Top 10k strings from Alchemist News - Issue 29 (1999)(Alchemist Research).tzx in <root> / bin / z80 / software / Sinclair Spectrum Collection TOSEC.exe / Sinclair ZX Spectrum - Magazines / Sinclair ZX Spectrum - Magazines - [TZX] (TOSEC-v2007-01-01) /
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1 t possessfancy graphics or a techno soundtrack itis significantly offbeat to warrant thetitle cult. Your Sinclair were obviouslyimpressed enough as well as it appeared onthe August
1 t accept Russianattestats, so he had to 'study' once moreso he went to Tamworth High School. Thatwas a very important decision, because itlead to today's situation - CC had becometoday's Concern. The future is unclear right now, so moreinformation will be available later ( atthe moment Random has finished last yearof school and is preparing for final HSCexams ). He plans to go to the Universityto do "computer science and technology"...time will tell what will happen... Russian Spectrum Scene. ...small introduction.... Well, again, don't know how to start thegoddamn article. Usually it takes lessthan 100 lines of bullshit to begin
1 stechnology you could create a real belterof a game, so long as you don't get thefooty bloke from Channel 5 to do thecommentary! JR: Matchday 3 will bereleased before Xmas (97). PW: Oh good, I suppose that means we canexpect Head Over Heels 2 in the Spring?Any chance of doing Speccy versions? JR:HoH2 (it may be called something else)will be release towards the end of nextyear either on the N64 or the PC. PW: Your next game, Head Over Heels,become an overnight cult game with gamersalways pleading for help with the puzzlesin the Spectrum magazines. Was thissomething you intended to achieve? JR: No,I just make games I would like to play. PW: So what games do you like to playnowadays? JR: Better soccer games, betterpuzzle games, better Doom games. PW: Using the
1 s games? MC: I have the same feelings for theirproducers and distributors as I do forthose who live off bigotry and fear (likethe churches and arms dealers). No time for despair, matey, too busymaking fun of them. ZX: With the game Pimania you offered a6000 prize for the first person to solvethe game? That was quite a gamblefinancially for you to take, especially ifthe game had been solved nearly straightaway. MC: Pimania was the twentieth or so game.Not really a gamble. We launched inDecember, and the winner had to physicallyturn up at the right place and the righttime to claim the prize. Well, the datewas 22nd July, which gave me 8 monthsshelf-life. How was I to know that itwould take 2 Yorkshire
1 s right, theycreated Russian analogue of Spectrum.Since then, Sinclair was the only homecomputer for everyone (until sometime inlate 80s when people found their secondSpeccy - AMiGA ;). end of quote. Well, you see - Russians had their ownSpectrums. Another extraction from FAQThere are too many models of Spectrum inex-USSR to attempt to list them all here.And we don't need that anyway... all ofthem are quite similar in main idea, so wewouldn't try to write about them. Well,despite the fact above, only two modelscan be called 'most popular'. They arePentagon and Scorpion. Funny but Scorpionisn't as popular as Pentagon, despite morecorrect implementation of originalSpectrum features, despite ServiceMonitor, despi... Let me finish this quotehere, since I promised not to include anymy own opinions here... So, again, despitethe advantages offered to Russian Speccymen (I don't like word Speccy-chum. Sound
1 s one of them (extractfrom Russian Most Popular Spectrums...):Russia (former USSR) had different but notless interesting Speccy life than othercountries (such as England, motherland ofSpeccy). Because of many reasons, such ashigh cost (for soviets), difficulty inrepairs and many many other problems,Russia had to create it's own computer.Soviet people went through various modelsof homemade computers (usually notcompatible with each other) when theyfinally got their BEST (at a time) homemachine - Spectrum. Some people had realSpectrums and they had friends -electronic engineers... well, guess whattheir friends did ? That
1 s absolutelysame machine, but difference isunbelievable. I wonder what would SirClive would say about last demos... he he.Demomaking is very good school for youngprogrammers. Trying to get most of theresources of most likely best 8-bitcomputer, trying to be stylish, trying tobeat best of bests, they're learning agreat experience. That's why scene peopleare teenagers (13+ actually). Don't get mewrong, there are many adults on the sceneas well, but for most of them Spectrum isjust a hobby thing, while for young codersSpectrum is their life. There are manydemomaking and/or release groups. It'ssimply impossible to count them all, oreven estimate. Most of those groupsconsist of 3-5 members. There're somemonsters though (like Concern Chaos he he,which has about 30-40 active members,Extreme, Digital Reality (?). As any othercountry, Russia has its very ownmagazines/newspapers dedicated to Spectrumlife. Most of them (and as far as I know,a
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1 ZX: Were you in awe of working with greatBritish actors? MC: Nope. ZX: They must have cost a bob or two tohire. MC: If you want to make a small fortuneout of computer games, start with alargefortune. ZX: "Excuse Mr Dury, would you mindplaying the part of some fertiliser?" Wasit easy to persuade Mr Pertwee and co. toaccept their roles? MC: I just phoned up afew mates. That'show it works in any medium. ZX: Did anyone decline your offer to starin a computer game? MC: Patrick Moore's mum wouldn't let himcome out to
1 You can edit the vertical guardians in room 13 like any other vertical guardians,but you must bear in mind the special conditions stated above. You have to make sure the vertical guardians do not clash or straddle the screen under modulo-8 (avoid having a vertical guardian in columns 7&8, or 15&16, or 23&24, as this would cause them to straddle the vertical borders of the screen). I have experienced a lot of trouble with Skylabs crashing into the floors they explode on and killing you, when you try to change their paths or speed! The best way I know to cure such a problematic Skylab is to change the number of pixels (the least three significant bits of the third byte) below the starting position tosome number between 0 and 7 and to set the number of pixels below the top position (the least three significant bitsof the sixth byte) to that same value. This requires at most 8 experiments beforeyou cure the p
1 XXXXX: 5 bits, giving a range 0 through 31. In this example, which is typical of many in Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy, these data represent the position of a 16x16 sprite as the number of characters down from the top of the screen (YYYY) and the number of characters to the right of the left border of the screen (XXXXX) - or, ifyou will, the top-left 8x8 character of the 16x16 graphic. Andrew Broad (Reproduced from his web site by kind permission.)
