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

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1024MAK
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Re: The comp.sys.sinclair Crap Games Competition 2021: 25th edition extravaganza!

Post by 1024MAK »

So the aim is for 9.975 more crap games, just to leave it hanging on the edge before the warp core explodes or the hull disintegrates…

Alas, what spare time I had has been eroded somewhat. I’m temporarily (well, for at least two months) covering for a work colleague and friend, while they have an operation for cancer and subsequent recovery. And it means I’m rather busy with less time for hobbies or to dip into the forums. And even if I do find time during the day, can be soon interrupted by the constant stream of emails that need attention or phone calls or sometimes being involved in up to three video conferences a day. Then I’m finding the need to switch off from using ‘screens’ in the evening. I’m not used to all this. Hence why I’m less active on all forums at the moment.

So sorry if people are waiting on me.

Mark
ZX81 Variations
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Looking forward to summer later in the year.
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TMD2003
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Re: The comp.sys.sinclair Crap Games Competition 2021: 25th edition extravaganza!

Post by TMD2003 »

If the worst comes to the worst, I'll tell next year's host to expect two ZX80 entries at least, mainly because I have one in the pipeline.

I've broken a ton of records with this year's competition already. Maybe it was too much to expect to get a ton of ZX80 entries, seeing as there's only so much that can be done with it...
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 »

END OF WEEK 37:

Another blank week in the CSSCGC - I haven't had a single entry in the whole of September - and just to really put the biscuit crumbs in the bed, Our Glorious Creator departed this realm. All in all, a monumentally rubbish week - eased only by my 14-year-old Honda sailing through its MOT earlier today, and the production of another ten jars of apple and blackberry jam to keep me going through the winter months and so that I can genuinely convince myself that I didn't waste the opportunity of a bumper harvest.

With the competition three-quarters of the way through, I'm going to be making a few changes to the website over the weekend, with a couple of extra pages. As frames are so massively frowned upon, this has meant editing every single page of the website. I am now going to have to do so again, but it's for a very obvious good cause.

In the meantime, can I have something this month? Any kind of tribute game for Sir Clive would be welcomed, even if he didn't welcome the presence of games himself, if Micro Men is to be believed.

"It taught a generation how to code", sang MJ Hibbett. Let's show the evidence.
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 »

INTERLUDE:

The CSSCGC website has been expanded slightly.

There is an Awards page, but that's only going to be activated once the competition is done and dusted. For now, it's heavily guarded...

The main addition is the RZX page, in which I've played right the way through all the games that it's possible to record an RZX for, up to the end of February. In cases like Pixel Perfect Shot, where there is no ending, I've played it until you've seen as much as I think you need to see, whereas for games that have a defined end point, such as Horace and the Vikings, you'll get to see it. Some games have more than one RZX file if I think it requires it - Cretans has two, one showing a maze that has a clear route through the game and one that doesn't, and Mono-Rail Simulator has three skill levels, of which I've shown them all.

More of these will follow in October - I'll probably update the RZX page every couple of weeks until we're up to date - and the second package will be one Spectrum game and four on the ZX81, for which I remind you it is possible to make an RZX if you know what you're doing!

Now, how about some new submissions? MUSH!
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 »

END OF WEEK 38:

Other than to 1024MAK who's explained his position...

*FUME*

Three weeks with nothing to show for it!

I can understand some things - those of you with kids putting them back to school, being traumatised by the demise of Our Revered Creator, being depressed by the end of summer - but I'd have thought I'd get one entry from someone, somewhere...

Who wants to know what the extra bonus to the competition will be?

Ten more entries and I'll reveal it.
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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Re: The comp.sys.sinclair Crap Games Competition 2021: 25th edition extravaganza!

Post by TMD2003 »

END OF WEEK 39:

Who'd have thought it? I should throw a mild hissy fit more often. By the looks of things, it gets results! This week I've had three entries, all for the 48K Spectrum, although the latter two should really have been 16K games:

Herman Tissies 1D Golf - by Jamie Bradbury
Dirty Harry Simulator San Francisco - by Phil Hite
Mines of Magrathea - by Paul E. Collins

As a reward for this sudden flurry of activity, and to maximise the chances of getting to the magic bullseye so that the Extra Bonus Meisterwerk can be revealed... the deadline has been extended to 17th December. This will mean the last one of these weekly round-ups will be week 50. I thought that was a better idea than stopping in the middle of week 47. There will be absolutely no further extensions on this date whatsoever, so if your game is ready on 18th December, you'll have to send it to next year's host.

{some of this post does not exist}
Last edited by TMD2003 on Mon Dec 13, 2021 4:20 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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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Re: The comp.sys.sinclair Crap Games Competition 2021: 25th edition extravaganza!

Post by TMD2003 »

EXTRA NEWS:

Who was a twonk and forgot to upload the folder with all the RZX files? It was me.

Who was a twonk and didn't tell me, or didn't even notice? It was everybody else.

It has now been done - and the page has been updated to include entries from March and April. This means that we have RZXs of Balloonatix (which is very hard), and - REJOICE, PEOPLE OF SINCLAIR ZX WORLD, BECAUSE THIS IS YOUR MACHINE - two ZX81 games, Camel Racing and Zonkey Kong, alongside all the others from January and February.

