Spectrum Computing

Hello and welcome!



I am excited to announce the opening of 2023's comp.sys.sinclair Crap Game Competition. The 27th year if this venerable and esteemed competition.

You can find all the details, including how to enter here....

https://csscgc23.blogspot.com



I hope this year is a fun competition for all involved and that we see games form veterans and new comers alike.

In fact if you have never submitted a game before, now is the time. This is a safe space to learn and develop yourself.

So have fun and may the chuntey field be with you!

And we're off!

@TMD2003 submitted a game almost at the stroke of midnight, and my first review is up!

https://csscgc23.blogspot.com/2023/01/d ... 1.html?m=1

That's a good start. At this rate you're on target for 334 games submitted and reviewed by 1st December.

And Dvorak keyboard layouts are amazing. Typing speeds achieved can be crazy quick, even one handed ones. I single doubt many of those speeds were achieved on rubber keyed speccies though.

uglifruit wrote: ↑Sun Jan 01, 2023 11:25 am That's a good start. At this rate you're on target for 334 games submitted and reviewed by 1st December.

And an average of 642 typos from me a day!

There is sadly no editor working at Bizzel Towers. And I have all the self policing of a late night Donald Trump tweet.

(A friendly encouragement from Cassette 50.)

So, wondering where to start?

I cannot recommend enough the following application:

https://arda.kisafilm.org/blog/?cat=13&lang=en

It's very easy to make a game in basic, and even save it as a tap file. You can use it as a tape editor as well.

I tend to use it to make my loaders and add loading screens to my games. All my basic crap games from last year were made using this, and the loader for Yoyo's Revenge.

I'm not on commission I promise. Just trying to temp anyone new who might be wondering how to get started.

Zx paintbrush is also a brilliant tool, and easy to gets started with.

Well, that's a prompt review - just what I like to see. Now for a couple of top tips:

(1) It's a good idea to put the title of the game in the post that links to it - I did, @PROSM did, @uglifruit did...

(2) I probably should have mentioned that the loading screen was swiped from Fuse and rearranged appropriately with ZX Paintbrush - and it's always a good idea to check that the screenshot in the review actually looks like the real loading screen, rather than cutting bits off it... in a way that I can't fathom how that would have happened. Here it is in the remainder of its glory:


...imagine dealing with that illogical mish-mash of keywords. Had the Spectrum been given a Dvorak keyboard, I'm sure the keywords would have been moved around to a better arrangement (say, SIN/COS/TAN and ASN/ACS/ATN on A/E/O, for instance - and seven of the eight Emode-shift symbols on P-L, maybe?).

As you might imagine, the reason why I've made sure to send a game so early in the competition is because I was always concerned how I'd fare in 2021. Would anyone want to submit anything when state-sponsored house arrest was biting down on us again? And there I was, launching the site at about 12:03 am on 1st January, when I had an entry to look at already, courtesy of @Turrican. I've never forgotten that - there was enthusiasm, straight away, and it came all the way from Brazil (where it was still 31st December 2020 for a few more hours). So I like to return the favour for future hosts.

TMD2003 wrote: ↑Sun Jan 01, 2023 1:36 pm (1) It's a good idea to put the title of the game in the post that links to it - I did, @PROSM did, @uglifruit did...

will do in future. I uploaded the game on itch and it published it without me being ready. So I ended up being rushed.

TMD2003 wrote: ↑Sun Jan 01, 2023 1:36 pm (2) I probably should have mentioned that the loading screen was swiped from Fuse and rearranged appropriately with ZX Paintbrush - and it's always a good idea to check that the screenshot in the review actually looks like the real loading screen, rather than cutting bits off it... in a way that I can't fathom how that would have happened. Here it is in the remainder of its glory

After the game loads there is a nice routine that clears the screen. I played your game on my phone, and wrote the review on my phone too. I tried several times to beat the screen clearing routine and get a good screen grab. That was the best I could manage. I have updated the entry with the screen you provided Jim, thank you.

TMD2003 wrote: ↑Sun Jan 01, 2023 1:36 pm As you might imagine, the reason why I've made sure to send a game so early in the competition is because I was always concerned how I'd fare in 2021. Would anyone want to submit anything when state-sponsored house arrest was biting down on us again? And there I was, launching the site at about 12:03 am on 1st January, when I had an entry to look at already, courtesy of @Turrican. I've never forgotten that - there was enthusiasm, straight away, and it came all the way from Brazil (where it was still 31st December 2020 for a few more hours). So I like to return the favour for future hosts.

