News - John Silver moved into his own apartment. Now I'm digging through old papers, trying to reconstruct the chain of events.

News
 by Alone Coder

My computer broke down at home and I don’t have time to fix it yet. I'm writing at work
so as not to mess with laptops.

There was a lot of news, it’s impossible to describe everything. So in two
words, and the rest another time.

The studio is going through hard times. "Magic World" separated
from us. The old directors left (Vladimir Denisov, Nina Abramova,
Alexey Pyatshev ). Now the studio is headedVladimir Ivanov with
video directions. The new recruitment for the film studio failed. With one
a girl who came in my direction ("2D animation and
demoscene") we are still drawing comics. 3D direction is closed 
due to lack of listeners. At the general meeting of the film studio
Ldir came and wanted to give lectures - he owns Blender - but
It was not possible to organize lectures.

John Silver moved into his own apartment (which he received
along the Airborne Forces) and is going to return to writing music. Me too
wrote a couple of patterns in the studio - showed students how to do it
is being done. I also translate musicArtyom Chauzov from MIDI to AY - for
graphic novel Rusted Souls, which is written by the guys (in
mainlyArwald, Masha Lyubchak uLouisa).John Silver uKarbofos
asked about VST plugins that implement AY and TFM with all
settings and restrictions so that you can compose music with
convenience, and then, if something happened, you could copy-paste it into
Spectrum trackers. I asked about this topictrue-grue (author
famous AY engine), he is ready to advise anyone who
ready to take it on. Who's ready?

KSA-7G is only engaged in repairs; Spectrum is not currently available
is interested.

I haven't seen T(c)S for a year now. As far as we know, it continues
repair cell phones, you can only find it at work
at the Sotamaster company.

Crutch moved to a new address (bought an apartment). Very strong
lost weight.

Dissonator can sometimes be found on the street. It seems that he is something
trades.

No one has seen Cyberdemon for a long time.

Hippiman is successfully working on expanding the capabilities of EvoSDK.

NedoPC was assembled in early October atdachaKOE, but I missed it
this is an event.KOE bought a car, learned to drive, and at the same time found
fixed a glitch in the VG93 emulator, due to which they did not work
some ZX-Format numbers.

Maxagor returned to Spectrum affairs with fresh strength and
I started updating the site about ATM Turbo again.

From world news:

Oleg Cherednichenko implemented Boulder Dash at 48K on Oberon.

Destr writes a 3D game for 48K.

Screw/OHG develops a powerful debugging environment based on
UnrealSpeccy. 

Einar Saukas supported mine in his NIRVANA+ graphics engine
multicolor32 spaces wide.

The Orfoviki project has moved to the domainorfografiya.org (server
Slaven's).

                             * * *

In recent days, questions have been pouring in about how to compile
WolfCH8 sources under cross-assembler.
There are two main problems with these sources: first -
use of parametric markstypelabel 1 in macros,
the second is a texture converter written in assembler (it
runs before saving).

I decided to put an end to these issues completely.

For the first point, I wrote a small preprocessor utility
AsmPre (http://alonecoder.nedopc.com/zx/asmpre.zip ). 
It implements macros of the following type:
#macro 
(start macro definition)
#endmacro
(finish macro definition)
#usemacro  ,,...
(use macro with parameters)
The parameters in the macro are the same as in ALASM. Macros can be
nested.

The second point can be bypassed using UnrealSpeccy v0.37.1CFIX
(http://alonecoder.nedopc.com/zx/USOЗ71FIXSRC.rar). Except
automatic periodic loading of a given file into memory
(key-c filename ) it can automatically periodically
upload the specified file from the specified address (key-sPPAAAA
filename , the length is taken from the first two cells at this address,
then the data itself is located) and if this key is available
fall out alongDI:HALT. This way you can process the data
assembler procedures and use their results in
linking

                             * * *

Now I'm digging through old papers, trying to restore the chain
events.
The papers are a bizarre mixture of code, music,
drawings and cartoons in the margins, hardware diagrams and
school and college lessons. Some entries are located directly
on school notebooks and diaries!

The very first surviving Spectrum recording dates back to
tape period (i.e. 1993 at the latest), but already
with an attempt to disassemble some program. Others
Spectrum recordings from the tape period have not survived, and
reels and cassettes are lost. All that remains from those times is
disk version of iS-Chess 48 with my father, dated 1993
year (see ZX-Pilot #41), and the animation editor Animator on
BASIC (see ACNews #53).

If you date what is happening since 1999, there are no special problems (I
published a diary in ZX-Guide), then with grayer
In antiquities one has to work according to the methods of Sherlock Holmes.
Most pieces of paper do not have any dates, but you can determine the year
by Font editor's release dates (according to one of the entries, it was written
from December 1995 to 01/18/96) and Sapper'96(12.12.96) - after all
the order of the sources on the source disks is known. More
can I compare game mentions and dates in my disc versions?
these games. You can look at the covers of the notebooks. Maybe in the end
compare with other pieces of paper that contain notes on the same topics.

Moreover, in those days I had such entertainment -
decompose the year (for example, 1995) by numbers and using
mathematical operations to form different numbers from these numbers.
The idea was taken from the magazine "Science and Life", and I hoped
to take part in the competition, but didn’t know if it was still running. How
date such things? It is logical to assume that the current year
laid out at the beginning or at the end of the previous one (otherwise you can
be late for publication in the journal). For example, decomposition 1996
found in Font editor entries (December 1995 - January
1996), and the 1995 expansion can be searched for December 1994 - January
1995.