It seems that my method to get RZXs of ZX81 and ZX80 games isn't fail-safe - neither Don't Panic nor MotoRace81 would work properly when I tried to run them using the Interface 2 ZX81 emulator cartridge (or at least a virtual version on Fuse). Both are a combination of BASIC and machine code, and that might be something to do with it.

More RZXs are coming in two weeks - and this time I won't forget. These will be the May/June entries, so that includes Zhunder Vlade (ZX81) and Tic Tac Toe Hell (ZX80) - I hope those two work as they're supposed to!
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 »

FOR MY 100TH POST ON SINCLAIR ZX WORLD,
THERE COULDN'T BE ANYTHING BETTER THAN THIS...


The latest entry that I received yesterday evening is a long-promised effort from John Connolly. What's this? A Simon game? Boo! Hiss! That's the laziest choice for a crap game since...

...what do you mean it's written on a ZX80? Everyone knows that couldn't make sound. Oh, right, I see what you did.

...what do you mean you managed to cram a digitised sound sample and the game itself into the unexpanded machine? There's only 1K, it can't possibly happen. Give the Goolus a grindstone to sharpen their spears on, this must be a joke. April Fool's Day was six months ago.

...what do you mean it isn't a joke and it actually exists, and it's called Ricky Gervais' Simon?

Image

It's not a joke, and neither is that screenshot. That's about all you'll see. In fact, if you have a real ZX80, you'll only need to plug it into the TV so that you can see the LOAD and RUN commands. Other than that, take the sound out of the MIC socket and you're all good to go. Fortunately, for that majority of us who don't own a real ZX80, EightyOne can also emulate this feature - just press F4 to activate "Beeper Sound" and you'll hear an allegedly-silent computer make noises that will drive you and your neighbours up the wall.

This means that - finally, after nine long months, the original Blue Challenge has been met - "make a 1K ZX80 do something useful in machine code". I really wasn't expecting anything like this!

Though that does leave Blue Challenge v2.0 still not taken, which is to use all eight of the ZX80's Integral Functions. This does mean a small fragment of machine code will be required to make use of the USR function; other than that, only ABS might be a problem. It's OK to use an expanded-up-to-16K ZX80 for this challenge, so if there's anyone who's up to doing so in the last ten-and-a-bit weeks...

^ THIS LAST PARAGRAPH IS WHERE YOU LOT COME IN, BY THE WAY...
Last edited by TMD2003 on Mon Dec 13, 2021 4:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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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Re: The comp.sys.sinclair Crap Games Competition 2021: 25th edition extravaganza!

Post by TMD2003 »

END OF WEEK 40:

As you see above and were all very excited about...

This week started with John Connolly astounding us all (and you were astounded, weren't you?) with a 1K ZX80 game involving Ricky Gervais' raucous laugh actually produced by an allegedly-silent computer (well, sort of...), welded to a Simon game engine that took less than 250 bytes and made weird patterns on the screen. To nobody's surprise, it was titled Ricky Gervais' Simon. Part of me wants to believe it will be ported to the ZX81 so that I can run it on real hardware.

This week ended with me taking my own advice. I promised Phil Hite I would watch Dirty Harry after his very-rough-round-the-edges entry in week 39 that quoted Clint Eastwood's most famous line in his entire filmography, including anything he might have said when he was still making Spaghetti Westerns. With one pizza from my marvellous local takeaway devoured and two cans of filthy stout that were part of my birthday present back in July, I will be spending more of the rest of this evening in Mr Eastwood's company. Magnum Force will follow as soon as I've finished posting these round-ups everywhere that I have to.

There are ten weeks to go. And I have just had word from the supplier of the Extra Bonus Game that it needs a bit of debugging but will be ready "mid-to-late November". If we get to 50 entries before then, and I would hope we do, I'll unleash the bonus review when the competition ends, rather the shove it after, say, 53 or 54 entries, because that looks odd, and if I put it in after 50, it'll get buried.

Do not let me, the author of the bonus game, or the CSSCGC down. Mush!
Last edited by TMD2003 on Mon Dec 13, 2021 4:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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 »

END OF WEEK 41:

Bah! No entries. What's happened, were you all so floored by the reveal of a ZX80 making noises that you've all given up hope of surpassing it? Quit your collective moaning and get back to making Crap Games. TWO MORE FOR THE ZX81, THAT'S WHAT I WANT. TWO MORE.

In the meantime, I've updated the RZX page with as many of the entries from May and June as I could make RZXs for, and they are:
#20 - Magiapotagia
#23 - Arse Over Tit
#25 - Tic Tac Toe Hell (ZX80)
#26 - Advanced Adding A TXT File... Simulator
#27 - Rubik Code
#28 - Hard As Nailz
#29 - Las Aventuras de Eustaquio I
#30 - Cliff Richard Loves Rihanna... FACT!

Also, I am revisiting the ZX81 games that I couldn't get to work with an earlier version of Paul Farrow's ZX81-on-128K-Spectrum emulator cartridges, to see if later versions will work. I'll probably put those in the next RZX update in three weeks, because there aren't too many left to reveal. Unless, of course, I get more entries. MUSH!
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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