ZX Spectrum - New Game - Rescue Lander

And now for something completely different...  My third outing with AGD and I decided to take a departure from the 'Page' series of games.  I wanted to make a lunar lander game, something simple and something that looked like it was made 30 years ago.  So I came up with 'Rescue Lander'.

The city is been bombarded by meteors.  It could be the prelude to an alien invasion so do your best to save as many souls as possible.  Fly your rescue lander  through the city and beyond collecting as many men, women and children as you possibly can.  Collect 3 pockets of people per screen to advance to the next level, but be careful, don’t land anywhere other than on the landing platforms, everything else will damage your ship.  Don’t run our of fuel either as that will cost you a life.

The idea is simple, but the levels get progressively more difficult.  Your lander will fall towards the ground if you do not apply thrust, gravity is your enemy.  

Keys are 'Q' to thrust and 'O' to move left and 'P' to move right.  (Also Kempson and Sinclair joystick compatible)

You get about one minute before running out of fuel, if the fuel gauge registers empty your ship will be destroyed.  While this might not be an issue in the early levels it can become more of a problem later on.  Any remaining fuel will count towards a bonus upon completing each level.

Once you have saved three pockets of people from the level the landing platform on the right side of the screen will change colour indicating you can advance to the next level.  Simply land on it to advance and receive a bonus for any remaining fuel you have left.

Please don't expect cutting edge graphics, or speaker pumping background music. The plan was to produce a game that looks like it might have hit the shelves in 1983.  Special thanks to Jonathan Cauldwell who created and continues to update AGD.

Download TAP Here

Download SNZ Here

Update - Special thanks to Luca Bordoni for creating an even more accurate cassette inlay below...

ZX Spectrum - New Game - Page and the Curse of the Pharaoh

 My second outing with AGD and continuing on from my last game, may I present... 'Page and the Curse of the Pharaoh'

After battling his way through the castle in his last adventure Page finally found a way out only to find an evil Pharaoh had awoken after centuries of sleep.  The Pharaoh's tomb had long since been pillaged so he commanded Page to return to him all his treasure on penalty of death and placed a curse on our poor adventurer. Page's only hope is to find a rumoured portal which will not only free him of his curse but also send him far away from these troubled lands.

Page has decided to make a run for it so help him find a way past the evil Pharaoh and his nasty minions and look for the 'Exit' portal. There are 30 levels to get through and grab as much treasure as you can on the way.  Keys open secret doors and there are strange powerful amulets scattered throughout the land which are rumoured to give him extra lives...

Keys are QAOP to move and SPACE to jump

Download TAP version here:

Download Snapshot (szx) here: 

Special thanks to Jonathan Cauldwell who created and continues to update AGD

ZX Spectrum 2015 Calendar

Well 2015 is just round the corner so I thought it might be nice to make a calendar for the new year. So I collected a couple of my favorite images from some of the games I used to love to play, plus a couple of other iconic pictures and made a nice calendar which you are welcome to download.

Most of the images are from early in the ZX Spectrum's life including some of my favorite games like Manic Miner, Deathchase and Atic Atac.

I had to include lots of 'ULTIMATE Play The Game' screens in the calendar as well as a nice shot of the 48k keyboard which remains iconic to me.  Also check out the score in the 'Football Manager' screenshot! 

Please feel free to download the PDF version here:

Somewhere Only We Know - Beepola Music - ZX Spectrum

Somewhere Only We Know - Beepola Music

I recently thought how nice it would be to make some music for the games I have been creating on the ZX Spectrum and started playing around with Beepola, a fantastic free collection of machine language music engines for the Spectrum beeper.  The 16k and 48k machines only sported a single channel beeper and in the early days that was pretty much all that came out of the speaker, but my first recollection of something different was on first playing Manic Miner by Matthew Smith.  Not only did the game have a multi-channel into theme but the game also played music continuously whilst playing the game! Unheard of!

My first recollection of 'real' music in a game!