@uglifruit did a fantastic job last year and left big shoes to fill, so I was very nervous about trying to do a good review. Getting this in my inbox and getting the review out early has helped, so it is much appreciated sir.

Jbizzel wrote: ↑Sun Jan 01, 2023 2:16 pm After the game loads there is a nice routine that clears the screen. I played your game on my phone, and wrote the review on my phone too. I tried several times to beat the screen clearing routine and get a good screen grab. That was the best I could manage. I have updated the entry with the screen you provided Jim, thank you.

That makes sense now - the routine clears the screen from the bottom up. When I'm making screenshots I always use Fuse, unless it's ULAplus or something that Fuse can't handle. One .SCR and then two .PNGs at single and triple size, and that's all I'll ever need.

Jbizzel wrote: ↑Sun Jan 01, 2023 2:16 pm @uglifruit did a fantastic job last year and left big shoes to fill, so I was very nervous about trying to do a good review. Getting this in my inbox and getting the review out early has helped, so it is much appreciated sir.

Reviewing will get easier as it goes on. @PROSM's reviews were usually around 500 words, and I tried to stick to that - but anyone who's ever known me outside of the Spectrum world has already seen the evidence 15-20 years ago, that word limit was far too restrictive. So I tried to keep it to 1000 instead, and that was about right. Some reviews took less than that (one was in the 600s), but generally I had to make some cuts to the first draft to stay within the limit, and Ricky Gervais' Simon couldn't be contained within three digits no matter how much I tried - although it deserved its longer review.

A weekly-or-so MUSH! gets results as well, I found.

Cocaine Bear by Azimov

Reviewed!

https://csscgc23.blogspot.com/2023/01/c ... r.html?m=1

Azimov seems to have made a really nice trailer for the game as well :

Good work!

"Inspired by real events."

The word 'inspired' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.

Jbizzel wrote: ↑Sun Jan 01, 2023 1:30 pm So, wondering where to start?

I cannot recommend enough the following application:

https://arda.kisafilm.org/blog/?cat=13&lang=en

It's very easy to make a game in basic, and even save it as a tap file. You can use it as a tape editor as well.

I tend to use it to make my loaders and add loading screens to my games. All my basic crap games from last year were made using this, and the loader for Yoyo's Revenge.

I'm not on commission I promise. Just trying to temp anyone new who might be wondering how to get started.

Zx paintbrush is also a brilliant tool, and easy to gets started with.

Using windows/desktop/laptop for BASIC development/testing is like crapping in the toilet!
Humans in the prehistoric era were free and did not have rooms for taking a crap! Even raw vegans understand this very well!

Humans should be free to make crap games everywhere!

Programming should be like this : If you have an idea on the subway why not type it on your phone/tablet?

If you are always in different places and you can't carry your desktop/laptop I'd recommend those simple basic/asm online editors packaged with emulator:
https://zxplay.org best online alternative (if you login it has a 2 window look -like Basin) You can use Sinclair Basic/Asm/C to create programs even from your mobile!
https://basic2tape.dimotika.tk (this is made by me for LAN class - the admin/teacher receives each pogram as a file). I will ask help in the forums someday to make this entirely client side and post it somewhere permanent. I don't post my code publicly because this was made in a few hours as a quick modification of another webpage of mine.

Most of my BASIC programs last year were made (about 80%) using a combination of those two from my tablet.
In the end I always used Basin for images/TAP handling.

Spoiler

Both programs started out of the need to have an simple portable online BASIC dev enviroment that can work from browser (=working in every device - even smart TVs). I did not create zxplay.org nor have the typescript/react knowledge to understand it's code. I contacted its author to ask if he could compile zmakebas to javascript using emuscripten (I started a thread about emscripten in spectrumcomputing ). In a few days he created this amazing program . He even added ZXBasic support but removed lated for abuse reasons

!


*Note1: Since they are both based on zmakebas they both have the FN problem. The DEF FN will work but not the FN command. Also numbered lines should be in the correct order
*Note2:Basin is amazing . (For my needs) it is restricted by the need of a windows/linux machine. I also had issues because I was running Basin in linux core2duo machines with 2GB or less RAM. The browser version was an one-way for me. When someone asks me for a basic enviroment I recommend Basin!

Mpk wrote: ↑Thu Jan 05, 2023 7:50 am Azimov seems to have made a really nice trailer for the game as well :
Good work!

holy crap

Now I see how @firelord quality games has such an edge in the market.

Humans should be free to make crap games everywhere!

Programming should be like this : If you have an idea on the subway why not type it on your phone/tablet?

Thanks for these top tips!

