R-SWYPE

By daveysludge

Genre: Christmas Crapper

With R-Swype, davey has completed his copro-trilogy and also coined another excellent poop-pun.  It bears more similarities to Dung Darach than Thunderturds, though it’s not a mere rehash – it has some pretty nifty new additions.  It should also be pointed out that like his other games, it is programmed in machine code, features great graphics making clever use of the spectrum’s attributes, is very playable and far too good for the CGC!  However, as we approach that time of year in which many of us spend a lot of time working on a hearty yule log, it is well timed.

The aim of the game is to guide Mark Barton Dung around and ram 3 poops down the bog, at which point Scott Faece appears (announced by a bit of BEEP FX digital speech) and you must collect the Omega Cider which fuels the rocket out.  There is a nifty bit of gameplay in the later levels with the bog roll, which Mark Barton Dung can shift but Scott Faece cannot.  So you have to think ahead to allow Scott to access the cider, and ensure the rocket is not impeded by the bogroll (hmm, what sort of rocket can’t go through paper?).  The time limits often prove prohibitive (see hack sack) but what can I say, this game is fantastic – play it.

Not crap at all, an afternoon consuming great game.  Thankyou davey!

Download TAP
Download inlay1
Download inlay2

HACK SACK:     Oodles of time: POKE 53499,x

                        Infinite time:        POKE 53581,0


 

Walking around Porto

By Paulo Silva

Genre: Tourist adventure

Thanks to Paulo for his second entry to the competition, which he describes as a Myst like “game”.  It is 128k only and paging must be enabled (ie use the Tape Loader option), I found using the +2 had the least bugs.

WAP (which Walking around Porto will henceforth be called, in order to maintain a modicum of brevity) uses grabs of pictures from Google’s StreetView and converts them to a ZX-Spectrum suitable format.  These pictures are best viewed in black and white, so if using real hardware dig out you old radiation king CRT telly, or set your emulator to B&W palette.  If you don’t have either of these options, WAP is going to look a complete shambles.

Using these images of Porto, Paulo has created a small adventure world in which you can ramble.  There is obviously going to be some loss of clarity due to pixilation, but if you squint while playing that sorts that out.  With its 20 screens, WAP is clearly an enormous and varied adventure, here follows a summary of just one possibility:

I begin at the Estacao de Sao Bento.  Tired, emotional and unsure of how I arrived here I glance around.  Despite the people I sense an early morning calm, it is cold in the shade so I follow the sun right towards the Sa da Bandeira.  The building before me has a celestial quality, so I genuflect before the sun basking columns.  Something deep within me says to take the right fork of the path, to the Santo Idelfonso.  A white jacketed lady catches my eye, while mine are cold and dead hers have a glint of something special.  Who is she?  Where has she been?  What has she been doing?  That is her business, so I continue to Santa Catarina where there is an explosion of activity.  People are milling around, going to work, going home, and simply keeping the wheels turning.  It is all too much so I wander a while until the Praca da Batalha.  Here I must be truly dazed or dazzled, because I find myself in the middle of the road with a car rapidly approaching me.  I sprint bewildered through nameless streets and again the Catedral, until I find I have come full circle, back at the Estacao de Sao Bento.  Nothing seems to have changed, no-one has moved, can it be there is no respite for me in Porto?  This time I go left in search of an exit but I find something even more terrifying, it seems there has been some kind of temporal disturbance at the Torre dos Clerigos.  The sky is flashing chaotically and the whole world is a swirling noise.  There is no way back for me now, I am unable to move, it seems the game is over…

 

As Paulo’s notes say, there are a few bugs in the game.  The ones I noticed are the ‘go back’ function doesn’t work as expected in certain parts, some screens keep repeating, and there are a couple of scrambled screens.  Like Paulo’s other entries it leans more towards art than gaming, but it’s full of ideas, passion and technical nous with a sprinkling of crap.  I rather like it.

WAP may also be the future too – virtual tourism.  So if like me, you’ve never been to Porto, then fire up your Spectrum, wait an eternity for WAP to load, pour yourself a glass of Cockburns, put a tin of sardines under the grill and you are practically there.

Download TAP file.

