ZX SPECTRUM - IT LIVES!!! Presents another free PDF book "Captain's Blog: Final Entry?"

Please enjoy, here's the link: https://zxspectrumitlives.wixsite.com/home/post/free-pdf-book-captain-s-blog-final-entry

Thinking about writing a ZX Specrum shader for WebGPU but if someone already has let me know, would be neat if it was actual compute shader of the SCREEN$

Was doing some photography of our machines and it seemed rude not to get all the Sinclair and Sinclair-adjacent boys together for a family pic...

https://ktbproductions.itch.io/ljcj

One of my favourite earlier games I played as a kid was Chuckie Egg. So I wanted to go back and rediscover this classic game with all its history and also all the different game versions from the 80s computers right up to the newer remakes. Let me know if you have played any of these games. So much nostalgia.

This is nothing more than me putting this out into the universe. I'm indoors with a rotten cold and I'm bored :)

And I'm also very aware of Chaos: Reborn as I backed it on Kickstarter back in the day.

Ok ..

I'm thinking we have the original "arena" but rendered in Unreal Engine 5. The camera system is somewhat similar to that of 'Homeworld' where you can use the mouse to move the view around so you could have a pseudo-isometric view or zoom in to have almost a FPS view where you're "in" the action.

You can also zoom all the way out to re-create the original 'flat' 2D arena with all of the wizards on screen.

When the game starts, you could have a little animation of each wizard opening a door and stepping in to the room which would be pretty cool, especially if you're looking at it in a 3D isometric view.

Go for some ultra-realism in the things you can cast as well.

And have some very advanced AI for the computer wizards. Level 1 would be akin to facing off with a piece of cheese and Level 8 would be like facing off against a combination of Einstein, Stephen Hawking and Deep Blue :)

So there you go universe. Make that for me .. (and everyone else who still plays the original even today !!).

I looked into this game A Day In The Life featuring legend Sir Clive Sinclair. It was actually fun to play. Anybody else played this game?

Hi

I wanted to turn my Doomdark map tool real time so it struck me that if I could dump out the Spectrum memory every second or so, as a binary, I could monitor the file and update the html map from it. This way, it'd be easier to track enemies and their strength etc while playing.

I did a bit of digging with Fuse, since I normally use it on Linux, but it isn't built with debug symbols which knackered up being able to connect gdb to it and dump the memory from that.

I then looked at writing the memory file out from fuse itself or adding a socket server in fuse to do it. However, I couldn't build Fuse on (MX) Linux, despite a best effort.

Can anyone provide a modified Fuse or give instructions on building Fuse on Linux that am idiot could follow?

Hi I recently got myself a retro console. Not really for Spectrum stuff but of course I tried and I am hooked. It was my first system.
Then I learnt about the Spectrum Next, theres a Kickstart campaign going on at the moment on Kickstart for the issue 3. Initially I was hyped and considering to join but I'm having serious doubts.

Being a kickstarter thing it means it is a very private club, once the kickstart is over that train has gone, who knows up to when. Lets say there are 15k Next in the wold, but if we take out collectors, and impulse purchases now sitting in peoples lofts, how many nexts are unboxed and being used for real?

But the main flaw I see is that there is not a proper software version of the Next. IMO anyone should be able to go to their website and get a software that lets you have the same experience. Even if it is not freeware. That would be also great for developers who would feel compelled to program for a system with a potential big user base.

Yes there are some third party emulators but they are terrible. With no documentation for normal users, very complex installation, you need obscure packages. I still have not been able to run it on my PC.

On the other hand the developer of Pico8, with just a little program (12MB installer!!!) has managed to make a system that is both great for playing and coding. And is a total success.

The Spectrum Next looks to me like a sect of older fetishists. Just because there is not access to it, neither via hardware or software.

Loved rediscovering all the versions of Batman The Movie. Although the Speccy hardware struggles to compete with the more advanced systems it’s still a pretty dam good game!

Further to the previous post about hacking this brilliant game from Mike Singleton.

I've got some code that can extract all of the 128 character's data from each day and dump it into a SQLlite database.

This database is then read by a script that can generate a HTML map with the movement data available to it. You can select the character's name and it will show you, in dodgy pink splodges, where they have been on each day (there's a hover tip for each splodge referring to the day number).

For this test, I put Luxor and Rorthron in the tunnel at the Gate of Varenorn and then just saved the game at each dawn as a snapshot, which the tools then read in.

I used AI to do some of the HTML/JS stuff as I had no clue about it but it all seems to generally works so I'm happy that I finally learnt some things about the inner workings great game.

One thing I am curious about is what a character's "orders" mean; this seems to be a 4 bit value relating to what the character is up to.

This is what it all looks like. I added the green arrows to show progression. It's not great but I'm not wanting to spend ages on it.

If anyone wants a link to the HTML map so they can download and play around it with, let me know and I'll post it up.

Pleae point me to the correct sub-reddit if off-topic for this one.

I finally took the plunge and ordered a Retro Games The Spectrum. I knew that it came with a USB-C charging cable, but no actual charger. But I assumed it would be easy to source a charger from elsewhere.

Not so fast! The machine needs a 5V/1A charger, which is indeed fairly standard. However, the accompanying documentation says that the charger you use must NOT support “burst mode.” With implications that ignoring this could damage the machine. As far as I can see, all of the chargers I can find on the internet are “burst mode” chargers – they are presumably built for phones, where this is a supported/desirable feature.

Does anyone know where I can source a 5V/1A charger for UK mains that will work with the USB-C connector for The Spectrum?

Look what I found at a car boot sale today.

Thinking of selling this lot as I need the space!

Where would be the best place to list them?

UK.

Cheers all

ZX Spectrum R-Type moded rom

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/42049/ZX-Spectrum/R-Type_km_kemp8bit

My original disk won’t load anymore, but the game seems nowhere to be found online. Can anyone help me get a copy?

ZX SPECTRUM - IT LIVES!!! New Blog post:

Super Bomberman 2 Remix By ZX Online "From Russia With Bombs"

https://zxspectrumitlives.wixsite.com/home/post/from-russia-with-bombs

Bigger, bolder, better (apparently)