Mpk wrote: ↑Thu Jan 05, 2023 7:50 am Azimov seems to have made a really nice trailer for the game as well :

Good work!

This is good for the contest! A game was entered in the competition and already Universal decided to make a movie of it. They also released a trailer!
This year competition will be Epic!

firelord wrote: ↑Thu Jan 05, 2023 8:18 am Using windows/desktop/laptop for BASIC development/testing is like crapping in the toilet!

I think this is the best thing I've ever read. Purestrain Firelord quality CGC energy.

Mpk wrote: ↑Thu Jan 05, 2023 9:08 am I think this is the best thing I've ever read. Purestrain Firelord quality CGC energy.

I can only wonder what @firelord quality games has in the pipeline for this year.

I guess where these games are actually coded is a man's own private business, and I'll try not to think about it when reviewing submissions!

Cocaine Bear... A nearly-fun actual game, so early in the year! What is this??

I'm crap at it. The forced 3D perspective on the graphics and 2D collision detection really does mess with my brain.

Although it's nothing like it, the nearly-3D look made me think of Pedro. And I've just played Pedro, and it is even harder (peraps even more crap) than Cocaine Bear.

Pedro might be the best C.S.S.C.G.C game ever. Even if it was written ages before CSS existed....

This is a great start to the comp.

I had a well dodgy first try with Dvorak - 145.6. I should dig out my rubber keys for this, as mapping a laptop keyboard with regular & cyrillic symbols gave several extra layers of confusion.

If push came to shove, I'd say Cocaine Bear is my favourite ursine themed drug induced berzerker rage game of the year so far.

Jbizzel wrote: ↑Thu Jan 05, 2023 8:03 pm I guess where these games are actually coded is a man's own private business, and I'll try not to think about it when reviewing submissions!

Last year "Firelord human research" and "Firelord science" departments proved scientifically with facts* that people are more creative in their private "thinking" room during their private time.
After a while "Firelord Software" department introduced to the world the tools to actually develop quality BASIC software inside their private room without the need to carry their big desktop computer (eg using their tablet/phone/pregnacy tests***) !

If you combine the portable development tools with the HSFACE movement* then you can see the advantages that BASIC develpors gain -even the ones that don't belong to the previous movement!

Jbizzel wrote: ↑Thu Jan 05, 2023 8:03 pm I can only wonder what @firelord quality games has in the pipeline for this year.

I can say that I don't belong HSFACE movement (unless I eat bad food or something like that) but I do beleieve to the developer right to write crap BASIC programs everywhere
I have almost ready 5 entries that are part of the epic story that started with Prehistoric Cookie . A teaser will be released soon in youtube -Yes! Cocaine Bear raised the quality of this contest!
Also, last year I made a sequel of 10D bathroom design but for some reason zmakebas and even Basin did not accept it. it could convert each line individually but not all the lines in one program -which was strange.


-----
*See Documentation of "10D Bathroom Design"
**Humans Should be Free Again to Crap Everywhere movement believes that people should be free of the toilet restraints
***https://www.fatherly.com/news/doom-preg ... est-hacked
****Sorry for my bad english in all my texts.Text quality assurance departement is closed at the moment. Also I hope I'm not boring you much. I try to make a crap backstory for all my entries

****Sorry for my bad english in all my texts.Text quality assurance departement is closed at the moment. Also I hope I'm not boring you much. I try to make

@firelord I love it. You have done a good job of building excitement!!

**Humans Should be Free Again to Crap Everywhere movement believes that people should be free of the toilet restraints
***https://www.fatherly.com/news/doom-preg ... est-hacked

I refuse to google this, but hope it not real!!

I had a go on your tool btw. Do I have to register an account to export a tap file?

Jbizzel wrote: ↑Sat Jan 07, 2023 4:16 pm I had a go on your tool

Finbarr_Saunders.png

Jbizzel wrote: ↑Sat Jan 07, 2023 4:16 pm I had a go on your tool btw. Do I have to register an account to export a tap file?

ZXPlay.org is not mine it is Stever (github username). It started during my quest for an online tool. Its creator has much better understanding of modern JS frameworks .If you register you will have unlock many more options. You can eg switch from zmakebas to bas2tap. I wanted to say that Stever is a very nice guy. He almost immidiatelly did whatever I askd him in this tool plus much more.

My tool (not that advanced but made for my specific class needs) is at the moment at http://basic2tape.dimotika.tk/ . I work at the moment on a version that accept BASIC commands in native language (ΤΥΠΩΣΕ=PRINT) and its very easy to be translated in other native BASIC type languages.