1 The second, third and fourth bytes (i.e. 703-705, 710-712, 717-719, 724-726) represent the starting position of the horizontal guardian as a 16-bit word in the following format (see Appendix D): 705 704 703 0101110Y 0110Y000 YYYXXXXX where YYYY represents the vertical starting position and XXXXX the horizontalstarting position (both in characters). In the now all too familiar way, the most significant bit of YYYY is redundantly duplicated in offsets 704 and 705. The fifth byte (i.e. 706, 713, 720, 727) represents whether the guardian initially goes left or right (0=right, 7=left).
1 The first byte of each graphic (i.e. offsets 544, 553, 562, 571, 580, 589, 598 and 607) represents the colour attribute (see Appendix A), and the following eight bytes represent the 8x8 graphic (see Appendix B). The colour attributes defined here must agree with the ones in the screen layout, as this is how the block at each characterposition is specified, so when you change an attribute here, remember to replace all occurrences of that attribute in the screen layout! If a block type is not required on a screen, I suggest zeroising the 8x8 graphic and using 255 for the colour attribute (some rooms in the original Manic Miner use colour attribute 0 for this purpose, but I don't like that because often times it clashes with the background attribute). In general, co
1 SONG BY ST COMPILE
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1 Internal RAM : 128K minimum All the systemRAM should be internal. No more screens orUDG on RAM.1, nor swap memory for badapplications. An amount of 64K isrequired, i.e. 4 banks : 8K for system variables, handles, buffers,restarts 2K for HIRES0, 512 bytes forLORES0, 2K for the screen base file 40Kfor the swap for bad applications 11K leftfor new purposes The 11K left could be useful for newfeatures like : other graphic screens (HIRES0) user defined interruptions the TCP/IP stack memory buffers allocated by a handle available for applications Serial port : high speeds, TCP/IP stackThe 19200 and 38400 bauds speed aresupported. Ga
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1 Bill Richardson has kindly invited us withhim to a Cambridge Z88 show - inCALIFORNIA! We'll be honoured to attend,and meet some of our Amercian readers. HACKING INCIDENT OVER In the last issue we reported how AndyRyals had complained about BernadetteDownsland had used some of his copyrightedPOKEs in her handbook. We're now veryhappy to report that the situation has nowbeen resolved. It appears that the reportof Berndadette using Andy's POKEs wasslightly incorrect, as her POKEs were forthe LIGHTGUN version of a game as opposedto Andy's POKE for a standard game. NEW POKE MAGAZINE If you are interested in POKEs magazines,Andy has launched his own. HACKERS HANGOUTis a profess
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1 97. Paul) ZX: Wasn't Automata originally a travelbrochure company? What compelled you totransform Automata into a computersoftware house? MC: Automata went from printed travelguides and maps, to audio/video guides ontape in 1980. One day I bought a computergame on cassette for 5 quid, and realisedthat I could produce a better one for 25pee at cost. I started in computer gamesthe following Tuesday, after tea andcompulsory prayers. ZX: How does one get inspiration for acharacter like the Piman? MC: Ivor Cutler, half man, half oatmeal.He lives in the flat opposite a lady Iknow, and we used to watch him at night.(He never draws his curtains.) ZX: Did your non-violence policy fo
1 92 covertape of theirmagazine. Translated from Czech the demogoes something like this. Man: Sing, ladybird, sing! LB: Bep, Bep, Bep Man: Clap, clap, clap. What he is actually saying is "Berus^ko,zazpi'vej!" which in Czech means"Berus^ka, sing!" (berus^ka=ladybird). s^=s with breve, i' = i with acute accent.The song in the demo (the beeping) is amockery of a (childish) song about aladybird. (Berusko, berusko, popojdimalicko). So now you know and thosesleepless nights will be a thing of thepast.
1 500 REM <<<<TControl Begin>>>> ! This could be used as a base for other objects 510 LET TControlXCode = 1 520 LET TControlXCount = 0 530 LET TControlXStackSize = 0 540 LET TControlXPostition = 500:REM put start of code line in here 550 REM <<<<Properties>>>>: Top, Left, Height, Width ! these are defined in the create method 560 REM <<<<Method>>>> 570 LET ControlXCreate = TControlXPostition +110 580 LET ControlXDestroy = TControlXPostition + 210590 LET ControlXPaint = TControlXPostition + 270 600 RETURN 610 REM ***Begin TControl.Create 620 REM ***Returns: Pointer: INT 630 IF TControlXStackSize = 0 THEN LET TControlXCount = FN I(TControlXCount): LETPointer = TControlXCount: GOTO TControlXPostition + 4 640 LET Pointer = S(TControlXCod
1 5 ExternalRAM will be inserted in slot 2 Minimum128K for internal RAM will be explainedfurther Kernel User Defined Interruption An interruption could be available forapplications. It could be done byaddressing it via an handle. Opening,using... and closing an interruption. Thisshould be a little fragment of code,copied in a special area of the systemRAM. For implementing it, we could insertin the IM0 interruption (keyboard, serialport, card manager...) a fragment of codelike this : ;the IM0 interruption entry .int_entry ld
1 1999 A.Davis & Alch. Research
1 1.50 later that evening! The Pics There were two Spectrum digitisers at theshow, mine (a Vidi-ZX and the best) andTomato Girl's (Bernadette Dowsland)Videoface - distinctly slower at grabbing,I noticed. I'd not seen one before but Iam glad I got the Vidi-ZX instead (Doktold me it was better before). We also hadL.A.'s polaroid camera and good use wasmade of that - The Aftermath After this was all over, about 4-4.30pm,people either disappeared or went into thepub. Me, Garry and Dominic went up theroad into the next one and hung around fora couple of pints before they had to catchthe bus back. I then went back to the showand found George (the organiser) andothers in the bar there.
