Spider

For the moment (excuse border colour, need to change the bit values around a tad) , not 'Alchemist' one: tune.tap

Thank you. 🙂 Appreciate the detailed reply. I guess (indirectly) I was vaguely correct in that it sounded partly familiar , to some degree at least! 🙂

Ah OK no problem. 🙂 Appreciate you checking for me and "thanks Richard" too. I will still extract it however. 😉 Moving on in 'platforms in general' both Kokotoni Wilf and Frank-N-Stein are well worth a mention. The former for having a 'fly' feature instead of jump. The latter for aside from being majority written in (compiled) Basic the jump feature only works directly vertical in certain places. The re-release updated 'rebooted' version does expand on this to a more regular jump routine in the bonus screens.

Thanks Richard 🙂 I was just about aware of this but having been offline a few days I'd not had chance to post about it. I've not examined it yet in detail either. I had heard "back then" there was a built in 'writetyper' rumour but there was never anything posted. The way its been coded is highly crafty though as it makes no attempt to (as I understand it, which is not great with the Acorn MOS or 6502 assembly) it does not look at the keyboard input via the MOS with its built in iirc 'key scan' routine nor via reading directly, instead it attempts to grab the keycode directly from #236h , Speccy rough equivalent might be considered to be 23560 ake the "LAST_K" system variable. 🙂

I think I'll probably extract its player code and tune data (likely uses ROM routine anyway not checked but a lot of early games do) and then assemble a quick stand-alone .tap file. I'm hoping @Richard Hallasmay be able to confirm or deny its a 'real tune' as such. 🙂

Well noted. 🙂 Not sure how that escaped me. Your suggested POKE's do work OK for the Bug-Byte variant. The short one I prefer is (BB version) 37488 , 201 to make the routine exit a tad early 🙂 SP equivalent of that is 37499 , 201

As usual, thank you for the updates 🙂

Tiny updates. 🙂 Two for the editor. Addition one: The toolbar now has a button for the 'spoiler' text to save having to manually enclose the word via 'BBCODE' in braces for both opening and closing it. Addition two: A font background option is also now easily available, should you wish for instance to draw attention to a specific area of text. In some instances this is more helpful than changing the text colour itself. One small addition for the reactions system: A new icon was added. I'll not say what it is, I'm sure it will be discovered quickly enough! This was one that I had intended to add a while back. I've purposely avoided "silly" ones and kept the reaction icon choices sane and sensible for our community. Finally they say " a picture speaks a thousand words " so here is one of the editor toolbar before and after, as you can see nothing was removed to allow the addition of the two new buttons (built into the editor but not enabled by default) options:

She's never really been that much of a concern though even in the standard game ? 🙂

I had a good friend also download and listen to it, but again she could not ID it either. Perhaps it just "sounds like" a section of something else and that is the reasoning. I'm not sure. Quite a few level intro tunes in Specventure (this is a decent game trying to get out) are vaguely familiar too.

That's the way I was thinking (without looking at the code) just not call the code that draws it all (rope/guardians/arrows) I do wonder what would happen if a rope was in the bathroom or top landing however but that is off topic, assuming it was still displayed.

That may be a saner (easier to code too) solution as its not unviable that 'he's won' so the guardians have run away! It does make more logical sense than allowing him to pass through otherwise erm 'solid' sprites.

Vague recollection of the C64 version of JSW applies some kind of immunity to M.W during his "dash" , I may have to check that. I think a few years back I may of mentioned this idea for custom games at one point ie when in 'mode 2' (run to toilet) perhaps collision detect should be disabled, this is more helpful for altered layouts where the designer then does not have to be hugely concerned with guardians 'in the way' 🙂

Most welcome! 🙂

Thanks. 🙂 Its well beyond my area (musical items) at all, example being Zzoom, I've heard that title so many times but I cannot put a name to it 😞 🙂 I do remember at least a couple of people said it sounded vaguely familiar but could not place it. I did wonder if that Shazam program might be able to ID but decided to not bother installing any random stuff to find out. South Bank Show ? 😮 I remember that from the 80's ? I did not know it was still about.

Not a trick question. Attached is a small 20second mp3 file from Alchemist. I'm not a "musak fan" but I'm sure this is part of a real classical piece of piano perhaps ? Can anyone ID it please ? , I stopped recording where I did as it loops at that stage. Alchemist.mp3

The above manual pokes were helpfully converted to a .pok file as attached. I can't do an 'undo' for it for two reasons: 1. Spin does not always honour the undo value for some reason, Spectaculator does as does Zero and Fuse (iirc) 2. As part of it is user set during load, I'd be forced to set a preset colour choice. I've called it chaos mode but I suppose its not really that bad, just try a few rooms with it applied anyway: Mono_Plus_Patch.pok Apply during title screen / gameplay , ie: anytime after menu has 'done its stuff'

I did plan on this earlier but there were some time constraints. BB: #870E = SP: #8714 BB: #8908 = SP: #890E BB: #902B = SP: #9036 Attached are three slightly messy (sorry) combi pics of the disassembly, however its likely enough for what you want as you can clearly see the locations. BB version on left side and SP on right side, so you can see its properly 'matched up' , the addresses you mention are highlighted (obviously only in the left part as the SP version is in a slightly different place!) 🙂 Ignore 'breakpoint' red dot on them, and the rest of the code around the indicated line(s).

