Adventure 'A' - Planet Of Death

[4K ROM]

Hello Stefano,

Thank you for the reply.

The one problem I had was with this version previously provided in this thread:-
https://sinclairzxworld.com/download/file.php?id=1537

As mentioned above, that one does not appear to be completable because some of the commands required to complete the game don't seem to generate the expected actions and responses (exact details given in post above).

Is there another version you have made available in this console directory you mention? Sorry, apart from the version I compiled myself, I am only aware of the above version posted in this forum, which I have already tried. Is the one in the console directory a different version than the above, and if so can you please provide a link to it? Thanks in advance for any possible further info about this.

In the version I quickly compiled (just very minor modifications from the original source), I also added an option for the "rubout" key to delete a character on the input line. i.e. "Backspace" on a modern computer keyboard when using the EightyOne emulator. I personally found that very useful as I was always pressing backspace out of habit.

[4K ROM]

Apologies Stefano, I just found out via a web search that adv_a is supplied with the z88dk distribution.

I didn't know that until now (been away from retro computing too long!)

I will check out that example version next time I get a chance.

Thanks very much for the pointer.

[4K ROM]

I have just compiled the adv_a version from the z88dk examples console directory, targeting the ZX80 and I am happy to say that one does appear to be working fine.

So it was only specifically that old, previously compiled version which had the problem. Whatever the issue was, it is fixed now in the example version supplied with the current z88dk release and the aforementioned commands do give the correct responses in the game.

Also, congratulations Stefano on getting the typing to work with no flicker on the ZX80, that is great to see.

It appears I did not have to convert my own ZX80 version from Paul Taylor's generic ANSI C source after all. Still it was enjoyable to do this even if I had to independently work out the "(void*)" casts needed removing from the data structures. Can't believe I already had a working z88dk-compatible version of the source on my HDD as I was working on this, but I didn't know about it.

Still, I added a few tweaks that suited my own particular preferences and as a result there's now yet another version of this game out there.

Thanks again.

[stefano]

Well, I'm sure we're all trying to have fun and learn a bit from our beloved zeddies, so what you did fits perfectly, it makes little sense to have a C compiler and use it only with the provided examples !
Another thing you could try (I hope not too disappointing) is to radically switch the compiler engine to SDCC (-compiler=sdcc), probaby resolving some of compatibility problems you had

[4K ROM]

Thanks for the tip.

I tried compiling the original generic C source using sdcc just out of interest.

It did give some errors, but different ones than the sccz80 compiler.

I then tried the modified (z88dk compatible) source using sdcc - this compiled fine with no further modifications and resulted in a tapefile 108 bytes smaller than the sccz80-compiled version.

Both compiled versions play fine.

I notice sdcc gives more warnings than sccz80 by default.

So it was a useful exercise to see that sdcc can sometimes produce slightly smaller code. Also to see that z88dk has more features since I had previously used it.

[stefano]

Retrofitting z88dk with SDCC was quite a challenge and it is definitely still experimental and incomplete on the ZX81, but if you succeed in compiling a valid/working program you'll gain size and especially speed.
An extra hint, in case you missed it: try -O3 to optimize for memory size (thus also slightly impacting on the code speed in some case), which surely won't bother on an adventure game.

[4K ROM]

Thanks Stefano.

I recompiled it again using sdcc with the -O3 option. It did result in a tapefile 8 bytes larger than sdcc without using -O3, but from what you are saying, the running program would use less memory. So I can see that this would be very useful in some cases.

[stefano]

it is possible that on this game the extra optimization is just not effective. the optimizations depend on the generated code and obviously vary depending on your program