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1 YYYY: 4 bits, giving a range 0 through 15. These bits happen to straddle the two bytes, with the most significant in 621 (this happens to be at the least significant end of 621, but this is not necessarily always the case in general!)
1 Willy's vertical start position is also represented by offset 616, which has the following format (see Appendix D): 616 YYYY0000 I'm not sure why this apparent redundancy is there, and I wonder whether the lower 4bits are supposed to represent pixels or something? (Don't take me at my word, do an experiment!). I can only advise you to be consistent!
1 Willy starts at a position which is held at offsets 620 and 621, which form a 16-bit word of the following format (see Appendix D): 621 620 0101110Y YYYXXXXX where YYYY is Willy's vertical start position and XXXXX is Willy's horizontal start position (both in characters).
1 The value held in offset 701 is the number of pixels of air you have (in addition to characters of air), represented as one of the following bytes (shown in binary to graphically depict it): 10000000 11000000 11100000 11110000 11111000 11111100 11111110 There are bugs associated with using 00000000 or 11111111, so it's derecommended (and my Manic Miner Screen Editor doesn't allow it). Using 00000000 causes a fairly harmless glitch in the graphics; using 11111111 confuses Manic Miner when it i
1 The value held in offset 700 is a+32, where a is the column the air goes up to (effectively, you have a-4 characters of air, as the air starts at column 4). The default value for offset 700 is 63 (i.e. a=31), but in many of my caverns, I give you a reduced air supply!
1 SETUP PARAMS
1 Room 9 ("Endorian Forest")
1 Room 8 ("Wacky Amoebatrons")
1 Room 6 ("The Vat")
1 Room 5 ("Processing Plant")
1 Room 4 ("Eugene's Lair") holds the Eugene graphic which appears on that screen. This is a special vertical guardian whose path or colour attribute (white ink on whatever paper you define for the level background) cannot be edited(at least not in addresses 45056 to 65535). It goes up and down the middle of the screen (columns 15 and 16, rows 0 to 12), and when all the items have been collected, starts flashing and immediatelygoes down to stop at rows 11 and 12. If you do not want the Eugene on your room 4,I suggest zeroising offsets 736 to 767 to blank out the special graphic, which will leave a harmless shadow on the screen. 768 to 1023: Guardian Graphics Eight 16x16 spr
1 Room 4 ("Eugene's Lair")
1 Room 3 ("Abandoned Uranium Workings")
1 Room 2 ("Menagerie") holds the boot graphic which appears on the Game Over screen, and also next to your lives when you use the 6031769 or TYPEWRITER cheat.
1 Room 2 ("Menagerie")
1 Room 19 ("Final Barrier") The alleged vertical guardian on room 4 ("Eugene's Lair") is a special case (see the special graphic section) - it is not aguardian in the sense of this section! In all other rooms, offsets 733, 734 and 735 are set at 0 (and so are offsets 736 to 760, except for rooms 0, 1, 2 and 4 which have special graphics). Each of these rooms can have 0, 1, 2, 3 or 4 vertical guardians. Unlike in Jet SetWilly, all vertical guardians in a room have to have the same graphic (guardians' graphics are defined separately, within the room data).
1 Room 18 ("Solar Power Generator")
1 Room 17 ("Amoebatrons' Revenge")
1 Room 16 ("The Warehouse")
1 Room 15 ("Sixteenth Cavern") Rooms which do not have bidirectional graphics for horizontal guardians (i.e. those not listed above) use only sprites 4-7 (offsets 896-1023) for the horizontal guardian graphics. Rooms which have vertical guardians (see section on Vertical Guardians) use sprites0-3 (offsets 768-895) for the vertical guardian graphics, so these screens do nothave bidirectional graphics for horizontal guardians. Note that this does not quite cover all screens which do not have bidirectional horizontal guardians, because... Rooms 7 and 11 ("Miner Willy meets the Kong Beast" and "Return of the Alien Kong Beast") use sprites 0-3 for the Kong Beastgraphics: the standing Kong Beast in sprites 0 and 1 and the falling Kong Beastin sprites 2 and 3.
1 Room 14 ("The Bank")
1 Room 13 ("Skylab Landing Bay")
1 Room 12 ("Ore Refinery")
1 Room 10 ("Attack of the Mutant Telephones")
1 Room 1 ("ColdRoom")
1 Room 1 ("Cold Room") holds the barrel graphic on the Game Over screen (well, it's a barrel in Jet Set Willy, and some sort of weird pedestal in Manic Miner).
1 Room 0 ("Central Cavern") holds the swordfish graphic that appears on room 19 ("Final Barrier") when you complete the game (only if you haven't cheated by using6031769 or TYPEWRITER).
