Okay I haven’t finished my remake of Joust yet, nor did I want to wait until the last week of the month to get an article out. Instead, I offer you Monster Maker as June’s monthly program. It’s pretty straight forward and anti-climatic against the power of today’s programs. Once you load it, enter in five numbers and type your monster’s name. That’s it. The program will then display a nicely formatted monster description based on your input.
I actually started working on May’s program of the month, Joust, about three weeks ago. My goal was to update the program to a faster and more fluid MCODER version. Sadly, things haven’t gone so well. Pressed for time, I will leave you instead with my original take on this popular arcade from the 80s.
April has been a crazy month. I decided to try something new, pushed along by an unexpected event. I’m writing a book. I joined NaNoWriMo just after last November's event so I didn't expect to do anything until later this year. The surprise was there CampNaNoWriMo event in April. Not to waste the opportunity, I’ve been busy crafting my Sci Fi novel and am now in the final stretch to my 50,000 words goal. Add on top of that a business trip and a family trip and you'll quickly see that my ZX81 hobby gets pushed by the wayside.
For March's program of the month, I drew inspiration from one of my older demo’s, The Ball. Like many young kids from the early eighties using BASIC, I took a stab at animating a bouncing ball. It is a a relatively easy program to write depending on how complex you want to make the math. In my case, it is very simple math, no physics involved here.
For February, I give you Time, a simple landing game with a twist. Using the Z and . keys, you maneuver your craft to each successive landing pad. If you miss the landing, keep trying but be careful. Run out of time and it’s game over! How high of a score can you amass? A fair warning, Time isn’t always fair.
January’s program of the month, Fireball, marks a first for me. Although I’ve used a few different methods to type in my programs, I’ve always gone back to a Windows so I could use EightyOne to generate the program files and images. However, for my birthday, my wife took me to the Apple store and I upgraded my old laptop to a shiny new MacBook Pro.
Winter has set in and it is time to close out the year with a simple game. Dollar Sign, December’s program of the month, is that game.
For November, I’m looking both forwards and backwards. Although I wrote SNUNCH in 1983, I added a corrected version to my first ZX81 web page in the ’90s. SNUNCH was my early attempt at writing a PAC-MAN like game. Note that I said like, not clone. My goal was to be inspired, not to copy. Sadly, it isn’t very good, even after I fixed some of its logic flaws. Despite its flaws, I still believed it had potential and I set about updating it using MCODER II. It is this improved SNUNCH ML version that I offer as November’s program of the month.
Since it’s been a few months since I’ve presented an animation program, I hereby offer October’s program of the month Space Dock. Written when the space shuttle program was in full swing, Space Dock depicts a shuttle launch for its scheduled docking to repair a satellite.
I took a break from educating myself on z80 machine code, more on that later, to fix a few things that have bugged me about the site. They are minor and probably will go completely unnoticed by most, but I wanted to make a quick note for future reference. Hey that’s what blogs are for, right?
October’s program of the month is S.M.P. or Sinclair Memo Pad. A simple scrolling editor that allows you to take a couple of quick notes that last as long they are on-screen.
While searching for some code examples I ran across this inventive hardware expansion. Michel created a ZX81 Nixie Clock and has been kind enough to share his creation with the world through Facebook.
Whoa, it’s August already? Time for another program of the month. Coming your way is Parachute, a deceptively simple reflex game that uses recognizable graphics to give you an enjoyable causal gaming diversion. I’ve been staring at this program for months now as it was sitting on the top of the stack. The airplane and parachute graphics stand out prominently in the listing, making it hard not to notice. As much as I tried to ignore it, Parachute was calling me to type it in. I finally caved and obliged.
I wasn’t sure in my last post how to remove the extra space from the program listings. Well, I figured it out.
Awhile back I went searching for a decent ZX81 font and ran across ZX81 VDU. I played around adding it to my site’s footer, but I really wanted to do more with it. It’s pretty good and, unlike some other fonts I found, it has all the ZX81 graphic characters. You do have to carefully choose the font size, but that is minor issue. Overall a great font that is easy to use.
I often search around the web looking to see what kind of ZX81 community still thrives. I truly expected to find a community in decline, but a surprising number of nostalgia sites are still out there. I found some dedicated to hardware, some to emulating, and others to software. Some are reference sites offering up tips and how to do things. Others simply have reviews of software from a different era. All of them interesting in their own way.
July is almost half over, but we still have time for our program of the month: Spiders & Flies. You play a growing Venus flytrap that is searching for flies and special bugs. Use the ZX81 arrow keys to move around: 5, 6, 7, and 8. But be careful. Don’t eat the spiders lurking about or accidentally eat yourself. It’s a super easy game so you have no excuse for not trying it out.
Blast Off, June’s program of the month, is a simple game that tests your typing skills. You may find it a bit easier to play on an emulator than on a real ZX81. Fortunately, you can try now! It isn’t a very hard game if you are decent typist. It would also work well for those practicing their typing skills.
Well it is getting late in the month and I didn’t want to pull another last-minute update. To make things a bit interesting, I used Zed Ex on my Android tablet to enter in this month’s entry. More on that in a bit. Let me first introduce our deliciously short entry for May: Up-Cake. A fast and simple scrolling game that is easy to play and hard to lose at. My kind of game!
Late and last-minute, I present April’s program of the month Star Dodge. A decidedly simple game that requires you to dodge stars randomly placed on the screen. Can you get your Tie Fighter shaped ship, an inverse H, past the increasingly more dense stars? Give it a try to see.
In 1984, I moved that Summer from Italy back to the US. As I was Flipping through my old printouts, I ran across one that I had marked as the last program I completed In Italy. How cool is that? Seeing this, I just had to make Raider V my program of the month for March.
The old saying “time flies when you’re having fun” is so true of late. This year started with a bang and I feel like I’ve been running ever since. It isn’t that I haven’t wanted to work on my old ZX81 programs, but they often take a back burner to other past times. That said, I did find some time to sit down this weekend to type in another program. For February I present you with ENLARGER.
Another year, another month, and now another program to celebrate 2013. January’s program of the month is an old one: Hit Man. From 1983, Hit Man was my attempt at creating a wall dodging program and it is a tough one to play.
December is upon us and Thyime is the last program of the month for 2012. My how quick the year has passed. Thyime’s elements include moving, shooting, a break through wall, and a moving enemy. It does all this while remaining fast. Thyime provides a decent game to close out the year.
I couldn’t help it. I updated Bonkers using MCODER II to convert the BASIC code to Machine Language. This improved the speed of the game making improving its playability. If you haven’t played the 1985 version, play it first so you can appreciate the difference. If you have, now give the 2012 version a try. Better?