Flash forwards 30 years and in-game music has come a long way, lots of games featured in-game music and the the 128k Spectrum and everything that followed were endowed with a three-channel audio via the AY-3-8912 chip.  Well I haven't got round to playing with the 128k and it's sound capabilities but instead I downloaded 'Beepola' and had a go at creating a multi-channel tune using the original beep.

There are lots of different 'engines' built into the program, which runs in Windows, each having different capabilities and each sounding different to each other because of this. Some are designed to play 'in-game' music, others for better quality sound and effects.  I programmed 'Somewhere Only We Know' by Keane using one of the engines which supports 4 channel sound and drums.  The program can export to TAP file and even creates a simple loader for you.  I created a loading screen and edited the TAP file to accommodate it.

I loved the version Lily Allen recorded for the John Lewis 2013 Christmas advert so I used an image from the advert for the loading screen.

Download the TAP version here:

Download the Screen$ here:

Download the MP3 Version here:

ZX Spectrum - Page's Castle Quest

New Software - Page's Castle Quest

The Story

An alien spaceship has crashed into the castle and scattered the treasure all around the castle and beyond. It's our hero's job to collect as much of the hoard as possible before finding his way out. Beyond the castle lies an unfriendly Jungle, maybe he can find safety in the caves which lie beyond... but don't go too deep, there are tales of terrible things lurking deep below ground!

Guide our hero through 30 levels picking up objects along the way, if you miss one you can come back later. There are a few powerful amulets scattered around which can restore a life, but be careful not to waste a life trying to recover one!

 Controls

‘Q – Left’      ‘W – Right’       ‘SPACE – Jump’

You can also select either Kempson or Sinclair Joystick at the start menu.

Download

Page's Castle Quest TAP

Pages Castle Quest SZX

Map

RZX 

Cassette Inlay

Credits

This game was created using Johathan Cauldwell’s brilliant Arcade Game Creator (V4.5 and V4.6). 

I followed the tutorials provided by Paul Jenkinson which were also brilliant.  In fact the first 2 levels may be a little reminiscent of Paul’s levels in the tutorial… This is an intentional homage.

Thanks to my children Luke Pagett (12) and Ethan Pagett (8) for you help, you are both the next generation of Spectrum users and your enthusiasm and encouragement helped see this project through.

© David Pagett (2014) T.D.F. micro-visions

Coming Soon...

ZX Spectrum - AGD (Arcade Game Designer)

AGD (Arcade Game Designer)

As with most kids who grew up with the ZX Spectrum I enjoyed programming in BASIC and dreamed of creating games to match the commercial releases of the day.  But it didn't take long to realise that without knowledge of machine language, this was never really going to happen.  That didn't stop me from trying and I still have lots of bits of paper sketching out ideas and graphics for games that only ever existed in my head!

Back in the day several companies released games designers, some were designed for creating adventure games and others for creating arcade games.  the one I remember is H.U.R.G. from Melbourne House. It was announced late in 1983 but was delayed and despite the company announcing a £3000 prize for the best game created using H.U.R.G. I can't remember if I even bought the package in the end.

Roll on 30 years and I happened across AGD (Arcade Game Designer) by Jonathan Cauldwell.  It's a games development package which runs on the ZX Spectrum or an emulator and for me it does everything the old  packages claimed they could do and more, also games created with AGD can run standalone, unlike H.U.R.G. which still needed the engine loaded to run.

I can't praise this enough, it sparked my interest in programming as the built in language is very similar to BASIC making the learning curve nice and easy.  There are several demo games included which can be loaded and experimented with but the most useful guide was a set of tutorial videos by Paul Jenkinson available here at his website.  These videos are brilliant and perfectly paced and by following these I started to create my first 'proper' game which I later called 'Page's Castle Quest'

There are other modern development tools out there, some which run on a PC and compile to work on a Spectrum and others which run on an actual Spectrum or emulator.  But my vote goes to AGD, have a look here for the latest version, discussions and tips.