1 Room 0 ("Central Cavern")
1 PPP representspaper colour (000=black, 001=blue, 010=red, 011=magenta, 100=green, 101=cyan,110=yellow, 111=white)
1 Offsets 688-691 represent the position of the portal, as a 32-bit word in the following format (see Appendix D): 691 690 689 688 0110Y000 YYYXXXXX 0101110Y YYYXXXXX where YYYY is the vertical position of the portal, and XXXXX the horizontal position. Both YYYY and XXXXX are duplicated: 688 and 689 are informationally equivalent to 690 and 691.Don't ask why, just make sure Y is the same in 691 as 689, and make 690 the same as 688. 692 to 699: Item Graphic The item's 8x8 graphic (see Appendix B) is held in offs
1 Offsets 656 to 687 represent the 16x16 graphic of the portal.
1 Offsets 624 and 625 represent the position of conveyor animation. They form a16-bit word of the following format (see Appendix D): 625 624 0111Y000 YYYXXXXX where YYYY is the vertical position of the conveyor animation (in characters) andXXXXX is the leftmost column of that row (regardless of whether the conveyor - I mean, the animation - goes left or right).
1 Offset 730 is a terminator which is always set at 255, and offsets 731 and 732are 0 for all Manic Miner rooms. 733 to 760: Vertical Guardians (Rooms 8, 10, 12-14 and 16-19 only) Only the following rooms can have vertical guardians (`up and down nasties'):
1 Offset 655 represents the portal's colour attribute (see Appendix A). If you define it to be flashing, then Willy can exit the room without collecting the items- I used that trick in "Students Union" (room 8 of Manic Miner 4).
1 Offset 654 is always set to 255.
1 Offset 628 is set to 0 on all Manic Miner rooms - it doesn't seem to be used for anything. 655 to 691: Portal
1 Offset 626 represents the length of the conveyor animation. If you don't want a conveyor animation in the room, I suggest having an animation of length 1 over something inconsequential (such as a background block), as setting the length to 0 can cause this bug which corrupts thegraphics on one vertical half of the screen. 627: Border Colour Offset 627 represents the colour of the room's border (0=black, 1=blue, 2=red, 3=magenta, 4=green, 5=cyan, 6=yellow, 7=white). 628 to 654: Items
1 Offset 623 represents the direction of the conveyor: whether it animates to the left or to the right, and what effect it has when Willy steps on it. A value of 0 means the conveyor carries Willy to the left, 1 means the conveyor carries Willy to the right, 2 means the conveyor is 'off' (when Willy steps on it, it just acts as a regular floor) and 3 means the conveyor is 'sticky' (it carries Willy in the direction he's going, but you get stuck if you jump straight up onto it or if you fall or jump onto it from a height of one character or more). 'Off' and 'sticky' conveyors did not feature in the original Manic Miner (or Jet Set Willy) atall, but I've started incorporating them into my games since I made this discovery:room 11 ("Inside Information") of Manic Miner: The Hobbit features sticky conveyorblocks, while room 12 ("Not at Home") has off conveyors.
1 Offset 622 is 0 in all the original Manic Miner screens. It does not appear tobe of any consequence at all. 623 to 626: Conveyor: Direction and Position of Animation Technically, the animation of the conveyor is decoupled from the actual conveyor blocks (for further discussion ofthis issue, see the subsection on conveyors in the block graphics section). If you are a lay hacker who just likes to have one conveyor in each room and animatethat, then whenever it says "conveyor animation" below, just read "conveyor".
1 Offset 619 is 0 in all the original Manic Miner rooms. If you set it to 1, Willy will automatically jump (straight up) when he starts the level, like in "Tales From A Parallel Universe" (room 15 in Manic Miner 4 (apologies to Lee Tonks))and "Queer Lodgings" (room 6 in Manic Miner: The Hobbit (apologies to J.R.R. Tolkien)).
1 Offset 618 represents the direction Willy faces in when he starts the room: 0 for right, 1 for left.
1 Offset 617 represents which sprite Willy starts at, from 0 to 3 inclusive. 0 represents the leftmost frame and 1 the rightmost frame of his set of four 16x16 graphics for facing right (when offset 618= 0) or of his set of four 16x16 graphics for facing left (when offset 618 = 1). (If you think of Willy in terms of his legpositions, each set is the other way round from the other set.)
1 LOAD PART
1 LOAD +D INDEX
1 In the second (Software Projects) edition, the guardians in room 8get corrupted, killing you as soon as you enter it! So if you want to let Willy jump off the top of the screen or fall off the bottom, as happens on several occasions in Manic Miner 2 and Manic Miner 4, you should baseyour game on the code for the first (Bug-Byte) edition (addresses 32768 to 45055). Title Screen Graphics on Room 19 Room 19 ("The Final Barrier" in Manic Miner 1) has the title screen graphics on the first 8 rows of the screen (the picture showing the sunny
1 In the first (Bug-Byte) edition, some blocks in the screen layout of room 7("Miner Willy meets the Kong Beast") get corrupted. This is ugly but fairly harmless.
