Advanced Anticlimactic New Years Simulator

By Lee Spoons

Genre: Utility: It’s so true!

As a brave new year approaches, Lee has submitted (hopefully at the thin end of a bottle given the time) this rather compact bit of code to the competition.

AANYS is a work of genius because it is ahistorical*.  Whether past, present or 100 years hence, people can count down to a new year in which everything will be better, and it might be.

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

*apart from the computer bit but, y’know.

Thankyou Lee!

Download here.

Advanced Power Cut Detector Simulator

By Lee Spoons

Genre: Utility: Chocolate Fireguard

This utility was inspired by the unfortunate weather induced power cuts over the festive period.  We were unaffected in our locality, and were jealous of those without power, who were set free from the restraints of the grid – just imagine the things you could do: play scrabble by candlelight, eat raw meat, write a poem, contemplate a wall and so on.

So to use this tool simply load into your real Spectrum, which unlike your PC can run on the chuntey alone in the absence of proper juice.  Simply follow the questions and after the rather nice interlude music, it will decide and tell you if you have a power cut and how to act accordingly.

Download here.

Advanced Junglist Simulator

By Lee Spoons

Genre: utility: bass und drums

Booyakabooyakjunglist Massif.

I remember spending a rather splendid few weeks mapping the drift geology of that spot during the mid 90’s.  I’m joking of course, because this is referencing the parlance of the old school jungle, a subset of the ‘drum, and base’ musical genre.

 

On loading AJS jumps into Lee’s demo, which is actually sounds exactly like the youtube vids I found while researching, oops – I mean jiving, to jungle.  Then you get the chance to record your own version.  There is a record and play mode, and you have a choice of 8 sounds that epitomise jungle – “Wicked”, “Booyaka”, “Junglist” massive to name a few.  Why not have a bash yourself?

Booyaka!

Great fun, and actually very good at what it does!  Thankyou Lee!

Download here.

I don’t think Lee quite captured it in his demo, so I had a go (space to play)......yup, still got the magic.

HACK SACK:  Timmy provided the following:
125 REM
135 GO TO 100
RUN

Pacifist Space Invaders

By Lee Spoons

Genre: Arcade: hand wringing

Yet again those pesky aliens are bearing down on earth and you are mankind’s last hope.  This BASIC game has a new take on the Space Invaders genre: you have a white flag instead of a death ray.  As the intro screen suggests you are relying on the hope that the aliens are fans of various yoghurt weaved foodstuff and talking things over.

 

As ever Lee is a master of sound, and pacifist space invaders has nice effects and a superb rendition of ‘Give peace a chance’.  However the quality ends there – Pacifist Space Invaders is utter carp!  There is some curious screen edge checking, so that when you go off the right hand side it causes the BASIC ‘scroll’ to start!  Pressing the fire key prints an ineffectual white flag above the player ship, though having said that it looks chunky and odd enough to at least confuse the aliens.

 

If you have the patience to wait for the aliens to land, you’ll discover they mean business…

Thankyou Lee!

Tipshack: crank you emulator up and get it over with.

Download here.

HACK SACK: Download the yoghurt weavers version with a happy ending :-p

Pixy the PIxel

This entry from Lee Spoons uses a new, groundbreaking game designer that will be hitting the shops soon called C.G.D (Classic Game Designer).  So with such a powerful tool at his disposal, let's see what Lee has come up with (and it had better not be a lazy hack of my Pacman demo).

Ah.

This is a pacman game in which all the sprites are replaced with single pixels, which to my eye looks very atmospheric.  It would also be a playable game, if the ghost sprites weren't invisible when on blank background!  You can only see them moving as they overshadow the pellets.

It drew me in though, as it is so difficult.  I'm pleased to say, by chance as much as anything that I managed to complete it.

So, Pixey the pixel is a bit crap, but I'd say it's a seed that could sow a mighty oak if explored further...

Thankyou Lee!

Download here.

AWFTRBTSFTVOTWWPRSWWSBASS

A topical new entry from Lee Spoons, who is building up quite a portfolio.  Lee's description of the game:

For anyone who wants to re-live the thrilling experience of watching the outside of a hospital, may I present to you, "Advanced Waiting for the Royal Baby to Spring from the Vagina of that Woman whose Parents run some Website what sells Balloons and stuff Simulator"...

I'm really pleased Lee has sent this in, because like the whole rest of the bloody country I was waiting with bated breath the arrival of the royal baby from the Duchess of Cambridge's loins.  Now the poor bugger has emerged I feel hollow.

To emulate the exciting waiting time Lee has used a FOR NEXT loop that has 100000000000 repeats, though I have no intention of finding out exactly how long this takes.  What he has failed to do in this entry is capture the newsfeed of journalists saying the same thing every 15 minutes in the absence of facts, and interviewing rebarbative fools with equally little to say on the subject. 

Now I can get on the train south to drop of some flowers at the palace, and thanks to Lee's simulator I can do so safe in the knowledge I can relive that wonderful day en route.

