itch.io

Thankyou Robert!  very much appreciated.  Hope you are still keeping up in the dev scene and keep creating those wonderful gfx, you are a true artist.  

maybe things have changed in cspect since i wrote it? The sna self detects if it thinks its running on a spectrum next so there is nothing to do.  Ensure when you run  the sna under the next browser or cspect command line ensure to choose next rom  and not 48k rom to run under. Ensure that the bmp file is also in the same directory.  When you run and quit the game on the next it should also create a hi score save file in the same folder after playing the game.  I dont have my systems setup anymore to test so just going off memory here, but other people have run it succesfully from other screen captures on youtube i have seen.

Cursory glance at the cspect readme i guess you will need to run cspect with command options -zxnext -nextrom -mmc=c:/path to folder/ ???

yes it does.

The zip contains and SNA a BMP and a TXT file.  The Sna is dual compatible between original 48k and Next.  To use on a next, create a sub folder and place all files inside it and run the Sna file from the next browser.    Instructions are in the TXT file on how to do this.   

Glad it's of use. Have to say I haven't tested it on recent OS so good to know its still compatible. Thanks for the detailed info. 

Been playing this on the NSwitch recently and really enjoy it.  Saw this for the next so thought I would try this too.

Great start to the product but I have some points.

The alignment is slightly out... .  

If a branch is above me and there is a branch on the opposite side at the bottom lowest position, i should need to chop the bottom one away.  It is opposite to the way it should be, and i infact have to move into the space where the bottom branch is to chop it away else I get clunked on the head.  

Minor niggle I know, but when I am so used to played the switch version, this throws me completely.

I think line 7045 should be after 7055 so that when you move into a branch, you die.  And your random generation routine for branches should have a guarantee of enough space on opposite side when chopping bottom branch out. (proc createbranches, and line 5027 in proc updatebranches).  

Also, i dont think the random routine accommodates for blank spaces either.  There is not always a branch to chop, but just some trunk sometimes.

Be great to see these extras added.  And two or 3 player support also.  Imagine the manic fun to be had!

Keep up the good work on the Next.

absolutely awesome...tricky as hell!

Just finished first level - hope you manage to complete some more.

My screen  seemed too dark and couldnt find any options, but your youtube video showed a lot more detail than i could see on the gun.  

(Windows version)

Keep up the excellent work!  loving the retrospec feel of it all - great interpretation of a great game.   

I think the original character could kneel also, so maybe a C or CTRL to crouch option might be a good move also.

Hi pcarmo,

Thanks for the great feedback - glad you enjoyed it.

If any complaint I was expecting to see, it would have been that it is too easy!   During development I play tested an enormous amount and personally found it a bit too easy now, and can get to level 8/9 without much trouble.  This is why I added the missile to the mothership just to make it a little more difficult.   As a tip, when you get to the last invader,  stand still and precision time aim rather than trying to chase and shoot.  The speed is as per the arcade version and you will notice that the very last invader is subtly different in speed from left to right - this is by design as the same as the arcade.  I always thought that was a hardware design issue in the old arcade hardware, but it turns out it was programmed that way.

Regarding CSpect emulation.   I have tried to get it working under CSpect.  Someone else commented that it didnt work under CSpect running NextOS which is why I compiled the BAT file variant for playing under CSpect.   As to why it doesnt work directly under NextOS, thats a tricker question.    I have spoken on the boriel/zxbasic forums about this, and so far, no diffinitive answer, but what is speculated by Mike (the cspect dev) is that there is no TBBLUE firmware, just the Nextos and emulator, so many system variables may not be as per real hardware on boot up.    These can be set manually, if we know what they are, but that is the unknown at present.    When ran from the batch file, the NextOS is not used - this is the difference - maybe that changes some vars.  Yet, when ran from real hardware, it all works.   All a big mystery at present.    Compatability is better if you rename the file from SNX to SNA, and I have had success upto the point of the backdrop showing, but have got no further currently.   My other next program, Funky Monkey Kid, does run under CSpect with NextOS as an SNA, which adds even more of a mystery for me.   That game however uses very little next hardware - just the backdrop, real time clock, and save and load features.  I speculate something to do with sprites or sound are the cause of the troubles in Spice Invaders on cspect/nextos as these are extra to whats in Funky Monkey Kid.