1 If there are fewer than four vertical guardians in the room, the sequence is terminated with 255 in the byte after the last horizontal guardian (i.e. 733, 740, 747 or 754), and all bytes after that one up to and including offset 760 are padded out with 0. If you delete a guardian, remember to shunt the ones after it down a place, and pad out as necessary! Skylabs Vertical guardians have unorthodox semantics in room 13 ("Skylab Landing Bay"). Instead of going up and down, they come down from the top of the screen and explode at the bottom of their path! The way this is implemented is that that vertical guardian is then shifted horizontally 8 characters to the right (with screen wr
1 If there are fewer than four horizontal guardians in the room, the sequence is terminated with 255 in the byte after the last horizontal guardian (i.e. 702, 709, 716 or 723), and all bytes after that one up to and including offset 729 are padded out with 0. If you delete a guardian, remember to shunt the ones after it down a place, and pad out as necessary!
1 If there are fewer than five items in the room, then pad out the item after the last item with [255,255,255,255,255], and any items after that with [0,255,255,255,255]. If you delete an item, remember to shunt the ones after it down a place, and pad out as necessary!
1 III represents ink colour (as above) Appendix B: 8x8 Graphics An 8x8 graphic is represented as a sequence of eight contiguous bytes, where the first byte is the top row of pixels and the eighth byte is the bottom row of pixels. Within each row, each of the eight bits represents a pixel, where the most significant bit is the leftmost pixel and the least significant bit is the rightmostpixel. If a bit is set to 0 then the corresponding pixel is `off', whereas if the bit is set to 1, the corresponding pixel is `on'. In other words, it's exactly how normal
1 I hasten to add). Or would you justprefer an old photo to be used? JR: Idon't have anything scanned in at the6moment so you better use an old one. PW: Thanks once again for all your timeand assistance, I really appreciate thatyou could find the time to answer thequestions. Take care. JR: Cheers. Originally published in issue 5 of The Zx Files.
1 F represents flash (0=not flashing, 1=flashing)
1 CHOOSE PART
1 B represents brightness (0=not bright, 1=bright)
1 Appendix D: Word Formats 0 to 511: Screen Layout The blocks on the screen are represented as a sequence of 16 rows, each of which consists of 32 characters, 1 byte per character. Each row r {0 <= r <= 15}, where 0 is the top row and 15 is the bottom row, is stored at offsets 32*r to 32*r + 31. Each character c within a row {0 <= c <= 31}, where 0 is the leftmost character and31 the rightmost character, is stored at offset 32*r + c from the start address of the room. Each character is represented as the colour attribut
1 Appendix C: 16x16 Graphics
1 Appendix B: 8x8 Graphics
1 Appendix A: Colour Attributes
1 992-1023: sprite 7 Exactly which sprites are used for what varies from room to room. In particular, some rooms are allowed to have bidirectional graphics for the horizontal guardians, while others are not, because some of the sprites are used for other purposes (mainly vertical guardian graphics). Rooms which have bidirectional graphics for horizontal guardians use sprites 0-3 for the right-facing frames and sprites 4-7 for the left-facing frames, where 0 and 4 represent the leftmost frames and 3 and 7 represent the rightmost frames: I suggest having a normal width of 10 pixels, which you shift 2 pixels to the right on each successive frame. The rooms which
1 960-991: sprite 6
1 928-959: sprite 5
1 896-927: sprite 4
1 864-895: sprite 3
1 832-863: sprite 2
1 800-831: sprite 1
1 768-799: sprite 0
1 768 to 1023: Guardian Graphics
1 754 to 760: fourthvertical guardian (if present, and third vertical guardian must exist) The first byte of each vertical guardian (i.e. 733, 740, 747, 754) represents that guardian's colour attribute (see Appendix A), except that the most significant bit is not used, i.e. you can't have a flashing guardian. It is recommended that you use the level background paper colour and brightness, otherwise it looks rather ugly! The second byte (i.e. 734, 741, 748, 755) represents which sprite the vertical guardian starts at, from 0 to 3 inclusive. The third byte (i.e. 735, 742, 749, 756) represents the vertical start position of the guardian, as an 8-bit word in the following format (see Appendix D):
1 747 to 753: third vertical guardian (if present, and second vertical guardian must exist)
1 736 to 767: Special Graphic (Rooms 0, 1, 2 and 4)
1 733 to 760: Vertical Guardians (Rooms 8, 10, 12-14 and 16-19 only)
1 733 to 739:first vertical guardian (if present)
1 723 to 729: fourth horizontal guardian (ifpresent, and third horizontal guardian must exist) The first byte of each horizontal guardian (i.e. 702, 709, 716, 723) represents that guardian's colour attribute (see Appendix A), except that instead of flash, the most significant bit(MSB) represents whether it goes at the normal speed for a horizontal guardian (MSB = 0) or slowly (MSB=1), like when youwalk Willy under a wall with the jump key held down. It is recommended that you use the level background paper colour and brightness, otherwise it looks rather ugly!
