth a watch 😉 Referring to the Spectrum Basic manual (the one included with all machines) this is the 48K version so its Chapter 17, Page 122. Here's a small excerpt: Here is how it looks on the original Speccies (all of them), colour clash et al because you cannot have more than one ink and one paper choice per 8x8 cell. Note I'm using 'SE Basic' for this hence different cursor and font, but its quite similar... Here is how it looks -without- any colour clash 😮 Same program. Pause it at start to confirm if in doubt 😉 Super Speccy 😉

Small update from 0.06b to 0.08b to fix a (to be fair, rare) possibility of a lock-up/freeze with certain add-on hardware. Should be noted this would only likely occur with a real machine. Thanks to 0xC0DE for the quick update!

As title. 'Chat' is after all really the only area of the forum where 'off topic' (and on topic!) discussion is welcome. 🙂 This is -Best- ran at high emulation speed (at least four times) Standard .sna snapshot, pic of Basic and small 20s/192kb video included, running at a higher speed. Press a key to start. Safe to 'break' rnd_blocks.sna Basic very simple. Line 10 sets sane colours. Line 20 draws random blocks Line 30 erases them by a random number setting them back to black, but not all of them... Line 40 jumps back to line 20 to repeat it again.

Hosted here with permission from the author of the Electron remake " 0xC0DE " from the stardot forum. 🙂

View File Manic Miner Electron 2021 This is the Acorn Electron version of Manic Miner, written by "0xC0DE" and built from Toby Lobster's greatly updated Manic Miner for the BBC Micro ( you can find that here ) To quote the coder of this version, " 0xC0DE " The files attached here are two .zips: One containing four game files and two readme files, the original GitHub readme.md and a shortened plain text .txt of the same. Inside this zip are also the game files themselves, consisting of two tape .uef and two disc .ssd images, one for emulators and one for real machines. The other .zip file contains the screenshots used here, for convenience. The game controls are: Z = Left X = Right RETURN = Jump DELETE/COPY = Pause / Un-pause Q/S = Music off / Music on ESCAPE = End game Attributions: Original (ZX) game by Matthew Smith Initial BBC Micro release by D.J.Coathupe Updated 2021 BBC Micro release by Tony Lobster This Electron version presented here by 0xC0DE Submitter Spider Submitted 05/16/2021 Category Manic Miner [Remakes]  

I was going to say I do have some CPU power but I'm not sure its going to help as its not that "modern" (HP XW6600 workstation as my desktop) but I tend to leave my computer on most of the time anyway, mind you having said that if it is running high CPU usage it will start to eat electricity.

Watched it, excellent. Did do a quick mp4 conversion of it (36mb vs 55 with a bit of a resoultion reduction) but not much point me uploading that now. 🙂

Thanks. 🙂 FWIW or not: Speccy Combo here Oric Atmos here

The idea of the standard 'Miner' sprite is very good, I'd take a wild guess he may consider or make those. Can see why you'd want your own 'Sprite' too Richard for your game creations. 🙂 Here's a short small 50s vid(sadly I should of done this at night or in a darkened room) of a rainbow LED, actually two. They are not in sync anyway. Not really meant to be: I'm sure the model illustrated initially is similar in its 'slow fade' effect.

I've not said much (if at all) in this topic however I have been following it with much interest and fascination. 🙂 I do appreciate the work that's gone into it.

Thanks for posting @Richard Hallas 🙂 I'll only repeat a little bit of my PM reply as its relevant here in that those RGB leds usually have a slow fade effect, still have two functional 10mm ones from a few years ago. @IRF's suggestion has made me think of something so I'll just leave this here 😉

And some non Speccy pics...

