Alternative loading screen (Software Projects)

[Spider]

Here's an 'alternative' loading screen I put together a while ago. It combines both the Software Projects copyright message (diplayed during loading) as well as part of the title screen and the 'flashing' blocks of the original loading screen.

 

The only slightly tricky part was filling in the 'gaps' where it would be blank along the top third, nothing that a bit of careful use of ZX Paintbrush could not fix.

 

The loader does *not* contain the game code. It expects a headerless block of 32768 bytes to be loaded after the screen has drawn. You can return to basic by doing a POKE 32798,201 before running the loader code if needed.

 

The screen is compressed to save loading time, reduced from 6912 (plus say half a dozen bytes for the loader) to 2278 bytes. A significant saving. :)

 

The loader basic and code is very simple:

 

 

 

# Call the screen decompressor (this extracts and moves the screen data to the screen)
 
32768: CALL 32803
 
# Move the loader code (see further on) to 21280 so its out of the game's way:

32771: LD HL, 32785
32774: LD BC, 18
32777: LD DE, 21280
32780: LDIR
 
# Call the loader now we've moved it to 21280:

32782: JP 21280
 
#LOAD "" CODE 32768,32768:

32785: LD IX, 32768
32789: LD DE, 32768
32792: LD A, 255
32794: SCF
32795: CALL 1366
 
# RANDOMIZE USR 33792:

32798: JP 33792

 

The screen looks like this:

 

 

Tape structure:

 

 

Loader .tzx (no game code, only loader)

 

Manic_Miner_New_Loader.zip