New ZX81 Game: Against The Elements

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Fruitcake
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Re: New ZX81 Game: Against The Elements

Post by Fruitcake »

mrtinb wrote: Sun Dec 01, 2019 10:49 am And the software I found on my hard drive: https://trello-attachments.s3.amazonaws ... ements.zip
That zip contains the original V1.00 release. I later released V1.01 that made some small efficiency changes to the display generation routine, so you might like to update your copy.
Fruitcake
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Re: New ZX81 Game: Against The Elements

Post by Fruitcake »

An update to Against The Elements (v1.02) has just been released!

ATE.gif
ATE.gif (3.53 KiB) Viewed 5223 times

The game play remains the same as before but I've squeezed in a number of improvements and enhancements to address a few niggles, including:
  • Support added for control keys Q, A, O, P and M, in addition to the existing cursor control keys.
  • Integrated ZXpand joystick support, overriding the new QAOPM keys support if a ZXpand is detected.
  • The flicker that occurred when switching between lo-res and hi-res screens has been eliminated.
  • Lo-res and hi-res screens are now properly aligned.
  • More colourful displays when using the Chroma 81 interface via some additional colour coding.
  • Fix for an obscure bug that could result in the game locking up.
  • Small improvement to the speed of the game play.
  • Extra indication shown when the game is lost.
  • Integrity check added to verify that the game has loaded successfully.
stevenmcdonald
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Re: New ZX81 Game: Against The Elements

Post by stevenmcdonald »

A great update Paul!

I know Free space was very tight on the original release so that’s great work cramming in these updates !

I’ve just played it and love the added colour and new key support!

Steve.
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Vorticon
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Re: New ZX81 Game: Against The Elements

Post by Vorticon »

Well consider my flabber properly gasted. I can't believe this so playable on the Zeddy! Well done indeed!
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mrtinb
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Re: New ZX81 Game: Against The Elements

Post by mrtinb »

Vorticon wrote: Wed Mar 30, 2022 4:09 am Well consider my flabber properly gasted. I can't believe this so playable on the Zeddy! Well done indeed!
It’s incredible that it needs no WRX hardware modification, and only 16k.

(If you have 48k WRX enabled RAM on your ZX81, you could also try the port of H.E.R.O, which I find impressive as well.)
Martin
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escher
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Re: New ZX81 Game: Against The Elements

Post by escher »

This is the most impressive thing I have ever seen an unmodified 16K ZX81 do, you deserve great credit - I apologise for not realising you were also the person behind the ZX81 "Celebration" Demo which I became aware of a few years back when searching for images of my old game "Z-Xtricator". Your kind words about the hi-res technique was nice to read after only ever seeing negative comments about the game. In fact I posted a recent thread in the hardware forum where I go on to mention some details of the sorry tale of that game and its impact on The Software Farm. I didn't get to touch a physical ZX81 in nearly 40 years since and was looking for impressive demos, this is great but would be even better if you put a simple demo "attract" mode which shows off the game for a few seconds repeatedly in idle mode.
Lardo Boffin
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Re: New ZX81 Game: Against The Elements

Post by Lardo Boffin »

mrtinb wrote: Wed Mar 30, 2022 4:41 am
Vorticon wrote: Wed Mar 30, 2022 4:09 am Well consider my flabber properly gasted. I can't believe this so playable on the Zeddy! Well done indeed!
It’s incredible that it needs no WRX hardware modification, and only 16k.

(If you have 48k WRX enabled RAM on your ZX81, you could also try the port of H.E.R.O, which I find impressive as well.)
HERO! Blimey. I bought a 2600 just to play that. Amusingly the game cartridge cost more than the Atari…

Shame there isn’t a multi load ‘spand version. I don’t have a 48K zeddy.
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mrtinb
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Re: New ZX81 Game: Against The Elements

Post by mrtinb »

Lardo Boffin wrote: Sat Apr 23, 2022 4:31 pm Shame there isn’t a multi load ‘spand version. I don’t have a 48K zeddy.
If I want to play it, I attach the ZXblast which has 512k. :)
Martin
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Fruitcake
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Re: New ZX81 Game: Against The Elements