One thing I did note about Skyranger that was similar to SD and BTS is the border colour cycle during the 'title tune' 🙂 That seems to be a Microsphere trait (its good) 🙂 CSC is quite different. Its hard to play with not being able to 'see in' too well, as the outer building wall is there. You can make a small change to the code to make it draw the moving graphics outside (on top) of the background , you can see what's going on when you do this but cosmetically it looks quite bad 😄 I'm not aware of what happened to them, I'd like to assume they are perhaps still involved in the software industry at some level though. I've not tried The Train Game, I do remember trying Evolution at one point in the past. Although quite basic it was perhaps a good candidate for a complete rewrite in assembly with a few more graphics rather than 8x8 blocks.

It is the Bug-Byte version. 🙂 I half thought it was in the file descriptor but its not. Probably the quickest way to fix it without changing the code code (to halt the game etc) is to simply insert the data from 45056 / #B000 from the SP version into the BB version of this, that way the game graphics (cavern and sprites) data will be using the SP version.

@IRF has answered you @crem but that's the correct file. For reference the Mastertronic and VentaMatic are based on the Software Projects release too, the latter has a different loader with a vaguley hidden cheat and some language changes, the former is missing a single byte of data from the end of the code, effecting the horizontal guardian in Final Barrier in its appearance.

That's excellent Norman 🙂 🙂 Well spotted! , It is something that is overlooked. Don't forget the items too 😉 Pic attached:

One more thing I appreciate about the above file is the fact that a small 'third screen' preview of each cavern has been provided. 🙂 This is an excellent nice thought, and while I'm at it the fact the score alternates in colour for each point incrementation.

Ah yes. 🙂 Microsphere. David and Helen Reidy. There was a decentish article in one magazine back then. I think they had some extra help from another person with the graphics designing at one point or another. I've not dug out the article. The first game I saw from them in late 84 or possibly early 85 was Wheelie, not actually quite my "cup of tea" but I did appreciate the good gameplay. This was something that was brought around to me by a relative, who lived nearby a video hire shop (ah the good old days of BetaMax and VHS tape hire!) , point being this place hired out original games for week iirc for a small sum. Off the top of my head here the first games I saw from said place (I did not se them all that were hired) were Wheelie, Frank-N-Stein, Pyramid, Kong, Chuckie Egg and likely a few others, memory fades! Back to Microsphere itself, yes I did purchase SkoolDaze 'back then' , I actually still have it! First thing that struck me was the loader with its initial bright red screen with yellow ink and its high speed. I'll not go into the loader here as its off topic I guess. I do remember having a bit of paper with a list of battles on that I'd discovered during playing etc. Back To Skool again was so impressed with the first game I managed to cobble enough to get this too. You must not forget "Contact Sam Cruise" 😉 as that is a similar vein, slightly different gameplay, I do have this now (got it about 4 or 5 years ago I think in a small bundle of a dozen titles), it was not really a game I could get into too well. I think somewhere I did post about this, the fact that the 'game core' engine as such is likely not that far different between SD/BTS and CSC, I do wonder if any other games were planned using this 'engine' as such, if that makes sense. I could not find any evidence of this unfortunately. It would be interesting to ask even if it was only "ideas at the time on a bit of paper" if anything was actually planned or not. SkoolKid released the excellent PiSkool and SkoolKit, so you can modify the game engines a bit too, I do recall messing about with this a few years back, great fun! But there's disassembly's of all three of these games available. 🙂 Microsphere did release a few other titles but they were iirc not that well known about perhaps, I don't recall seeing any 'in the plastic' so to speak , as in on a shop shelf back then but its quite possible I may of overlooked them. EDIT.. Completely forgot about SkyRanger ( ! ) , I had this too when it appeared on Mastertronic re-release, iirc partly on the strength of it being a Microsphere game, however it was again not really my "cup of tea" , pretty sure there's a decent game in there trying to get out though. Perhaps I should of played it a bit more! 🙂

I did at one time grab all Software Projects and Bug-Byte's games that were listed (and not denied) as its quite surprising how many other good titles they actually have. I mean, when 'Software Projects' pops into my mind I think of JSW and to a lesser extent, MM. Similar with Bug-Byte I tend to immediately think of MM 🙂 There are a few erm 'not great' titles from both 'houses' though, but to be fair the same could be said for most others too. To a slightly lesser extent PSS do have some cracking titles inc FNS (bug fixed and slightly easier version available I modded) Is a lot to be said about the smaller or less well known 'houses' too, Atlantis being another perhaps. 🙂