1 716 to 722: third horizontal guardian (if present, and second horizontal guardian must exist)
1 709 to 715: second horizontal guardian (if present, and first horizontal guardianmust exist)
1 702 to 732: Horizontal Guardians
1 702 to 708:first horizontal guardian (if present)
1 700 to 701: Air
1 692 to 699: Item Graphic
1 655 to 691: Portal
1 649 to 653: fifth item (if present, and fourth item must exist) The first byte of each item (i.e. 629, 634, 638, 644, 649) represents that item'scolour attribute (see Appendix A). Note that the item's ink colour cycles from magenta to yellow to cyan to green - so the ink colour should be one of these (which is the colour the item will be at the 0th time-frame of the room). The ink colour of the items determines what phase they are in with respect to one another. It is recommended that you use the paper colour of whatever block you are embeddingthe item in (usually background), otherwise it looks rather ugly! And alwaysput the item over a background block, otherwise you will not be able to collect it! (if you want to embed the item in floor, say, then leave a hole for it, as in "The Vat" (room 6 of Manic Miner 1) or "The Warehouse" (room 16 of Manic Miner 1)). It is illegal for an item to have a colour attribute of 0 or 255
1 644 to 648: fourth item (if present, and third item must exist)
1 638to 643: third item (if present, and second item must exist)
1 634 to 638: second item (if present, and first item must exist)
1 629 to 633: first item (if present)
1 628 to 654: Items
1 623 to 626: Conveyor: Direction and Position of Animation
1 616 to 622: Miner Willy's Initial Position
1 607 to 615: Spare
1 598 to 606: Nasty 2
1 589 to 597: Nasty 1
1 580-588: Conveyor
1 571 to 579: Wall
1 562-570: Crumbling Floor
1 553 to 561: Floor
1 544 to 615: Block Graphics
1 544 to 552: Background
1 512 to 543: Room Name
1 0 to 511: Screen Layout
1 740 to 746: second vertical guardian (if present, and first vertical guardian must exist)
1 627: Border Colour
1 JAN. 1999
1 The following article was kindly writtenby Random Chaos, member of Concern Chaos.Born on second of April 1979 inSankt-Petersburg ( former USSR, now Russia) and now residing in Australia.Originally Concern Chaos organisation wascalled Amber Corporation, but since thisname was registered by Roger Zelaznyspublishing company, they had to change thename to Concern Chaos. Firstly created asa software development group Concern grewin size and has changed it's primefunction. We Solve Problems. Random (real name is Potapov VsevolodViktorovich ) had completed Russian highschool with top 5% results, but Australianeducation system doesn
1 The Great Giana Sisters. Fact or Fiction? By Paul White. The Spectrum has its fair share of mythsand legends, games that never appeared,programmers who disappeared only to appearin Elvis like visions in hippie communes.The Great Giana Sisters is one game thathas also become part of Spectrum folklore,often dividing opinion as to whether iteven existed. The reason for its non-appearance isbecause the game is a Mario rip-off andNintendo took the games creators to court.Rainbow Arts were ordered to withdraw thegame in a groundbreaking court case thatrevolved around 'the look and feel' ofgames. Obviously Nintendo saw TGGS as too much ofa likeness to be coincidence and the judgeagreed with
1 The story behind Beruska the Ladybird. Paul White Anyone who has wondered what thatwonderful little demo called Beruska wasall about can now rest easy for the answeris here. For the unenlightened the saiddemo is a simple black and white animationthat features a well-wrapped up gentlemanwho holds a ladybird in his hand. He sayssomething like Berushky, vusdeeday towhich the ladybird replies yap yap yap.,whilst nodding its head from side to side.The man then claps, squashing the poorladybird and then grins like a Cheshirecat. Weird. Beruska was originally createdby a Polish coder called Marek Fiser, yetit is definitely Czechoslovakian inspired.I have raved about this demo in a previousissue, and although it doesn
1 CRASHED CHANGE OF EDITORS (again!) Mark Sturdy When I wrote my editorial for issue 22 ofCrashed (it came out about three weeksago, for those of you who haven't got acopy), I'd decided that the fanzine hadrun its course, and I'd made the decisionto close it down. As it turned out,however, Dave Fountain (former prorietorof the Spectrum FPD software library) hadother ideas, and I'm happy to say thatCrashed will continue to exist for theforseeable future, under Dave'seditorship. With immediate effect, allcorrespondence relating to the magazineshould be addressed to: Dave Fountain 11 Camel Road Silvertown LONDON E16 2DE.
1 ANOTHER FIFTH NSSS SHOW REPORT Bernadette Downsland I say 'another'on account that I know thatthere are several accounts scheduled to goin this issue of Alchnews. Anyway after a very hectic rush round theprevious day, on the morning of the show Iferverently prayed that I hadn't forgottenanything as I loaded up the car. As itturned out I hadn't, I guess everybody isentitled to a bit of luck sometime. The weather was dire! or to be morespecific it was freezing fog all along themotorway to Bolton. I wasn't really surehow long it would take me and the weatherprevented me putting my foot down as muchas I would have liked, add to that thevenue was new to me so I had to find theplace, and if that wasn't all I had thishorrible feeling that it would either becancelled or a
1 B A C K T O B A S I C S NO.5 by Ken Beer. READ & DATA Commands Up to now we have been entering data atthe keyboard in response to an INPUTcommand. Another way to get data into aprogram is to store it in a DATA commandwithin the program itself, and to READ theitems of data from these DATA commands.Note. DATA is obtained by pressing 'D' keywhen in the extended mode E. READ is similarly obtained by pressing key'A' when in the extended mode.(Reminder-Extended mode=press CAPS SHIFTand SYMBOL SHIFT together). Each time the computer comes to a READcommand, it takes an item of data from thedata list and
1 The Jon Ritman Interview. By Paul white. PW: The first game I believe you wrote wasNamtir Raiders. Did you have any troubleselling it to Artic? The impression I getof those early days is that softwarehouses were desperate for titles tomarket. JR: It took 24 hours from mesending it off to them accepting it. PW: Another early title you wrote wascalled ARG but was never released. Whatwas the game about and why wasn't itreleased? JR: It was a crap SpaceInvaders, it wasn't released because itwas crap. PW: I don't suppose there is a chance thatyou have a copy of ARG knocking about onan old C90 tap
1 Back in time with Arnold. This time lets look at the Rotonics Wafadrive. This was very much like the microdrive. Around september 1984 theprice of the Wafadrive was `150.00. (Ipicked up two brand new at the SAMS98show for a tenner. Ed) The drive connectedup to the spectrum via the expansion port. The single cabinet housed two 128k drives,centronics RS232 ports and the computerinterface. Connecting the Wafadrive toyour computer was made with one connecter.One connection to your computer is allthat is needed to be up and running,nofragile cables or boxes to cluter up yourdesk top. Like all professional systems thewafadrive is dual drive,thus makingcopying from one drive to another verysimple indeed.