Rest assured, if we every find out the required settings, I will update and release.

do you mean on the sounds?  Possibly but haven't learnt how to do samples/dmasound as yet.   If I learn how I will revisit it. Thanks for the ideas. Keep them coming!

Dunno in all honesty. Never looked into it before. Do you have any in mind? Any examples of any?

Correct. This was by design.  If you read the instructions if was fairly evident.  I fail to see your point in your statement?

Hi Nigel,

Fair point about it not auto running but by not running it yourself you miss out on the nice border effect on the preparing graphics routine.  i have updated the downloads as z80 and sna snapshots whicg are default at the menu, ready to play.

I have been unable to replicate the issue about the character swapping between letters. the character itself looks like a letter i and when running could be seen as a letter k i guess but working on an 8*8 pixel boundary doesnt give you a lot of scope for detailed graphics 8) 

I have tried many flavours of spectaculator with different hardware setups but all seem normal to me.

if it is definately not graphics but letters being shown, it would be interesting to know your setup in spectaculator and a screen shot of the issue which  may help me diagnose the issue.

the main characters graphics are UDGs over the letters e through to o so it could be represented by these letters if the graphics routine has not been run through, but the snapshots have already had the graphics compiled into memory so this should not be the case.

i know emulators like retrovirtualmachine can override the model type so can run the game as a 128k model which does corrupt the game as not all UDGS are available in 128k mode but this still doesnt seem to fit what you are experiencing.

regards jason

Hi Nigel,

First off, let me thank you very much for the purchases.

I dont know what happened to the link - it shows 0 bytes.  

I have since re-uploaded the z80 file so please try to download again.

If you still have issues with downloading, you can also try my alternate site of https://sites.google.com/site/bootleggersrealm/Downhome/Topic3 which has it in tap format, and also the source code if you are interested in the code behind it all.

I do hope you enjoy the game, and I highly recommend using a currah microspeech device if you are playing on real hardware, or if emulating, try using the Spectaculator emulator as this does a very good job of the currah emulation.

Also, if you are interested, I developed this for the Paul Jenkinson The Spectrum Show series, so if you have an interest in all things Spectrum, I highly recommend watching the series. This was included in Season 5 from episode 1, or Episode #41 

Regards

Jason

hi retrobrews.

First off thanks for asking.

Secondly of course you may. As long as it is not being sold, or profit being created from them in anyway for yourself or site, I am more than happy for them do get extra advertisement. 

Regards jason

As the Jam has finished, I still developed it further, so please see my latest submission on https://bootlegger.itch.io/ink...

Vast improvements on speed and fill logic/completion

dev here - published another version after gamejam complete as was never happy with fill routine.  better fill and end of game detection.

briliant.  very sleak code. I was expecting more code than that!  very impressed.

dev here - another small update - improvements to the gfx and layout. 

Dev here - I agree it is too slow - really needs a bit of machine code for the fill routine, but this is a speccy jam game release where only Basic is allowed so have to suffer the slowness i am afraid.   I have added a little code to try to fast fill from the top when a full line is a complete colour just to increase the speed a bit (not perfect but does the job)

What to do - choose a colour and flood fill from top left.  Fill will continue right until it hits a colour that is different from the one currently filling over or itself.  If it hits its same colour, it will continue.  Breaking into a new line is only achievable by choosing the colour in the left column.   Try to determine which colour will give you either a new line or the largest flood fill to try to complete the whole board in one colour in the least amount of moves.

Thanks for the positive feedback so far.

Great idea implemented well.  Could do with a little expansion to safe the repetitiveness of events.  Is there an end to it I wonder - got as far as some ruins so far!

nice breakout attempt using just attributes.  Feel the angles of the ball need a little tweaking when hitting the ball on the edge of the bat but otherwise a fun little game.

Brilliant presentation.  Fluid game.  I like it.