14 июля 2020

                              News
                         by Alone Coder

Since the newspaper has not been published for a long time, it
makes sense to describe in a nutshell what happened during this
time. And here's what happened: the NedoOS operating system has
become my main project. A few more people joined the NedoOS
project ( DimkaM, Demige, Lord Vader, etc.). The site
http://nedoos.ru/ was created, and I revived my YouTube channel 
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqoatWkMXgxnFWdwRXYEMfw (72 
subscribers so far) and started Twitch broadcasting about
programming (22 followers so far). Broadcasts take place almost
every day at 21:30 at https://twitch.tv/alone_coder/

Programming with NedoOS is much easier than with TR-DOS, so I
started to drag my old projects onto it and undate them.

In particular:
- in the WolfЧ8 engine (in its ATM version) sprites and lamps
finally appeared. Loaded directly from bmp. BigL editor fixed so
that object codes match those displayed in the editor.
- network Snake was written based on the usual Snake (DimkaM and
Demige helped). 
- Untangle game ("time killer") was implemented, on which Shiru
once hooked me up :) At the moment, there is the fastest line
procedure for colour-per-pixel mode. Lord Vader helped with
optimizing line intersection checking.
- ZXRar, zxunrar and pkunzip now work with files and archives of
any size.
- Instead of MCX viewer, a more universal NedoView was written.
- instead of JPEG viewer, a web browser was written :) GIF, PNG
and SVG are also supported there (in part, according to Elph's
source). DimkaM helped with HTTP and DNS.
- instead of Unreal Project game engine with 16-pixel
scroll, a new one was written with 1-2-pixel scroll and 256x64
map of 16x16 metatiles or using a 1024x512 image that can be
loaded from bmp.
- Black Raven is colourized, which I was going to do for years
since 2000 and for that I even wanted to solder something :) I
even recorded a complete walkthrough at YouTube (before that
there was only black and white, blurred, and slow one, with a
label "Unregistered HyperCam" ). SashaPont, Kotik and Louisa /
Conscience helped with graphics. 
- all three versions of Loyd puzzle, which I wrote back in 1998,
are glued together and also colourized.
- I finally ported Super Mario from NES to Speccy :) I started
drawing the first sprites in 1995, then another version around
1996, then in 2002 I tried to write an engine together with 
Shiru. But in the end it turned out that the easiest way is to 
port the original command-by-command - like Prince of Persia
and Gobliiins. Including even the music player. The game is
fully passable (including branded cheats and glitches) and
allows you to record and play the walkthrough. My walkthrough is
posted on Hippiman's YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tlW7kIxPyY . Interestingly, 
Gogin also revived his Super Mario project (for 128K ) and then 
completed it too! True, there is not everything that was in the
original game, but this version successfully participated at
CAFe'2019. I was there. 
- NedoLang (see ACNews #63, Info Guide #12 ) now knows how to
compile projects larger than a floppy disk :) At the same time,
a third target appeared - an interpreted script. But there is a
strong desire for an integrated development environment.

In addition to NedoOS, I also did other things on Speccy - I
started writing another demo for 48K (I didnt finish it),
experimented with 48K raycasting, released a multicolor game
Space Monsters meet THE HARDY ( Sand/mHm's project), finalized 
the Con18pal converter, added the ATM2 driver to the game Land
of Myths (previously there was only ATM1 ). 

Significantly expanded the list of Soviet software for Speccy
(see ACNews #65, Info Guide #12 ) - thanks to the disks from
CPU, vBv and MidiSoft. I searched for the latter for about 15 
years, it appeared only recently - that's because Newart is
engaged in "Speccy archeology".

Together with AcidRain ( Maksagor also sponsored, and a lot of
people corrected the rules) in December 2019 we launched the
Your Game 6 compo. It has two sites: http://tiб.club/ and 
http://tiб.nedopc.com/ . For the history I duplicate the rules 
here (press "3" ). Now Yandex, apparently, decided to lure the
authors to its own competition. Our term is October 4, they have
it somewhere in November. It's almost impossible to participate
in two. In this situation, on TIб any work can win, not a
biggest game. And the prize fund is 158,000 rubles!

I'm working for the entire period of the coronavirus, except for
one week. We walk and sit in masks, write entry lists and entry
forms, constantly wash hands with alcohol or something else,
wipe the keyboards. Bosses tried to introduce remote jobs, but
so far not very successfully - only extra reporting in the form
of Jira and Git. Videoconferences also appeared.

I wrote two articles on linguistics (together with M. S.
Yastrebov-Pestritsky ). No one has been printed yet. One (in 
Russian) concerns the chronology of the Balto-Slavic phonetic
changes, the other (in English) proposes a new method for
reconstructing the Proto-Indo-European vocabulary (more
precisely, the narrow Proto-Indo-European - only the lexical
core common to all central branches) with some results achieved
and a long list of references. Tables with these results are
available at http://alonecoder.nedopc.com/ling/PIE/ and are
updated periodically.

Children are growing up. Dasha has already learned how to manage
a man in Zelda: Link's Awakening and successfully wins in Galcon
on a tablet (at an easy level). Sasha is now talking a lot, but
he presses the buttons completely by accident and when it isn't
needed!

Louisa/Conscience learns to design sites. She also helped with 
English translation.

Arwald/Conscience is trying to make a Spectrum website. A 
copy-book with the script of the game Rusted Souls was never
found :(

Hippiman/Conscience started porting Evo SDK to NedoOS, but 
he is very busy at his job.

Nitrofurano/Conscience is experimenting with converting colour 
video to Speccy.

Ldir writes effects on LED panels. I dont quite understand how 
they work :)

Cyberdaemon monitors Speccy events, but so far does not code 
anything.

Finally I was able to take back ZX Evo and TurboSound FM from
John Silver. I only need to set it up - and I lost the soldering 
iron somewhere. John now hardly writes music - perhaps because
no one sends him reviews? In principle, he was not against
voicing a game. His e-mail address is ljohn149(at)gmail.com .

For my part, I also tried to write something, but got stuck
after a couple of patterns (one such result is in the noise
demo). You dont particularly write music with children...

Savelij13 added a "5" button to the Evo Reset Service to quickly 
start the OS from an SD-card.

Fyrex/mHm fixed one ATM2+ emulation glitch in Unreal Speccy 
Portable, but there are problems with some software. 

Piotr Marecki was able to release a book about the Spectrum 
demoscene (see ACNews #64 ). But it is for money yet.

There is a new Spanish emulator with ATM2+ support -
Es.pectrum. It even supports the DDp's palette (4+4+4), which 
Unreal Speccy does not! 

In my old version of Unreal Speccy (which is compiled in MSVCб),
I added export of the current palette data. However, the render
there was made so cleverly that I dont even know how to add
4+4+4 there. 

KOE has released a couple of new firmware versions for Pentagon 
2.6ббLE, but there is no stable version yet. The problem is that 
some external devices do not work at 28 MHz. He is also engaged
in firmware for Pentagon 2.666 (this is the one with the real
Z80 ). 

It turned out that I did not publish the list of books I read
since 2015 ( ACNews #60 ) - I fill this gap (press "4" ).

Send me your articles for Info Guide #13! The music is almost
complete.