The comp.sys.sinclair Crap Games Competition 2021: 25th edition extravaganza!
Posted: Sat Dec 26, 2020 10:01 pm
There a few days of the year to run, but one thing has been abundantly clear since May: for 2021, I will be running the comp.sys.sinclair Crap Games Competition. I have officially launched the "preview" on Spectrum Computing (and on World of Spectrum, which gets less attention these days), and I'm not going to repeat the bulk of the post - read it there.
But, to keep things short: it's 25 years since the first CSSCGC in 1996, and also, because 2019 went without one, this is the 25th edition of the competition. For this fortunate collision of two ways of seeing a quarter of a century in business, I'm pushing the boat out far, far into the ocean of dubious-quality programming. And for extra hundreds and thousands on the ice cream, 2021 is also the year that the ZX81 blows out 40 candles on its birthday cake.
This is where you, the people of Sinclair ZX World, come in.
In previous years, the highest number of ZX81 submissions in any one year is seven - in 2004, which is also the first year that anyone ever thought to submit a ZX81 entry. 2004 also saw the first ZX80 entry, and, unknown to me until a few months ago, I was the one who did it! Since then, ZX80 entries have dribbled in at an even slower rate, though 2018 saw five of them, and that's the year that holds the record. In total, there have been 36 entries for the ZX81, and 10 for the ZX80. That is, I remind you, over 24 years. And I am responsible for 20% of the total of the ZX80 entries.
The 2020 competition has only added one title to the pile for both of the old black-and-white machines. And, of course, no prizes for guessing who wrote them both. (Me, obviously). There was even a Challenge to write a ZX80 game to celebrate its 40th birthday, but unfortunately John only allowed "28 days for delivery", and I had no idea of what I could do to enter the challenge! Later on in the year, with THAT THING FROM CHINA THAT WE'RE ALL SICK OF keeping us all indoors, and with the internet out for an afternoon, I had a strange and bizarre idea which became a ZX80 game: Complex Maths... WITH DRAGONS!, which showed that the ZX80 can do calculations with complex numbers if programmed correctly.
I will also be issuing some challenges, and one of them is aimed squarely at the members of this forum: write a game in machine code for the 1K ZX80 - or maybe not even a game, just a demo or utility or... something that could have been published in Sinclair Programs in 1982. Essentially, prove that it's possible. The magazines of t'old days were full of very crude ZX81 games that could be typed in on an unexpanded machine. I hear that the ZX80 had more of its 1K free than a ZX81 did... so that's even more room to circumvent all the compromises that the ZX80 had!
Later on in the year I decided to complete the set of Sinclair machines and wrote Illuminati for the 16K ZX81. Anyone who's going to write a Crap Game for the ZX81, it's not as if there aren't already plenty of examples of how to do it... and how not to do it. I'm told there was even a ZX81 version of Cassette 50, though I've never seen one in the wild.
This forum also appreciates the Z88. And that's a good thing because 2020 saw only the second ever submission for the Z88: the very topical Ronaprise USS 19-2020. Anyone who's good at writing BASIC junk for the Z88, crack on with it!
And even better than that would be if there's anyone who can program in FORTH, and thus write something on a Jupiter Ace. This is a machine I have an emulator for (EightyOne, providing it's less broken than its QL emulation), but I have no idea how to compile and load the program, so if you're going to take up this challenge, make sure you write clear loading instructions to go with it.
Some of you may say "but this is a technical forum, we're mainly interested in how the circuit boards work and which transistors we can replace and so on and so forth". Well, in that case, see programming a game as a technical exercise - particularly if it's on a machine that you've never tried to program before, which is another of my official challenges. Over on SC we have Ast A. Moore who's generally regarded as a genius; he doesn't have much interest in games, but still wrote A Yankee In Iraq to show off his trick with the floating bus on the +2A. I have no idea what it means, but the game is smoother than a baby's bottom.
I may not make maximum publicity of each game on this thread, it might take the form of a weekly update on who's written what, with links to the reviews. Any time there's a ZX81 or ZX80 entry - or something else that's obscure and presumably-SZXW-related - I'll make an immediate update. The 2008 competition, which was open to the largest range of machines, had 130 submissions in the end, and is also the only year where there's been a submission for the Jupiter Ace.
The competition will open on the stroke of midnight (UK time) on 1st January 2021, and will close at two minutes to midnight on 30th November, to allow time to sort out any dangling loose ends, such as multiple entries tied for the winning post.
I'm after "maximum effort, minumum attainment" - so take basic, half-baked ideas, turn them into a playable game of some sort, and then embellish that with... whatever the limitations of the ZX81 and ZX80 allow you to do. Look at Illuminati to see what I did, and you'll get the idea. Write extensive instructions and a backstory, make a cassette inlay card, anything to give a Crap Game something above and beyond what it deserves!