1 B A C K T O B A S I C S No.4 by Ken Beer I now want to bring some colour into ourprograms. The Spectrum treats the TVscreen as a sheet of PAPER surrounded by aBORDER For example: ENTER BORDER 1 The white screen is reduced in size and isnow surrounded by a blue border. There isa choice of eight colours available whichcan be used in conjunction with the BORDERor PAPER commands either singly or incombination, selected by following thecommands with a key number (or codenumber) as follows: Key 0 for Black 1 for Blue 2 for Red
1 Z88 HINTS AND TIPS By Jack lawrie Part Three Print Format The Z88 manual says nothing about this andthe books can be a little confusing. Itconcerns how figures will be presented inBasic. The default format ( the way it isunless you change it! ) is &0000090A Ifthis is changed to &0002000A then allfigures will be integers - no decimalplaces. If &0002020A is used you will get twodecimal places and successive numbers onnew lines will have the decimal points inline e.g 98.6743 will be 98.67 and 25 willbe 25.00 and 345.5672 will be 345.57 -nice & tidy! So, the third pair of figuresafter & is the number of decimal places -this is especi
1 Z88 HINTS AND TIPS By Jack Lawrie Part Four Changing the Battery Before changing a battery, and especiallyif it is "flat", or may be flat, take outany EPROM in slot 3 or it may getcorrupted. Cataloguing Files. If you are looking at the files in a RAM,by selecting "Cataloguing Files", you willsee, if there are more than six, aninstruction at the left side saying to useSPACE or ESC. You MUST do this. You shouldreally never use anything but ESC to leavethe Filer or you could have "in use"problems i.e. there is a file in the RAMthat you can't erase, rename or copy. Theonly cure for
1 Z88 HINTS AND TIPS By J.E.Lawrie Part Six Using % variables You may have wondered about all these T%x% etc in Basic programs and you maywonder why, because they are not reallypercentages. These are "integervariables". They take up less memory. Itis claimed that the system operates muchfaster with these integers since nodecimal places are shown. Of course it is often essential to obtainexact values, especially where roots ordivisions are involved. This is notimpaired by the use of % integers - thedecimal values are used in all internalcalculations. A% through Z% are "special"variables in that they are not cleared byRUN, CHAIN, an
1 Z88 HINTS AND TIPS By J.E.Lawrie Part Five Printing from Basic (2) It may be useful, even essential, to get aprintout of what is on screen while theprogram is running. It may not bepresented on paper exactly as shown on thescreen regarding layout, but this is notusually important. Put this line in the program listing justbefore you want printing to start OSCLI("CLI #+P~E"):dummy=INKEY(0) If you want printing to stop at some pointbeforethe program ends then insert - OSCLI("CLI #-P~E"):dummy=INKEY(0)
1 Z88 HINTS AND TIPS J.E.Lawrie Part Seven Sooner or Later - - you are going to have to take off therubber "keys" and clean the underside ofthis and the face of the p.c.membrane onwhich the keys impinge. If you find youcan't start up but there is no indicationof the need for a hard or soft reset thenthis action is essential - there is apartial short-circuit between strips onthe membrane. You can test for thiscondition now by pressing down any key andthen both SHIFT keys - it won't fire up! You can get the rubber off and clean it,being careful not to break off the threerubber "pegs" holding it close to themembrane. This also needs cleaning. DON'TUSE A SOLVENT
1 The Fifth NSS Show Reviewed by The Editor Ah, it's that time of the year again, whenwe all venture up to Wetherby and.... um,hang on a minute, it's not September, butDecember, and this isn't the A1 toWetherby, but the A628 Woodhead Pass toManchester. What's going on? "I tell you what's going on!", shoutsMick, second in command of the Alchemistempire, "I'm taking control. What the helldo you think you're doing, driving andtyping with that bloody Z88 on your lap?" "Gerroff!", I shout. The car lurchesacross the road and we force a Skoda intoa ditch. "Right," says Mick, "I'LL type, youdrive.". I sulk. So, wh
1 OOP On The Spectrum =================== by Chris Thomson <for competent Sinclair basic programmers> As many programmers will know if theyprogram on modern PC's, most new languagesare 'Object - Orientated'. The most recentof which is JAVA. Anyway these languageshave distinct advantages over thetraditional languages such as Sinclairbasic. Object oriented programming (OOP)basically means that each bit of programcode is self contained, creating anobject, this object contains any number ofsubroutines which are concerned with theoperation of the object. For example aobject might be a box that displays text,this object would encapsulate (or hold)the necessary routines to display the boxcontaining the text on the screen. Thesewould included a property (or variable)for holding th
1 DESERT ISLAND DISKS Review by The Ed. Desert Island Disks - henceforth known asDID - is another magazine which has made asuccessful transformation from one mediumto another. In this case an internet website to paper. This is the first issue andappears to have made the change very well. The magazine is in A4, comprises of 18well filled pages and claims to 'takeSpectrum games seriously' - I like italready. The magazine begins with a very goodeditorial. There's a comprehensive reviewof the new strategy game Formula 1 '98,POKEWORLD comprising of a couple of pagesof tips, POKEs and an Alien 8 map. An interview with programmer NAMCO wasvery good, as
