The comp.sys.sinclair Crap Games Competition 2021: 25th edition extravaganza!

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Crayon21
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Re: The comp.sys.sinclair Crap Games Competition 2021: 25th edition extravaganza!

Post by Crayon21 »

thank you :D
In Heck, there are two options for perpetual torment:

Eat the Puckerberry and suffer for eternity:
drink nothing but a cocktail of The Last Dab and Mexican Cake blended and served with
habanero slices
:twisted:
Crayon21
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Re: The comp.sys.sinclair Crap Games Competition 2021: 25th edition extravaganza!

Post by Crayon21 »

Where the hell is my submission? this isn't spite is it?
In Heck, there are two options for perpetual torment:

Eat the Puckerberry and suffer for eternity:
drink nothing but a cocktail of The Last Dab and Mexican Cake blended and served with
habanero slices
:twisted:
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XavSnap
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Re: The comp.sys.sinclair Crap Games Competition 2021: 25th edition extravaganza!

Post by XavSnap »

it's time to call a halt to it
Xavier ...on the Facebook groupe : "Zx81 France"(fr)
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TMD2003
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Re: The comp.sys.sinclair Crap Games Competition 2021: 25th edition extravaganza!

Post by TMD2003 »

END OF WEEK 50:

The canonical end-of-competition flurry continued unabated, until yesterday. And to think that I was originally planning to run this competition between February and November. Got to say, I'm glad I did it this way.

This final week's four contributions were:
#56 - Avoid Santa, for the 16K Spectrum by Firelord (which didn't get any demerits!);
#57 - Psycho 3, for the 16K Spectrum by Luny;
#58 - Dragon Tale (demo), for the Spectrum +3 by Enrique Pimpinela Santos;
#59 - Advanced Fishing Simulator, for the Spectrum +3 with ULAplus! also by Enrique Pimpinela Santos.

That's the end of the last of the weekly round-ups. I never missed one, and that's because I run a tight ship. In just over five hours, it'll also be the end of the competition. I fully expect these to be the final entries, but you never know what might happen right at the bitter end...

Cheers to everyone, everywhere, who made a positive contribution (and anyone who might just squeeze a 60th entry in before the door slams shut).

I'm now finalising the Awards Ceremony! I don't expect anything to change in it at this stage, and I'll be revealing all over the weekend.

It's been an exciting journey.

ADDENDUM: ...and I'll have more to say when the competition formally closes.
Spectribution: Dr. Jim's Sinclair computing pages.
Features my own programs, modified type-ins, RZXs, character sets & UDGs, and QL type-ins... so far!
salvacam
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Re: The comp.sys.sinclair Crap Games Competition 2021: 25th edition extravaganza!

Post by salvacam »

TMD2003 wrote: Fri Dec 17, 2021 7:53 pm Cheers to everyone, everywhere, who made a positive contribution (and anyone who might just squeeze a 60th entry in before the door slams shut).
It cannot be that it stays at 59, for my part it will not be you can see the mail
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TMD2003
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Re: The comp.sys.sinclair Crap Games Competition 2021: 25th edition extravaganza!

Post by TMD2003 »

It won't stay at 59 entries for the year.

Or 60.

Or 61...
Spectribution: Dr. Jim's Sinclair computing pages.
Features my own programs, modified type-ins, RZXs, character sets & UDGs, and QL type-ins... so far!
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TMD2003
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Re: The comp.sys.sinclair Crap Games Competition 2021: 25th edition extravaganza!

Post by TMD2003 »

WE'RE CLOSED!

And the final total is 62 entries. Reviews will be forthcoming in the morning, because I'm completely cream-crackered and I'm going to bed.
Spectribution: Dr. Jim's Sinclair computing pages.
Features my own programs, modified type-ins, RZXs, character sets & UDGs, and QL type-ins... so far!
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TMD2003
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Re: The comp.sys.sinclair Crap Games Competition 2021: 25th edition extravaganza!

Post by TMD2003 »

The final reviews of the year are now available!

First... it's Giannis ("Firelord") again. He couldn't stand to see this competition end on 59 entries, and sent in a 60th. I was obviously cynical about what Avoid Trees (16K Spectrum) would be, but I was sort-of-pleasantly surprised. It's a very basic skiing game - with "quirks" rather than terminal problems - adapted from a 140-character BASIC program thread on WOS five years ago that Giannis just dug up. It serves a purpose, and that purpose is to ensure I didn't get stuck on 59 entries.

Salvador Camacho has been a trooper this year, and - at the risk of repeating myself - couldn't stand to see this competition end on 59 entries, and sent in a 60th. But because Giannis got there first, Salvador's entry was #61. I'd usually say it was lazy to retool a previous entry, but this serves a purpose, and that purpose is to ensure I didn't get stuck on 59 entries... even though I already wasn't. Presenting Rudolph Practices - if you've been paying attention to the rest of the competition you'll recognise this one.

Image

And finally... Andy Jenkinson's last chance to get an entry in until 2023 was a "nano-game", High/Low Continue, crammed into a single line of Spectrum BASIC, with the sole purpose of demonstrating that CONTINUE actually has a purpose in a BASIC listing. The "game" itself... threw up so many coincidences that Agrajag spontaneously reincarnated so that he could scream "COINCIDENCE?" in my face before once again being killed by Arthur Dent.
(This final entry is a shining example of HOW TO DO IT and not get ripped to shreds in the review when submitting something that won't even fill one page of the screen on a Spectrum. It's the Honda Beat of programming, the complete opposite of an Oldsmobile diesel.)



And that's your lot.

I'd already written the Awards pages - there are four of them, now - when these last entries came in, so I'm going to have to adjust the ranking tables that took bloody ages to translate to HTML. There are a few bits and pieces to clean up on them, as well.