And on this border 1994-1995 (if the date is determined correctly)
there is a huge surge of material. Apparently this winter
I met a friendNick from the neighboring yard (aka
Vundik, akaKolya Medvedev), saw his demos and became
try to write your own.
At that time he himself wrote a fighting game, which he later
put it up for a hacker competition and then successfully erased it.

I was doing this beforeanalogue of Supercode, smoothly turning into
graphic editor project (and it ultimately resulted in
Font editor), Russification of Masterfile, writing all sorts of nonsense 
in BASIC, drawing fonts, etc.
And my circle of Spectrum acquaintances was limited to five users
in the entrance, of which only one wrote in BASIC, and one
an attempt to send the same animation editor to the city
competition My father also had some acquaintances from whom he took
software But for the hacker competition, onAlexey Bugrov (he wrote
assembler) and on the hackerVyacheslav Mikheev (and the entire STR group) I
came out throughNick. (The next stage of recruiting commands
there was a programmer school at the radio institute, but that’s already the end
1996.)

It’s interesting that while I was hanging out withNick, I even changed
style of drawings (and it is very well traced and dates back to
diary covers) - perhaps because Nick's mother
I drew it and I saw it.

And thanks to all these signs, as well as those used
ink, source design styles and logos, managed
restore some dates.
For example, this is what the history of multicolor studies looks like:1994-1995: first analysis of multicolors 1x8 and 2x8 - sheet contains
graph editor, border font, B&B emblem, Arkanoid idea,
Multicolor via LDI:POP DE:PUSH DE
1994-1995:Multicolor 14 spaces wide (LDI:LD E,A) - sheet
"Yamaha+IBM is very big shit"
1994-1995: multicolor width analysis (LDIR 10, LDI 14, LD
(HL),n 16) - the sheet contains the wave effect, graph editor menu,
Russification of BASIC tokens
1995:Multicolor 16 spaces wide (LD (HL),n) - for
multicolor editor 16x192, which was not written
1995: analysis of the width of multicolors, there is no longer an LDI option, but
there is LD (HL),n, POP HL:LD (),HL and LD:PUSH - the sheet contains the font
3x3 and breaks for the border
1996: full Multicolor program with a width of 16 spaces (already POP
HL:LD (),HL) - the sheet also has a vertical scroll, sapper and
pentomino
summer 1996:Multicolor 20 spaces wide (LD:PUSH)
late 1996:TMC12 (multicolor 4x8 at 48K full screen, beginning
screen about 1HZxx clock cycle) - lies on the disks betweensources
sapper
late 1996: RADUGA effect, subsequently screensaver for ACEdit
(then still in solid colors and also under 1ХЗxx) - lies in the same place
July 1997: T2ХMC (Multicolor 24 spaces wide, non-working)
July 30-31, 1997:MC24.a (Multicolor 24 spaces wide,
worker) - typed later, already in MASM.

It is quite likely that you will be able to sort all the records and
compile a complete dated list of releases, and at the same time
restore the whole story. But it will take a lot of work.

But the positive effect of such work is that you can see all these
old ideas and try to implement them at a new level. Couple
you may have seen examples recently - Self Printing
Greets(09.22.15) and R-Mode in the Con18 converter (09.11.15). 

What, you didn’t see it? :)
Search athttp://alonecoder.nedopc.com/zx/.

Self Printing Greets - a 32-byte intro that grew out of 
one small note about ASCII coding in pieces of paper. The idea was
to write a program using only symbols
ASCII, where mostly commands likeLD register, register.
Of course, by calculating the given bytes andpatch given
locations you can get other commands, but the number
some parentheses and commas (and other symbols,
which can be used to perform at least some mathematics) will exceed
all acceptable limits, and the text will not look like
text. Therefore, in this 32-byte intra, only one byte is patched.

R-Mode - a descendant of one of the software video modes from the list in
ZX-Guide #2. Why didn’t you read it too? :) But some 
those listed there have not yet been used in software :)

The desired mode there is called"16 COL 128x96/2 (RGBW)" - and this is
a typo that will need to be corrected, as it was meant
of course256x96. I had fun with this mode in my first year,
viewing pictures from MS-DOS disks in a standard CGA palette.
And on the pieces of paper that I sorted through, there was a record of how I
askedYura Sviridov to find and convert these for me
pictures.

As you can see, this mode assumes the presence of 2 screens. On one
the frame alternates lines of two colors on a black background
(for example, white and blue), on the other two other colors, also on
black background (for example, green and red). Total 4 colors
layer. As a result, you can get any color anywhere withoutspecial
CPU time costs. In general, practically without costs -
you just need to fill in the attributes and click on the port. But the picture
it turns out very dark.

What isR-Mode? It's the same thing, only instead of red,
green and blue color layers are used automatically
selected attributes. The colors are brighter and richer. It seemed
would be, we lose the most delicious thing - color to a point. But not really!
Since the white layer remains intact, we can still
overlay black and white sprites onto the picture. Moreover,
since all attributes have a black background, the brightness of the picture
can be smoothly faded to black using shading.

I will not describe the algorithm for calculating attributes, it is close to
I'll punch you in the forehead. Let me just say that in the end I limited myself
with the following attribute values for layers:
;0: G/M/C - bottom (odd)
;1: R/C/M - bottom (odd)
;2: B/Y - top (even)
;3: W - top(even)
Such restrictions allow you to fill half of the attributes with
usingPUSH:PUSH:PUSH... in the upper border - it even manages to
branded cars.

The picture is comparable in quality toMCX, but not
requires so much memory and CPU time