1 QL TODAY MAGAZINE QL Today is a specialist Sinclair QL 60page bi-monthly magazine published byGerman software house Jochen Merz Software(JMS). I am the editor of the magazine.Jochen himself is currently in Croatiaattending a Sinclair show there and dueback sometime this week (early November). The articles in QL Today magazine arewritten by the readership themselves andby the traders who still support theSinclair QL. We have our main readershiphere in Britain and in Germany, with asomewhat smaller readership throughoutEurope and the USA, with a still smallernumber of readers in Canada andAustralasia. Despite being nominally a Sinclair QLmagazine, covering all versions of itsoperating system including QDOS, Minerva,SMSQ/E and the
1 TRADING POST ************** Please enclose a SAE with your enquiry toall services. If purchasing from a privateindividual, make confirmation the articleis still for sale and try not to send cashunless a premium delivery service is used. If your group isn't listed, please get intouch and we'll add your details. * * * * * ADVENTURE WORKSHOP 36 Grasmere Road OLDHAM OL2 6SR (Adventure software distributor) ALBHAR 4 Bethune Close Farley Hill LUTON LU1 5LX
1 NSSS 5 Review By John Garner / [email protected] Introduction The NSSS #5 was held on Saturday 28November at the RMI Club in Horwich, whichis near Bolton (near Manchester) in thecounty of Lancashire, England. NSSS standsfor Northern Spectrum and Sam Show and itis a much better mix of Sam and Spectrumthan the Gloucester Show run by FormatPublications. You also get Z88's and maybeeven a QL or two turning up. Travel For everyone I know, travelling to it wasat least a hassle, if not worse. Part ofit was due to BR engineering works betweenBolton and Manchester Picadilly, part dueto football matches played at home(Bolton). I'm
1 Mel Croucher. An interview by Paul white. Anyone who has come across Mel Croucher'swork before will know that he is a trueindependant spirit who in an industry thatinspires to blandness is a real breath offresh air. It was after tea and compulsory prayers Iwas finally able to ask Mel if he wouldmind answering a few questions....... MC: OK, it's my birthday today, so I'mfeeling slightly less Meldrewish thanusual. Ask away, and I'll try to answer asbest I can. ZX: I don't beeliiieeevvee it. Belatedbirthday greetings. MC: Thanks, half a century of sex, liesand videotape.
1 Andrew Broad's Manic Miner Room Format Welcome to my Manic Miner room format! I figured all this out for myself by eyeballing the data and experimenting. That was back in 1992, before I had accessto the Internet, therefore I had no idea that other people have also written Manic Miner editors and unofficial sequels! But as far as I know, this is the only technical specification for Manic Miner onthe Internet, and none of the existing editors - except my own Manic Miner ScreenEditor which has now been released - do not appear to have all this knowledge built into them! Everything you ever wanted to know about the room format is here, plus I impart lots of tips on creating special effects as well as pointing out the pitfalls to avoid! I did this for Jet Set Willy as well, but Arsen Torbarin
1 INDEX (1) AN29.1 : This index. AN29.2 : NEWS. Some brighter news forAN29.3 : this issue. AN29.4 : THE 5TH NSS SHOW. Reviewed by The Ed. AN29.5 : CRASHED PRESS RELEASE. By Mark Sturdy. AN29.6 : Z88 HINTS & TIPS. Part three by Jack Lawrie. AN29.7 : THE GREAT GIANA HOAX. Paul White reports on this elusive game. AN29.8 : OBJECT ORIENTATED PROGRAMMING. AAN29.9 : project by Chris Thomson. AN29.10: Z88 O
1 STERLING Reviewed by Mick Harrop This is a review of a program i cameacross in the Z88 Library STERLING pfs.When i first came across this program ithought YES! this is just what i need. But to my disappointment i found theprogram was Shareware and i could only putin ten transactions. So i thought i wouldsee if i could still get in touch with theauthor but after 8 years i did not know ifhe would still live at that address. Well to cut a long story short i never didfind him. For the next couple of months(well 8 months) i tried alsorts to findthe program. From asking Andy to puttingpost on the internet. I had at this time given up on finding theprogram when one day i got a e-mail sayingthis guy had a
1 OZ v5 The steps for rebuilding the Z88 operating system OZ is certainly the best multitaskingoperating system working on a 8 bitscomputer. Paul Bond was the mainprogrammer who designed and programmed it. Since its start, he designed a veryinteresting boot option. On reset, ifthere is a special pattern in slot 1, OZjumps to it. Paul Bond thought probablythat one day, there will be flash epromcards which could contain OZ in slot 1. OZ on a 1M Flash Card in slot 1 A large1MEG card for OZ, applications and systemfiles would be enough. Every one coulddownload the latest OZ from internet,upgrade the Z88 like flashing a BIOS on aPC. This could be done by a simple BASICflashing 64K o
1 NEWS ****** IBM 'INVENTS' THE MICRODRIVE It seems that, in the eyes of IBM, SirClive never existed and in 1983 ainnovative new storage medium never cameabout. The invention looks something like a verytiny hard disk drive, very much the sizeof the ORIGINAL microdrive, but can hold170Mb or 340Mb. Future models could hold1Gb. Considering that the originals couldbe unreliable, 1Gb sounds like a lot ofdata to lose! More information andpictures can be found in the December 1998issue of PCW magazine. ROCKY HORROR SHOW GETS THE PC TREATMENT No, it's not a