Resource centre for ZX Spectrum games
using Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy game engines
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Message: 4788
Author: Daniel
Date: 01/05/2005
Subject: More about file formats and thanks
Thanks to John and Sendy for their instant replies to my questions
:-) . I am not sure if it is customary in this group (in any mailing
group, in fact, since this is the only one I belong to) to post
messages which only contain thanks, since such postings do not add
anything valuable or interesting for other people (I guess), although
they are a sign of good manners (I hope). It took me over two weeks
to thank Andrew for his very informative reply, so now I am probably
trying to compensate for that failure :-) .
Anyway, in order not to post a "contentless" message, here's a couple
of further questions for John:
- You say: "All JSWED does is set up the Z80 so that the game will
start running as if it's just been launched from BASIC. The game
itself is then responsible for setting up all its temporary
variables".
So the .z80 file set up by JSWED *IS* a perfect snapshot in the sense
of Andrew's description, isn't it? And the same goes for a .sna file
set up by JSWED, right?
- I admit my mentioning a "perfect" .tap file was very imprecise. Let
me clarify:
I take a .tap file of an existing JSW game. I load it into a decent
emulator, play it for a while and save it as a .sna or a .z80
snapshot. I load this snapshot into the JSWED, and I save the game as
a .tap file. Will the resulting .tap file be identical with the
original .tap file I started with in the beginning? If it is, I would
call it a "perfect" .tap file :-) .
On second thoughts: I suppose it will not be identical, since the
loader will be different (JSWED creates a "generic" loader, correct?)
and if there was a loading screen, it would have been lost, right?
But what I mean is whether the other segments of the .tap file, the
ones that really matter because they contain the "proper" game files,
will be IDENTICAL? ("proper" is imprecise again, but I hope it is
clear what I mean)
About the loading screen: John, do you have any plans to include this
function in the future versions of JSWED? It would be very nice, I
think, to be able to import images into JSWED which it would then
turn into loading screens, producing .tap files including these
screens.
Daniel
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