Here's the official website. It contains all the contact details.
But, to keep things short: it's 25 years since the first CSSCGC in 1996, and also, because 2019 went without one, this is the 25th edition of the competition. For this fortunate collision of two ways of seeing a quarter of a century in business, I'm pushing the boat out far, far into the ocean of dubious-quality programming. And for extra hundreds and thousands on the ice cream, 2021 is also the year that the ZX81 blows out 40 candles on its birthday cake.
This is where you, the people of Sinclair ZX World, come in.
In previous years, the highest number of ZX81 submissions in any one year is seven - in 2004, which is also the first year that anyone ever thought to submit a ZX81 entry. 2004 also saw the first ZX80 entry, and, unknown to me until a few months ago, I was the one who did it! Since then, ZX80 entries have dribbled in at an even slower rate, though 2018 saw five of them, and that's the year that holds the record. In total, there have been 36 entries for the ZX81, and 10 for the ZX80. That is, I remind you, over 24 years. And I am responsible for 20% of the total of the ZX80 entries.
The 2020 competition has only added one title to the pile for both of the old black-and-white machines. And, of course, no prizes for guessing who wrote them both. (Me, obviously). There was even a Challenge to write a ZX80 game to celebrate its 40th birthday, but unfortunately John only allowed "28 days for delivery", and I had no idea of what I could do to enter the challenge! Later on in the year, with THAT THING FROM CHINA THAT WE'RE ALL SICK OF keeping us all indoors, and with the internet out for an afternoon, I had a strange and bizarre idea which became a ZX80 game: Complex Maths... WITH DRAGONS!, which showed that the ZX80 can do calculations with complex numbers if programmed correctly.
I will also be issuing some challenges, and one of them is aimed squarely at the members of this forum: write a game in machine code for the 1K ZX80 - or maybe not even a game, just a demo or utility or... something that could have been published in Sinclair Programs in 1982. Essentially, prove that it's possible. The magazines of t'old days were full of very crude ZX81 games that could be typed in on an unexpanded machine. I hear that the ZX80 had more of its 1K free than a ZX81 did... so that's even more room to circumvent all the compromises that the ZX80 had!
Later on in the year I decided to complete the set of Sinclair machines and wrote Illuminati for the 16K ZX81. Anyone who's going to write a Crap Game for the ZX81, it's not as if there aren't already plenty of examples of how to do it... and how not to do it. I'm told there was even a ZX81 version of Cassette 50, though I've never seen one in the wild.
This forum also appreciates the Z88. And that's a good thing because 2020 saw only the second ever submission for the Z88: the very topical Ronaprise USS 19-2020. Anyone who's good at writing BASIC junk for the Z88, crack on with it!
And even better than that would be if there's anyone who can program in FORTH, and thus write something on a Jupiter Ace. This is a machine I have an emulator for (EightyOne, providing it's less broken than its QL emulation), but I have no idea how to compile and load the program, so if you're going to take up this challenge, make sure you write clear loading instructions to go with it.
Some of you may say "but this is a technical forum, we're mainly interested in how the circuit boards work and which transistors we can replace and so on and so forth". Well, in that case, see programming a game as a technical exercise - particularly if it's on a machine that you've never tried to program before, which is another of my official challenges. Over on SC we have Ast A. Moore who's generally regarded as a genius; he doesn't have much interest in games, but still wrote A Yankee In Iraq to show off his trick with the floating bus on the +2A. I have no idea what it means, but the game is smoother than a baby's bottom.
I may not make maximum publicity of each game on this thread, it might take the form of a weekly update on who's written what, with links to the reviews. Any time there's a ZX81 or ZX80 entry - or something else that's obscure and presumably-SZXW-related - I'll make an immediate update. The 2008 competition, which was open to the largest range of machines, had 130 submissions in the end, and is also the only year where there's been a submission for the Jupiter Ace.
The competition will open on the stroke of midnight (UK time) on 1st January 2021, and will close at two minutes to midnight on 30th November, to allow time to sort out any dangling loose ends, such as multiple entries tied for the winning post.
I'm after "maximum effort, minumum attainment" - so take basic, half-baked ideas, turn them into a playable game of some sort, and then embellish that with... whatever the limitations of the ZX81 and ZX80 allow you to do. Look at Illuminati to see what I did, and you'll get the idea. Write extensive instructions and a backstory, make a cassette inlay card, anything to give a Crap Game something above and beyond what it deserves!
Here's the official website. It contains all the contact details.