All we need now is the waiting for that rich family to give the baby a name simulator.  My money's on Bob.

Thankyou Lee!

Download here.

Teach yerself Australian

Genre: Utility: Antipodator

By Lee Spoons

You might be forgiven for thinking it would be safe to speak the Queen’s English if planning a jaunt to Australia.  This is not the case unfortunately, as there are a number of things you need to take into account when speaking the uncivilised, backward dialect that the uncouth yobs are pleased to call ‘Australian’.

TYA, like all of Lee’s entries, features a non standard loader.  It’s not quite as good as the Henry’s cat one but I like it – it does the whole thing in reverse:  attributes first followed by an upside down pic of Ayres rock (all loaded bottom to top), partially obscured of course by the loading message.

 

Like all the translators in the competition it features an advanced algorithm that translates any phrase you care to type in.  In this case it is takes advantage of Hugh Shaw’s Inverter and turns your text upside down and back to front.  If you leave the program it leaves the whole BASIC listing inverted (poke 23606,0 23607,60 sorts it natch).

So what do we think of TYA?

So if planning a trip to Oz do you want to go to bed with a ‘hottie’ or a ‘dog’ and wake up to a ‘dingo’s breakfast’ or a ‘dog’s eye’?  Well, If you think Lee’s utility is going to help then you’ve got kangeroos loose in the top paddock!  Thankyou Lee!

Download WAV here .
Download TZX here.

(And you could try the alternative translating engine Teach yourself AQI)

Search for ET

By Lee Spoons

Genre: Arcade: Urbanmythbuster

Lee is building up a great little portfolio in the CGC after a long break.  This one is inspired by the Atari video game burial of 1983.  In a nutshell this is the suspected disposal of Pacman2600 and ET the Extra Terrestrial cartridges in a new Mexico landfill site after huge sales losses (ET is also generally hailed as one of the worst games of all time).  Rumour has it that there are over 3.5 million crushed cartridges and some peripherals concreted over there.  The story resurfaced recently as a media company will soon be searching the landfill site for a documentary.

After the loading screen the first thing to notice is the ABSOLUTELY COOL MUSIC!  Made using Beepola, in my opinion it improves on the actual ET theme so the game’s going to have to be pretty bad to make up for it.

You take the role of a digger (represented by an excellent high resolution UDG) which you drive around the landfill site and dig for treasure.  Digging is represented by an irksome cascade of beeps.  If you are close to the ET cartridge you are given a message ‘GETTING WARM’.  Lee avoids silly complicated algorithms and bases the check on whether you are on the same row or column as the cartridge.  Unfortunately this means once you work out that you are on the same line, all you have to do is work your way along it – slowly digging all the way. 

Just in case you fancy playing Search for ET more than once (and why the devil wouldn’t you?!?), be prepared for a couple of bugs on restart.  There are ghost graphics and it’s possible to go outside the screen and return to basic (bonus points!).

Well as the saying goes, you can’t polish a turd – but you can give it an excellent soundtrack.  Thankyou Lee!

HACK SACK:     Remove line 1005 to stop the annoying digging noise.

                        Success every time:  1005 LET H1=H:LET V1+V

Tipshack:         From a hard reset, the RND seed sets the cartridge position to the same place each time.

Download the game here.

And if you like, the cracked version here where ET has been paid off by Atari to stop you finding the cartridges.  (Sorry Lee!)

DubSpec

By Lee Spoons

Genre: Utility: Dubstep

Like most Spectrum fans, I like to think I have my finger on the pulse.  Most of my Saturdays are spent wearing headphones in front of HMV shaking my hips while listening to the latest banging tunes, and occasionally giving a high five to a passing blood.  This means I’m fully aware of the phenomena that is the Dubstep, but for those not in the know here are a couple of quotes from Wikipedia:

The music generally features syncopated drum and percussion patterns with bass lines that contain prominent sub bass frequencies.

"tightly coiled productions with overwhelming bass lines and reverberant drum patterns, clipped samples, and occasional vocals."

If you venture further and listen to some ‘Dubstep’ samples on the web you would be forgiven for thinking it to be nothing more than a bloody racket.  That’s the attitude of a square of course and not my view at all.

The question is, in this post Dubstep age, how are we to take the genre forward?

With DubSpec of course!  Lee Spoon’s Advanced Dubstep Generator.  From top to bottom this utility oozes crapness: an irritating (and thoroughly unnecessary) delay at the start, a SCREEN$ with the bottom clipped due to the SAVE message, and an overall crap idea.  DubSpec uses the routine around 1300 that simulates the loading bars, Lee informs me this is the same one often used during the 80’s to make Speccies appear to be loading permanently in shop windows.  So with no key pressed you get the loading noise, press ‘space’ and it warps the sound, exactly like Dubstep.

So what are you waiting for?  Close the curtains, pop a couple of paxmans, plug in the USB disco ball and get jiving to some dubspeccing beats.  Cowabunga!  Thankyou Lee!

Tipshack: Insert 1 NEW at the beginning of the program.