Post by Fruitcake »

Thanks all for the kind comments. :)

escher wrote: Sat Apr 23, 2022 3:33 am would be even better if you put a simple demo "attract" mode which shows off the game for a few seconds repeatedly in idle mode.
Well as you can imagine the 16K RAM is pretty full and so there is no room for a demo mode. Any spare RAM was used to try to cram in as many rooms as possible and to make them as interesting as space allowed.

escher wrote: Sat Apr 23, 2022 3:33 am Your kind words about the hi-res technique was nice to read after only ever seeing negative comments about the game.
I think Rocket Man was always going to be a very hard act to follow. It had the impressive look of Forty Niner, but was far more playable. It was in the charts at a time when they were dominated by Spectrum and C64 titles! So the odds of any ZX81 game matching its popularity was very unlikely in my opinion.

The look of Z-Xtricator always struck me as special. It had pseudo hi-res graphics yet looked pixel perfect; no other pseudo hi-res game back then did that or even now for that matter. Odyssey Invaders used a similar technique to Z-Xtricator but even its graphics had the characteristic misshapen appearance of pseudo hi-res. Z-Xtricator stands out because of this fact alone for me. In terms of game play, the only real thing I felt was lacking was a bit more variety, maybe different looking levels to reach so that there was more a sense of progression. Seeing Z-Xtricator it was clear there was more potential to be had from its hi-res technique and this inspired the investigation that lead to the development of Celebration. I'm just surprised Z-Xtricator's technique has not been used as the basis for other games over the years...

escher wrote: Sat Apr 23, 2022 3:33 am the sorry tale of that game and its impact on The Software Farm.
In terms of not supporting both ZX81 ROM editions, that is an issue that plagues even modern day releases. And in fact there are actually 3 editions of the ZX81 ROM, a fact that only came to light last year! Finding that out after all these years shocked most folk on this forum, including me.

Software Farm went on to release Booster (which looks the part but has major playability issues), and Spectrumiser (which was apparently based on an unlicenced version of M-Coder!), so I don't think Z-Xtricator can be attributed for all the woes of Software Farm. I don't think it was realistic in 1984/85 for any company to keep going solely on the back of the ZX81 market...
escher
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Re: New ZX81 Game: Against The Elements

Post by escher »

Thanks Fruitcake,

I was a teenager studying for my 'O'-Levels when I created the Z-Xtricator game, I had purchased the Complete Rom Disassembly of the ZX81 book by Ian Logan and Frank O'Hara at quite a lot of expense to me at the time only earning income from a paper-round job, and that combined with Toni Baker's "Mastering Machine Code on your ZX81" borrowed from the local public library led to many many weeks of obsession with the display routine (explained in the first couple of pages of Ian Logan's book).

I really wanted to do a hi-res chess game, but I was fascinated with the ability to display perfect diagonal lines with psuedo hi-res I had discovered and thought I'd try to do a sideways scroller demo like defender. I developed it so quickly and was so excited I sent the tape off to the Software Farm before really thinking about making it into a proper game (There were just two FIXED paths for the aliens, and each level the number of aliens just increased by one. I really never thought they would publish it like that, but they demoed it with a group of schoolkids according to the reply I got and just asked me to change the name from "Hi-Res Defender" and make a (huge!) loading screen with the Software Farm logo (the game loaded in under two minutes without that!)

I got a little over £600 in royalties in a few months and then received a letter from The Software Farm explaining that hundreds of tape were being returned to sellers (which included local newsagents etc) due to the game crashing on the new rom ZX81.

This resulted in the distribution company (Tiger?) going into bankruptcy, so was definitely the cause of The Software Farm's demise.

I felt bad about this, and as a dumb teenager I tried to make amends by sending them another game, which was much better, a platform game with large insects, which I called "Bugs", of course they didn't release this and even sent me a kind letter saying it was a much better game, but the fiasco with Z-Xtricator had damaged the company irreparably.

It wasn't until quite a few years later that I realised calling this game "Bugs" could have been taken as a not funny joke, they were pretty gracious in the circumstances.

I may try to cobble something together for the 50th anniversary in my retirement...
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