Looking at the issue of the loading screen rip-off, I just noticed my first ever 8-bit game was released in October 2014 (for the #ZxSpectrum 48k), so this October it will be 10 years since I started this... hobby.
It wasn't a great game, barely functional because there were so many things I didn't know, both at hardware level and the most essential #gamedev stuff 😂, but eventually... I got better at it!
Ieri sera, una #radio slovena ha trasmesso in diretta un gioco per #zxspectrum vecchio di quarant'anni. In modo che chiunque fosse all'ascolto lo potesse registrare su cassetta e rigiocarlo con calma.
@Craktok@juanfr I’m not, on the basis that a lot of retrogaming folks are wedded to physical media – to the degree that crowdfunders tend to end up overloaded with extras that in the long term cause them all sorts of problems.
Honestly, I get that anyway. I much prefer physical over digital for magazines.
@sysop408@juanfr@timixretroplays SOME Spectrum games had redefinable keys. There were several joystick standards (around 3-4) and one of them ("cursor joystick") corresponded to keys 5-8. The biggest mystery to me is: How did the fire button work? This gizmo only seems to have access to keys 5-8 and fire button was mapped to "0". This specific joystick does not even seem to have the fire button...?!
@klord I was too poor for a 16-bit system. I clung onto ZX81 -> Spectrum (many) -> CPC464 then direct to PC. I think I only played a few Amiga games on a friend's model back then. I missed out.
@edinburgh_man@juanfr The thing that got me about it was that once you had some magic, it was seemingly impossible (at least on the C64) to not bounce without firing – which depleted your life force. So just by moving around, you were penalised.
I can imagine the game working quite well on a two-button system. But one the standard C64, it was horrible. (I don’t recall if the Speccy/CPC versions had the same horrible drawback.)
"The importance of the ZX Spectrum and its role in the early history of personal computing and video gaming has left many to regard it as the most important and influential computer of the 1980s."
@popey I do remember the preset patterns to be excellent.. and a great introduction to rhythm sequencing in general.. It was definitely the era... We would go into Dixon's after school to play with the sampling casios and drum pad syntns...🤣
On this day 42 years ago my dad wrote a cheque and posted it to a small computer company in Cambridge. NINE weeks later my Sinclair ZX Spectrum arrived. Two days after that I tripped over the power cable and blew the ULA. It was six weeks before the replacement arrived. I was very careful after that. #ZXSpectrum
@mrpjevans Our first Atari was fried by a power outage from an electrical storm on Christmas morning, mere hours after hooking it up. Federated Group, a now defunct electronics chain, replaced it because they didn't have a return policy (yet) that excluded running computers during storms without a surge protector . We didn't even know was a surge protector was.
Oh now this I like. Using just the #ZXSpectrum attribute bytes crossed with a 4x8 grid to display a medium-res screen that scrolls at very high-speed is pretty cool. I've seen similar ideas before but never quite this slick.
All the game's original algorithms are intact (short of any bugs I might have introduced) - which is incidentally why the ladder disappears at one point, it does that in the original release. All fixes I added to the BASIC version included.
I might add some enhancements, like being able to redo a level when stuck (at the cost of a life), etc. But it's all a 1-for-1 reimplementation so far.
