The Sinclair QL Forum

END OF WEEK 35:

There's been one entry this week - Zoggle, by Jamie Bradbury, for the Z88. I never formally posted it here (Sinclair ZX World is the other forum where I only post entries immediately if it's a favoured system - but there is a special Z88 section, so I posted it there at the time). But as it game me an immediate idea, I did at least hint about it, and if anyone is going to take up the "QL plays Boggle properly" challenge, I will be waiting eagerly!

It seems I was slightly wrong in the review about waiting to break another record. As Zoggle was the second Z88 game to be submitted this year, that means this year's competition has more Z88 entries than ever before - seeing as only 2008 and 2020 ever saw any Z88 entries at all, and only one each at that. And hence, this year's competition has had as many Z88 entries as the entire rest of the competition history all put together. There may even be one more to come...

Meanwhile, my attention is going to have to be refocused for a week or so - although if I get an entry in week 36, I will review it. And I'm hoping I do - there hasn't been a blank week for a while and I'd like that to continue. The extra website pages I promised elsewhere, though, are going to have to wait until mid-September.

EXTRA POTENTIAL BONUS:

Here's something to look forward to: if this competition reaches 50 entries, I'll throw in an EXTRA BONUS REVIEW of a program I've had hanging around for a while that isn't part of the competition but is still intrinsicallly related to it. Do you want to know what it is? Then put fingers to keyboard and wrote Crap Games. I need ten more at this stage. It could be ten QL entries. Wouldn't that be great? MUSH!

END OF WEEK 36:

What's this? A blank week? Well, that's just brilliant, isn't it? Actually, just this once, I won't grumble because I've got a lot of much-needed work done on the house, and had a day at the coast eating fish and chips, two ice creams, and wandering around on the beach wondering why there are some people out there who would never, ever lower themselves to this level, liberally dropping words beginning with "B" and "G" into their lame excuses. You know the words I mean.

I would like things to change on the No Crap Games front, though. Unless I get 50 submissions, there won't be the Extra Special Bonus! That is a promise... it is also a threat. And I will update Zoggle to its MkIII state in the CSSCGC archive.

END OF WEEK 37:

Another blank week in the CSSCGC - I haven't had a single entry in the whole of September - and just to really put the biscuit crumbs in the bed, Our Glorious Creator departed this realm. All in all, a monumentally rubbish week - eased only by my 14-year-old Honda sailing through its MOT earlier today, and the production of another ten jars of apple and blackberry jam to keep me going through the winter months and so that I can genuinely convince myself that I didn't waste the opportunity of a bumper harvest.

With the competition three-quarters of the way through, I'm going to be making a few changes to the website over the weekend, with a couple of extra pages. As frames are so massively frowned upon, this has meant editing every single page of the website. I am now going to have to do so again, but it's for a very obvious good cause.

In the meantime, can I have something this month? Any kind of tribute game for Sir Clive would be welcomed, even if he didn't welcome the presence of games himself, if Micro Men is to be believed.

"It taught a generation how to code", sang MJ Hibbett. Let's show the evidence.

END OF WEEK 38:

Three weeks with nothing to show for it!

I can understand some things - those of you with kids putting them back to school, being traumatised by the demise of Our Revered Creator, being depressed by the end of summer - but I'd have thought I'd get one entry from someone, somewhere...

Who wants to know what the extra bonus to the competition will be? Ten more entries and I'll reveal it.

There is, at least, one minor update that I have so far not revealed here: the website has been updated, adding an Awards page (that's being sat on by a guard, until it's required in December) and an RZX page so that I can demonstrate short and/or complete playthroughs of the Spectrum (and ZX81 and ZX80, actually) games. That's of less relevance here, hence why I didn't mention it at the time, but I could make actual videos of QL entries if there was any demand for it...

END OF WEEK 39:

Who'd have thought it? I should throw a mild hissy fit (elsewhere, at least) more often. By the looks of things, it gets results! This week I've had three entries, all for the 48K Spectrum, although the latter two should really have been 16K games:

Herman Tissies 1D Golf - by Jamie Bradbury
Dirty Harry Simulator San Francisco - by Phil Hite
Mines of Magrathea - by Paul E. Collins

As a reward for this sudden flurry of activity, and to maximise the chances of getting to the magic bullseye so that the Extra Bonus Meisterwerk can be revealed... the deadline has been extended to 17th December. This will mean the last one of these weekly round-ups will be week 50. I thought that was a better idea than stopping in the middle of week 47. There will be absolutely no further extensions on this date whatsoever, so if your game is ready on 18th December, you'll have to send it to next year's host.

