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Message: 6530

Author: andrewbroad

Date: 21/03/2009

Subject: Re: Cheekah's Exploits / The Steelyard Blues

 

Daniel wrote:

Among them is the game "Cheekah's Exploits" (by Julian R.E. Wood,
Your Computer, 1985), which you describe as "a machine-code type-in
game from the January 1986 issue of Your Computer, based heavily on
the code for Manic Miner, and featuring a built-in room-editor".
Since you have included it, I think it will be appropriate to also
add some information about "The Steelyard Blues" (Tynesoft, 1987),
which is apparently a Harry S Price's rip-off of "Cheekah's
Exploits", so it must be equally based on the code for MM. The more
so that you have also included in the same category both
"Pyramania" and its Harry S Price's rip-off, "Odd Job Eddie".

I have added The Steelyard Blues to my alpha-copy of the List.

A compilation of Harry S Price's rip-offs can be found on Paul
Equinox Collins's website ( http://equ.in/ox/spectrum/hsprice/) ,
which is where I learned about them.

A question to the technically-knowledgeable among you: can any
portions of the MM code (data?) in "Cheekah's Exploits" and "The
Steelyard Blues" be transferred to the standard MM format easily?
I mean like sprites or rooms to be used in a "real" MM game?

Unfortunately, JSWED only provides a hex-editor view of Cheekah's Exploits, but I managed to load the data into JSW CK and view them as 16x16 graphics:
1. I converted the Z80-file to an SNA-file.
2. I used SPECSAISIE Count to observe that the bytes in 32768-64511 are all zeroes, but that there are non-zero bytes in 23296-32767.
3. I used SPECSAISIE SNAtoTAP to convert the SNA-file to a TAP-file:
java SNAtoTAP CHEEKAH.SNA CHEEKAH.TAP Cheekah 23296 9472
4. I loaded JSW CK Part II, broke into it, and loaded CHEEKAH.TAP, relocating it to the free space from 32768 onwards:
LOAD "" CODE 32768
5. I got JSW CK running again:
LOAD !"0"
6. In "EDIT 16x16 GRAPHICS", I saw some meaningful graphics in sprite-pages 132-134 (after relocation as per Step 4).

It would be so much easier if JSWED provided a 16x16 graphics-view of arbitrary SNA/TAP/Z80-files, and without restricting the addresses that can be viewed as such. For Cheekah's Exploits, the graphics appear to start at #5FC0.

And a final comment: I have noticed, Andrew, that you don't display
the Drunken Master's latest game's name fully, using *** to cover a
part of the second word. I could possibly understand it in the case
of the "f" word, but, surely, "s***" is not really a rude word any
more, in this day and age. Or is it? I'm just curious how all ye
native speakers feel about it :-) .

Last time I checked, the S-word was the second-rudest in the English language. So I don't want to give my enemies easy ammunition by using it on my site.

--
Dr. Andrew Broad
http://tinyurl.com/andrewbroad-mmjsw

 

 

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