 

Download TAP and all support files.  (remote link supplied by Paulo),

Thunderturds

By daveysludge

Genre: Scatform

GOOD GAME ALERT!  So good in fact that I’m reticent to review it as a CGC entry, especially as I know how much work has gone into it.  I’ve been following the trials and tribulations of davey’s machine code help threads on the World of Spectrum forums, and I get the impression he’s been having a lot of the same agonising bug fixing problems that I had.  Nevertheless, it has been submitted to the CGC, isn’t perfect and is called Thunderturds, so here goes.

In this game you are Scott Faece, and you must soil all the blue tiles while avoiding various dung themed baddies (oh and a laser beam).  So in principle TT is a painter game, though perhaps dirty protest would be more appropriate.

Given that it’s a wet Sunday afternoon, and davey provided me with WAV files it seemed rude not to load on it onto real hardware.  Firstly notice the lovely loading screen, which is an animated image that takes advantage of the Spectrums flash attributes (not only that, the intro screen has a rainbow effect!).

The game inlay describes the game as joystick only (but keys 67890 work fine) so for the first time ever I had a go with one.  I’ve never been a joystick waggler, and despite my unresponsive old stick (oh puhh-leees) it works ok .  All the sprites move in character steps, which enabled davey to put some fantastic colourful graphics together – these and the animations on collision are outstanding.

TT has a good difficulty gradient over the 20 levels, and gets quite frantic towards the end.  Very enjoyable.

The bad points?  A few times the baddies got trapped behind a block, which meant you couldn’t ‘get’ that square and complete the level, a small bug* when it loops around after level 20, and for me the scatological theme.

All in all though a really playable game, one that is now on cassette and in my ‘good’ games collection.  Thankyou davey!
______________________________________________________________________

Download game z80 here.

WAV files here, here and here.

Inlays 1 and 2.
______________________________________________________________________

Tipshack: Keep a close eye on the dung fly -the only one that chases and can move on to you, if you stay still the other baddies will treat you as a block and move around you. Not sure if that’s a bug or intentional.

HACK SACK:

Keys QAOP:

POKE 64445,251                POKE 64416,253                POKE 64474,223                POKE 64501,223

POKE 64449,1                     POKE 64420,1                     POKE 64478,2                     POKE 64505,1

*daveysludge has uploaded a bugfixed version, which gives a 'sort of' end of game sequence and loops.

CarPong

By g0blinish

Genre: Arcade farce

First things first.  Take a moment to reflect on this introscreen.  It may look hastily thrown together with no word wrapping or centre-ing but what you are looking at is the ZX Spectrum’s version of the white album.  We have to thank g0blinish for this sheer minimalist beauty.

After pressing a key and the game starting there is no waiting or prep time, we go rapidly into FAST ACTION PONG!  (whether you’re ready or not).  You control the blue paddles at the top and bottom with the <> keys and must keep the red attribute from leaving the vertical reaches of the screen.

However, looking at how the game was created we begin to deviate from this being a crap game.  Firstly it is in written in assembly language – in the early 1980’s many a cassette inlay would have dreamed of being emblazoned with the words ‘programmed in machine code’.  Secondly the game engine is crammed into 251 bytes!  Although efficient Z80 code and a crap game competition make unusual bedfellows, we can breathe a sigh of relief when we look at the gameplay…

I could be wrong, or just hopeless at playing the game but as far as I can tell it is impossible to wrong foot the magenta paddles.  The ‘ball’ seems to bounce in the same direction independent of which part of the paddle it hits so follows a cycle around the screen.  With these properties in mind it is clear that CARPONG is a virtually unwinnable game, and as such is a test of the human spirit against the computer.  If CARPONG is to be played seriously (and who on earth wouldn’t play a CGC entry in such a manner?) then the victor is the first to break.  I didn’t expect to have such a responsibility on my hands when agreeing to host the CGC.  Play this game at your peril.

So in summary:  attribute based graphics and gameplay that is only possible with pokes.  All the hallmarks of a crap game.  Well done g0blinish!

Download game here.
Download source code here.

Tipshack: pour a sugary solution down the back of your Spectrum, that way you have a chance of beating the computer.

HACK PACK:  
poke 24852,1              ;tiny paddles
poke 24851,40            ;computer fails every time