Yes it would be best to contact the author if possible to determine what they want to do, if anything. Although its a short message on their static page, they are to be given credit for that, rather than just disabling it completely without anything as some other sites have done. Static is one idea, although iirc there's a lot of scripts on that site for those games I think. Mind you it would preserve the raw 'meat on the bones' of the data around each game / room / cavern etc. Wiki: Well there's the article system here, it offers the ability to create pages and databases, including a wiki style option for editing. Its not used much as you can see. That's just a single database I whipped up a few years ago to store articles etc, as per usual you just create your fields for the records etc. The 4x version is a bit less feature equipped in some ways than the 3x version however a huge gain was made in its usability. Its not really something I've dealt with in great detail, it may have an API in the 4x version. I can probably point you towards some relevant documentation if required. However its probably best to not get too far ahead here with that until the site owner/author has possibly been contacted. EDIT... A 'REST' API

IA / WBM both hold (afaik) it, last grab was Jan 27th this year. There are some tools to permit downloading however a bash script and something perhaps again 'nix wget may be enough, assuming its all there. It would be a shame to lose it however I (not wanting to tempt fate here) don't see it going awol from IA/WBM unless the site owner specifically requests its removal. Its not a site I've visited for quite a while. I did enjoy a few years ago the variations on the games though! 🙂

Some hardware pics taken yesterday. I'll replace this line of text with a link or two later today or tomorrow. +2A ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- +3 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 48K Plus / Microdrive / Kempston

Mainly for @crembut I've provided the results into that test topic now, I thought it best to show rather than just post/say as such.

Thanks Richard. 🙂 I'll attempt a proper reply later bit time limited as I write this now. I strongly suspect on a real Electron it would look very similar as iirc the top area is needed for the trickery, as it runs really fast for that screen mode, given the Elk's constraints being (iirc) half BBC speed in some cases. I have nothing negative to say about it really, if I had to be picky I would say a single line space at the bottom of the screen would look neat but it may not be possible or practical. I note there's the emulator and real machine versions but not sure yet what the difference is unless its a timing issue perhaps. Downloaded that emulator for a closer look over the weekend.

Thanks. Yes I did wonder about that but I'll emphasise the 'development' nature of the pic in the post itself. I've just edited my post above to reflect this a bit more. 🙂 I think once (hopefully) the game is here with its screenshots etc it will be OK. I saw the posts on stardot a few days ago then the link to Twitter where I found the vid/screenshot. 🙂 To slightly compensate here's the real first cavern. Its a very good result for the erm 'crimped' nature of the Electron. The speed is excellent too given this machines constraints over the regular 'B I did take that with ElecrEm as I don't appear to have Elkulator to hand at the moment! Only issue with the former emulator aside from no built in screenshot capability unless its a hidden keypress is I cannot work out what del/copy are mapped to, not that it matters I'll get Elkulator later or tomorrow. The cavern cheat option is a very sane and sensible idea, you can now 'train' yourself for each cavern as many times as you like. Its sometimes a simple idea like this (ie: do not increment cavern ID upon completion if cheat was used to select this cavern) is a brilliant idea. 🙂 Small < 3mb video of some gameplay by the author 0xC0DE, runtime 1m42s. I do hope its OK to have this small video here for reference purposes. Will remove upon request. May wish to lower volume level a little bit first:

I've split the 'truncated posts' that followed on from my post above into their own topic for convenience. 🙂 Said topic can be found here, still in the News/Feedback section obviously. As the issue this topic from 2017 was originally opened for has long been resolved, I'll go ahead and close it. If any more truncated posts are noted (I hope not!) then: Please feel free to post into the existing open topic for them or start a new one for other questions / issues / feedback.

Perhaps (after a bit of thought) as you say dialect it could be similar to how say a "not great" translation of a technical manual (old VCR manuals spring to mind here!) appeared. Tis a 6502 based 'nearest to Speccy' machine though I think!

Thanks @Richard Hallas , I was 'aware' of this and seen some progress but had not had chance to follow it. Here is an old "in development" screenshot of it. Please note as I say this is not how the finished product looks! 'Dev' screenshot posted for reference purposes (and for the curious) Please see my next post for a screenshot of the Central Cavern how it is now. I'll contact the author later today or this week to see if we are able to host it here too, possibly I can do similar to how I did TobyLobster's variant, in that I'll put the files into a zip, put documentation into a text file, take some screenshots etc and write up a description etc ie "the legwork" 🙂