Design Design / Crystal Computing
Simon Brattel
I had a nostalgic moment and rummaged about in my archives. Doubt
they're of much interest to anyone else, but what source files still
exist for the early Design Design Spectrum games can be found here:
http://www.desdes.com/products/oldfiles/index.htm
Be warned, they're not pretty. The very early ones had to be compressed
insanely to make them fit in the memory of the development systems.
There's some information missing (syntax highlighting and so on) from
the later files, and the formatting has a few peculiarities (the
originals were not straightforward text files) but they would assemble
to the right bytes, I think.
Have fun, we had fun writing them...
Simon Brattel
"Programmers Can't"
Paul E Collins
> I had a nostalgic moment and rummaged about in my archives. Doubt they're
> of much interest to anyone else, but what source files still exist for the
> early Design Design Spectrum games can be found here:
> http://www.desdes.com/products/oldfiles/index.htm
Ooh, good. This might let me fill the holes in the list of DD Easter eggs,
which are pretty extensive because DD games were 50% Easter eggs. I shall
check it out when I have a long enough single block of spare time.
Eq.
Simon Brattel
> which are pretty extensive because DD games were 50% Easter eggs.
We did sneak some amusing stuff in there, but unfortunately the files
that had most of the source-code humour in were stolen about a decade
ago. The few source files that remain are ones I've pieced together from
bits and pieces that happened to be stuffed on other discs, or even in
one or two cases recovered piecemeal from deleted files... Nearly all my
original sources are completely lost, together with any history files
and comment files, todo stuff and diaries, and so forth, that was on the
individual project disks... Bloody annoying.
Paul E Collins
> unfortunately the files that had most of the source-code humour in were
> stolen about a decade ago.
Intriguing! Who stole your files, and how, and why?
Eq.
Simon Brattel
Dunno. If I knew who'd done it I'd have sent a few Things around to get
'em back...
All I know is that all the games source disks were sat happily in a box
on a shelf in the storeroom at work right up until the point that I
looked for them, at which point they'd come over all gone...
I had the off-site backups, but they were mainly serious stuff, at that
time the games disks were just ancient history that I wasn't looking
after particularly - most of the bloody backup disks that had existed
for 'em were stuffed into the same box as the others, gah.
It has depressed me occasionally to think of it. A large slice of my
history gone... And it was pointless - they'll have been unreadable to
anyone else, the disk format our development systems used was a
proprietary one, so either they'll have been reformatted and used on
something else, or just thrown away. Must have been someone we were
employing, nobody else would have had access, which makes it all the
more annoying.
Still, they did take Forbidden Planet as well so I suppose I really
ought to be grateful to them ;)
Sam Gillett
"Paul E Collins" <find_my_re...@CL4.org> wrote ...
Could it have been MI-5? If so, how is top secret, and why is up for
guessing. ;-)
--
Best regards,
Sam Gillett
If you make it idiot-proof,
someone will make a better idiot!
Simon Brattel
>
> Could it have been MI-5?
Damn! Why didn't I think of them? Wish I hadn't had Neil and Martin
executed now...
> someone will make a better idiot!
Somehow I think that's unlikely.
Brian Gaff
was idly looking at what was on them some years ago, using a low level disc
reader on a cp'm machine and found some ocp software source from vat manager
on a format badged as abbeydale, so I think it was speccy stuff. Quite how
such discs got into the hands of a second hand disc seller is not known.
Brian
--
Brian Gaff - bri...@blueyonder.co.uk
Note:- In order to reduce spam, any email without 'Brian Gaff'
in the display name may be lost.
Blind user, so no pictures please!
"Simon Brattel" <cr...@desdes.com> wrote in message
news:48c085b1$0$2504$da0f...@news.zen.co.uk...
Mal F
says...
I must say Warlock Of Firetop Mountain was the best and scariest two
player[1] game ever!
Mal
[1] well me and one of my best mates played it as two player anyway -
one on directions and the other on combat/door opening
--
"Please be informed that Port 80 is meant only for the FTP files
upload."
Deewna, BT Total Broadband Support
Simon Brattel
> Hi all.
>
> I had a nostalgic moment and rummaged about in my archives. Doubt
> they're of much interest to anyone else, but what source files still
> exist for the early Design Design Spectrum games can be found here:
>
> http://www.desdes.com/products/oldfiles/index.htm
Since the source files posed some problems with the Z80 assemblers now
available I've thrown a more compatible assembler together over the
weekend and put it on the site. Windoze only, I'm afraid, but it should
run under wine.
http://www.desdes.com/products/oldfiles/zeus.exe
I've also updated most of the games sources slightly so that they can be
assembled to *.szx files using it with a single click, which makes them
rather easier to play with.
Have fun...