MAIN MENU     FRONT PAGE MY PROGRAMS CHARACTER SETS ENHANCED TYPE-INS RZX ARCHIVE QL TYPE-INS LINKS & INFORMATION MEET THE CREATOR       ALSO HOSTED HERE     COMP.SYS.SINCLAIR CRAP GAMES COMPETITION 2021       ASSOCIATED WEB PAGES     THE HAMMER OF RETRIBUTION OGG-CAST HAMMER OF RETRIBUTION PRODUCTIONS THE DIAMOND HAMMER: MINECRAFT CREATIONS RICK DANGEROUS RESURRECTED DR. JIM'S PROGRAMMING HISTORY: SPECTRUM NEXT PROGRAMS I was just content to wait until the Issue 2 Next I'd ordered in mid-2020 arrived before I tried programming the Next. But, when I met Henrique Olifiers and Phoebus Dokos from the Next development team at CRASH! Live in November 2022, they gave me a copy of the Issue 1 manual to read (maybe they'd printed too many for the first Kickstarter). In January 2023, I started reading the manual, sorted out a working version of CSpect, and got stuck in. I am informed that CSpect is still riddled with bugs - the Next is far harder to emulate than even a 128K Spectrum - and in order to ensure maximum compatibility with everyone who might want to test these programs, I've avoided using anything that I know will make CSpect crash, even if it'd be fine on a real Next, or an N-Go. I will also make sure that anything I write is suitable for an unaccelerated, unexpanded Next. This is the most significant part of the website, so it gets full-size-with-border screenshots (320×240, though this will blur any LAYER 1,2 screenshots), all of which can be enlarged (to 960×720) by clicking on them - some will link to an HTML page with more than one screenshot. Click the title to go to its ZXDB index page on Spectrum Computing (if it has one - not all of these will!). Some of these entries also contain links to extra information on Dr. Jim's NextBASIC Dumping Ground on the Spectrum Computing forum, or to reviews by the CSSCGC host of that year's competition.   Go to:   SPECTRUM   ZX81   QL & OTHERS   COLLABS   NON-SINCLAIR   ILLUMINATI   ADVANCED LAWNMOWER SIMULATOR 2302: MOWIN' ON MARS Files:    1 × .BAS, 2 × .SL2, 1 × .SPR, 2 × .CAR, 4 × .BIN NextOS version: 2.06H        Released: May 2023 (written April 2023) Review at Jamie Bradbury's CSSCGC 2023 site. No sooner had I finished ALS 2023 than I had the filthy idea to make a sequel for the Next... set on Mars. I thought it would be straightforward... CSpect's "quirks and features" were a hindrance. Fortunately, the Next manual was a big help and this is my first attempt at using sprites, which are far better explained than tiles. It's a first use of tiles as well, other than Tile Cutter. A whole new set of six mowers is on offer, and unlike the Spectrum predecessor, it is possible to win and to fail with all the mowers that are working - though with some, your fate is entirely in your hands, with others, random chance will intervene. Expect many references to The War Of The Worlds, as well as Red Dwarf, The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, Futurama and Back To The Future. KATAKOMBS OF KAKRAFOON Files:    1 × .BAS, 4 × .BIN (optional: 1 × .BAS, 1 × .BIN) NextOS version: 2.08        Released: January 2024 Review at Ed Toovey's CSSCGC 2024 site. While writing my SAM Coupé upgrade to Paul E. Collins' bare-bones Mines of Magrathea from my 2021 CSSCGC, I'd intended to have Zaphod Beeblebrox as the controllable character, but two heads and three arms into an 8×8 UDG won't fit. The Next's 16×16 sprites and tiles were an excellent way to get round that - and once I'd given myself a bit of practice with these, MOM was upgraded further with its original hero. In this sequel, Zaphod collects coloured gems from Kakrafoon to line his own pockets - conscious that the desert planet will roast him alive if he doesn't move quickly or runs out of Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters. For the most part I've kept the Spectrum's 16-colour palette to show what a game without colour clash looks like - but there's a way to switch it to EGA instead, which might come in useful... NEXT-A-SKETCH Files:    1 × .BAS, 1 × optional .SL2 NextOS version: 2.06H        Released: January 2023 Review at Jamie Bradbury's CSSCGC 2023 site. A couple of rudimentary drawing programs from the pages of Sinclair Programs in 1983 were the inspiration for this 40-years-later enhancement, intended in a sense of "if there was such a thing as a Spectrum Next listings magazine, what would be in it?" This was all part of the NextBASIC learning process, and was particularly helpful in getting to grips with palettes and layers; much like the Spectrum originals, it's possible to change the background colour in an instant because it's held in LAYER 1,1 with the main drawing happening on LAYER 2. At its core it's still an Etch-a-Sketch program, but because one of these has previously been allowed into the CSSCGC, this was submitted as well. It contains every feature of both the programs linked above, and more that I've added. SKATE TRAINING I: TRANSITIONANIGANS (v2.0) Files:    1 × .BAS, 3 × .WAV NextOS version: 2.08        Released: February 2024 More info at the NextBASIC Dumping Ground. Conquering roller skating might not be the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of a practical use for my Next, but so it has turned out. To get really good at transitions - not a beginner-level move - and to be able to do so in both directions, I needed a device to bark orders at me, i.e. whether I should turn left or right, selected at random. The Next was that device, and even though this program uses a standard Spectrum screen (i.e. LAYER 0), it uses the dot-commands .playwav to shout at me (provided by a text-to speech program and resampled to 8-bit, 16 kHz) and, as of v2.0, .date to fill in the filename from the real-time clock. It could be down-converted for the Spectrum, but would require the Currah MicroSpeech or some chunky machine code. TILE CUTTER Files:    1 × .BAS, 2 × optional .SL2 NextOS version: 2.06H        Released: January 2023 More info at the NextBASIC Dumping Ground. Hacking my way through the Next manual was a breeze, mostly - concepts that were new to me were seamlessly woven in with the text of the 1982 Spectrum manual and the +2/+3 updates - until I hit the rocks in chapter 17, with tiles - effectively multi-coloured UDGs in 8×8 or 16×16 sizes. All the required information was there, but it was so tersely explained in a way that was very difficult for a newcomer to understand, that I had to get outside help. There were no example programs to illustrate how tiles are set up or used, so I wrote my own, and provided my own detailed explanation of how the TILE command works, and how a tile map is set up. To really ram the point home, the program takes tiles drawn in BANK 9 (the top third of the screen) and redraws the output into BANK 10 (the middle third) in the required sequential format.