It is ever more inadvisable to "send" your games to me via posting them here as an attachment, the closer to the deadline the competition gets, because I don't check here anywhere near as much as I do Spectrum Computing, unless I'm working on any QL projects. Remember that my email is left open most of the time and I'll see that within a few minutes. The address is on the front page of the website - don't forget it:
https://www.rickdangerous.co.uk/csscgc2021/

Will I get any more QL games before time runs out? I've had five, there's no reason why there shouldn't be more.

END OF WEEK 40:

This week started extremely well. This is the only forum I haven't posted it on yet, but let me tell you about Ricky Gervais' Simon. It is, as you may twig, a "Simon" game. You all know what that means. But instead of fixed-pitch beeps, it uses a digitised PCM sample of Ricky Gervais' raucous laugh, which I have linked in the review.

Did I mention that this game fits into 1K? ONE measly kilobyte - game code, sound sample and all?

Did I mention that this game was written on a ZX80?

Did I mention that it is not 1st April, this is not a joke, and it really exists and can be played on any ZX80 emulator which has some way of emulating the output from the MIC socket (such as EightyOne)?

A round of applause and many, may corned beef sandwiches to John Connolly, I would say.

Incidentally, this week ended with me taking my own advice. I promised Phil Hite I would watch Dirty Harry after his very-rough-round-the-edges entry in week 39 that quoted Clint Eastwood's most famous line in his entire filmography, including anything he might have said when he was still making Spaghetti Westerns. With one pizza from my marvellous local takeaway devoured and two cans of filthy stout that were part of my birthday present back in July, I will be spending more of the rest of this evening in Mr Eastwood's company. Magnum Force will follow as soon as I've finished posting these round-ups everywhere that I have to.

END OF WEEK 41:

Bah! No entries. What's happened, were you all so floored by the reveal of a ZX80 making noises that you've all given up hope of surpassing it with four-colour, off-key-sound, clunky-microdrive QL magic?

In the meantime, I've updated the RZX page with as many of the entries from May and June as I could make RZXs for. It's less relevant here, but I just thought I'd mention it.

END OF WEEK 42:

If anyone here has been wondering why I've not posted anything other than these updates, it's because I'm occupying myself painting my lounge in a fetching shade of QL-approved red. There's been two entries this week - both of them for the Spectrum.

Steve "Kweepa" McCrea has borrowed Old Bones from the BBC Micro's version of Cassette 50 and converted it for the 16K Spectrum. Given that the Beeb cost more than twice as much as a 48K Spectrum and Our Glorious Creator considered it a rival for the QL, is its own Cassette 50 better than the one that we know and wish we didn't? The game is 1.6K of BASIC. Judge for yourselves.

Meanwhile, as October means Halloween, "Titanius Angelsmith" sent a game that's at least appropriate for the occasion: Catch the Frankonstins, for the 48K Spectrum - written in Boriel BASIC, which explains why it's saved as a chunk of machine code and runs faster than regular BASIC.

There are four more entries that I require before the Extra Super Bonus Crap Game can be revealed and reviewed - its author is beavering away on it right now to get it into fine fettle for its intended release, on the assumption that The Great Reveal is a certainty. Don't let him down, don't let me doen, don't let yourselves down. FOUR MORE ENTRIES. I don't mind what machines they're for, but anything that's for the ZX81, ZX80, QL, SAM Coupé, Jupiter Ace, Next, ZX-Uno, Lambda 8300, Z88, MK14 or the undeveloped Loki will be extremely welcome.

I want to be able to say "we're getting the bonus game" before the end of October. You have nine days.

On the main Spectrum forums I said this:

END OF WEEK 43:

Grunt, snarl, froth. Once again I've had a blank week, and the competition is marooned on 46 entries with four to go in order to allow The Great Bonus to be revealed.

This update has to be short, because I've got a very interesting day driving a hired van on a 400-mile round trip ahead of me, half of which will be in pitch darkness. Fortunately, I know where I'm going, at least until I get to the M6 at Birmingham...

{some of this post has gone down the memory hole}

Hi,

Are the source code available to these games as I have been trying to convert dome Spectrum games to the QL, which all look crap...