Download the 'updated' version here.
Download the original version with no 34000 'second' delay at the start

Download an RZX of DubSpec in action playing a well known tune, can you guess what it is?  (hint - it's classical)

Henry's Cat

By Lee Spoons

Genre: Text: Guess the name of a fictional cat.

I can tell Lee is a massive fan of custom loaders as this is his third entry to have one, and what a lovely loader it is!  Just get a load of this screen: 

It’s so alive anyway, but the way it fills the screen in a painting motion is heavenly.  Lee admits in his submission email that Henry’s Cat is more of a way to show off this loader than to write a cutting edge game, and can’t even remember writing it.  We can forgive this however, as it was originally done in 2006 when recreational drugs like elcid and paxmans were all the rage.

Now the game itself.  Henry’s Cat is a rather compact BASIC program in which you have to guess the name of Henry’s Cat.  For those not in the know this is based on the absolutely fantastic 1980’s cartoon series which also gave us Roobarb.

As the title screen suggests you have 20 goes to guess the name of Henry’s Cat.  Your first response might be to go straight to the horse’s mouth and ask Henry himself, but OH NO!  Henry has been incarcerated in a mental institute.  As the name is 10 letters long and each letter is found by the completely random RND command we have a 1 in 1.41e14 chance of randomly guessing the correct ‘name’ (assuming we forgo the usual custom and accept a name as a string of gobbledegook that is).

Bizarrely I managed to guess on my first go!  You may not be so lucky.

Tipshack: Admire the great loader, then watch Henry’s Cat and Roobarb on youtube with a warm feeling inside.

HACK SACK: Increased Stephen Lewis probability: Change line 75 to: LET N$=”STEPHEN LEWIS”

Download here.

I’ll get you Spoons!

Travel with PACMAN

By Lee Spoons

Genre: Arcade Corruption

 

This was originally written for the CGC 2006 but due to Lee’s intense perfectionism he didn’t feel it was quite ready for release.  Since then Lee has been slaving away working on his code to produce Travel with PACMAN.  Well…. actually that last bit is a teeny lie, Lee rediscovered this melange on an old hard drive that was never finished and couldn’t be arsed untangling the crap BASIC to finish it (I’m paraphrasing there), hence felt 2013 was the year to submit it!

Lee gave these instructions:

Pac-Man has escaped from the ghosts and has found some more dots in old Speccy games. Simply collect all the dots to complete the screen, however some parts of the screen are blocked off and watch out for the "killer square" which will cause you to lose a life. Controls: Q, A, O and P. Good luck!

I rather like the idea of this game, there are 12 levels in all that involve Pacman eating up dots scattered around various classic spectrum games, all of which are carefully designed to look like a kill screen.  On level one you move Pacman around the famous Chuckie Egg screen collecting the dots until all are gone – at which point nothing happens.  To progress in TWP you need to BREAK into the BASIC and change the level variable (see HACK SACK), and only then you can witness the treats of Exolon, Deathchase and Skool Daze to name a few.  Trouble is it is so bugged you can’t usually move (and that’s without the deadly invisible blocks), though I must doff my cap to Lee for cramming so many classic SCREEN$ into a game (which would explain the 4 minutes 12 seconds (custom) loading).

It’s clear Lee had big ideas for this game, as the code has more going on than meets the eye.  There is code for ghost collision for instance, but no UDGs for the actual ghosts!

In summary: this game is a bloody shambles .  Well done Lee!

Tipshack:             Lovingly caress your spectrum until you find the magic button, y’know, the one at the side that resets it.

HACK SACK: Incessant lives: Change line 4001 to REM pangolin.

                       You can see the various levels by changing 'ON' to VAL "x"  to the level number in LINE 4 (x = level number you desire).

Download here.

Teacho Yourselfo Italiano

By Lee Spoons

Genre: Utility: Word Appender-o

Ah Italy!  The rolling hills of Borlotti, the valleys of Rome lined with pasta trees, wine coming out of the taps and everyone strolling around in white vests and greased back hair.

Now then, for some reason it is a common accusation that the English speaking nations are ignorant of the both the language and culture of other countries.  This is why it’s especially nice to receive this lovely utility from Lee Spoons – it blasts this myth into the cosmos faster than a gondola full of meatballs can sink.

God knows why but TYI has speedlock protection!  And although the code is really short it loads the entire RAM with sodding NOPs in addition to it.  This means that you get a hypnotic humming sound for most of the 2 minutes and 35 seconds of loading.  Annoying and crap?  Yes.  Bonus points!

Lee has spotted some common rules of the Italian tong and has devised a clever little algorithm that can convert any English word into Italian.  Astounding.

I didn’t realise that it was so easy to speak Italian, and if I travel to Italy in future I will do so secure in the knowledge that, thanks to T.Y.I, I will be able to fit in with the locals.  Thankyou Lee!

The verdict?  Merda!

Tipshack: convert to the Sprechen Sie Deutsch simulator:  20 LET i$=EN

Download here.