These will be revealed tomorrow, alongside the Bullseye Bonus Game and its lesser siblings.
Spectribution: Dr. Jim's Sinclair computing pages.
Features my own programs, modified type-ins, RZXs, character sets & UDGs, and QL type-ins... so far!
Crayon21
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Re: The comp.sys.sinclair Crap Games Competition 2021: 25th edition extravaganza!

Post by Crayon21 »

TMD, did you erase my entries? If so, why? :?
In Heck, there are two options for perpetual torment:

Eat the Puckerberry and suffer for eternity:
drink nothing but a cocktail of The Last Dab and Mexican Cake blended and served with
habanero slices
:twisted:
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TMD2003
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Joined: Sun Oct 11, 2020 5:39 pm

Re: The comp.sys.sinclair Crap Games Competition 2021: 25th edition extravaganza!

Post by TMD2003 »

Listen up, Crayon, and listen good.

I didn't intend it to be this way. I certainly didn't have to extend the competition to this forum, either. Nobody else ever has done so before. I regret nothing - the inclusion of Zonkey Kong is as a direct result of me posting here, and I'd be willing to bet this was how Salvador Camacho knew about it, to contribute as much as he did.

But as far as I also know, nobody in the entire 26-year history of this competition has ever gone whining to the forum mods demanding that either posts or reviews are edited, and at no point in the competition's history would that ever not have resulted in being told to sod off. I was sent a message that said you'd objected to what I'd written, and was told in no uncertain terms that either I made edits to remove all the nasty hurty words within 24 hours, or the words would be removed for me automatically, here at least. And it was to happen not just here, but on the website as well and the other three forums I've been promoting this competition on.

I run a tight ship, and I do not like it being holed below the waterline. And I took the only feasible course of action. Remove the reviews, and the entries, outright. I then had to edit twenty other reviews, changing more links and URLs that you've had hot dinners. And you can imagine how absolutely thrilled the other forum mods were, on Spectrum Computing and World of Spectrum when I had to ask for the mod's axe myself so that I could correct two lengthy threads that were now horrifically inconsistent. Eight hours, all in, this cost me, and that's time I should have spent on other parts of the competition. I was supposed to be preparing the Awards pages, and those were no picnic.

It takes a lot of effort to run this competition - and I put more into it than most hosts, including trying to write anything-up-to-1000-word reviews on entries that are so meagre that it could be done in a single sentence.

Your seven entries that I originally reviewed, and whose reviews have all been memory-holed in a way that would make Oceania's Inner Party proud (to my disgust, I would add), are officially cleared for re-entry into the 2022 competition, or any other future competition you might want to send them to.

Andy Jenkinson is next year's host, and he's been impressed with the way I've run this competition. He's said so on SC, and will - I would assume - attempt to run as tight a ship as I have done. He is a member here, he's only ever made two posts in September 2020, and whether he wants to resume his activity here and make a 2022 CSSCGC thread is entirely up to him. His competition, his rules, his opening time, and his words on the review. I am adamant, and I will go to my grave saying that what I wrote was milquetoast in comparison to some of the previous year's hosts, who'd have had the mother and father of all field days. But the evidence is gone.

I repeat: if you want to re-submit any or all of your entries for 2022, you are welcome to do so. But actually listen to some advice for once in your life. First of all, don't just leave them lying around here. Absurd as it sounds, the chief reason why I was checking SXZW more than I used to at the beginning of the year, was because I was constantly wondering if you'd dropped something on one of your posts rather than emailing it to me, as I'd always asked, right from the beginning of the competition. If you want to submit them for to Andy's competition, you'll have to do that. He will not be under duress to keep on checking this forum, and neither was I. But I did, and it was only checking here one fateful day that meant I saw that mod message before it was too late! Otherwise I'd have returned to find the thread devastated, and if you or anyone else thought I was angry before...

Secondly, when XavSnap says - and I can understand his frustration - "OMG, WTF! RTFM!" - actually do that.
Here is Steven Vickers' ZX81 BASIC Programming Manual. It, along with its later Spectrum counterpart, is widely regarded as excellent.

Read the manual, right the way through, cover to cover, type in all the example programs - a lot easier to do in the days of emulation rather than dealing with a membrane keyboard that I had to in 1984, not to mention wobbly RAM packs - and then, it will click, and you'll look at what you tried to enter for this competition again, and you'll realise: "good gods, what was I thinking? This can go, that needs editing, that's going to cause the screen to overflow..." and the final product might not be more than the standard CSSCGC fayre, but at least it won't be antagonistic.

Do not even think about re-submitting your previous attempts, or anything new, to Andy's competition until you have done the above, and fixed everything that needs to be fixed. I absolve myself of all responsibility for the fallout if you submit anything that doesn't meet a bare minimum level of competence. Luny's "Psycho 3", shorn of its OUT commands, can be considered that absolute bare minimum.

Also, write that quadratic equation solver that I asked for, before it got lost in all the drama. It's one of the simplest pieces of maths that it's possible to do reliably on a ZX81. I managed to make one, on the 1K model, in under six minutes, which worked first time - it's that easy. I have not deleted the evidence. I might even have a shot on another computer that I've never tried to program before, or at least have some meagre grip of its BASIC. I've got a taste for 1970s computers now, and I'm about to reveal the evidence.

Anyway, enough. I am drawing a line under this right here. I've spent far more time and energy on this explanatory post than it deserved.

10 FOR X=0 TO 63
20 PLOT X,0
30 NEXT X

And now, what I want to do is make a happy ending to this competition. I will do so.
Spectribution: Dr. Jim's Sinclair computing pages.
Features my own programs, modified type-ins, RZXs, character sets & UDGs, and QL type-ins... so far!
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