December's Program: V Water Battle
As 2014 comes to a close, I wanted to end the year with an original program of the month. For December, that program is V Water Battle, an action game from 1984. For some reason, the title screen I created said designed instead of wrote but I did both. I was an odd duck in 1984…
Posted Dec 29, 2014
3 min read
November's Program: Maze Craze
Hope everyone in the US had a great Turkey Day (Thanksgiving) and are now enjoying the last weekend of November. I’m busy with NaNoWriMo, and a bit behind. So I give you another program from my original ZX81 site, but not yet featured here. November’s program is the month is Maze Craze…
Posted Nov 29, 2014
2 min read
October's Program: NA
Whoa, there are still almost two weeks left in the month and I have October’s program done and waiting for you. Yep, you heard right. This month is a short one called NA. The program is an action game that requires you to use “N” and “A” to try to stop a runner…
Posted Oct 21, 2014
2 min read
September's Programs: Photon '85 and '98
Well, the month is over and life has taken over and delayed my program of the month. For the tail end of September, I offer two programs: Photon and Photon 98. Wait, what? Yep, you heard right. I’m offering two programs this month. Sort of. Actually they are very similar…
Posted Sep 30, 2014
2 min read
August's Program: Cave War
August’s program is Cave War, a later program from 1985. It starts out similar to Hit Man, basically a scrolling dodge the wall game. But there is more to it than that. Once you get to the end of the tunnel, you find yourself in a cave and need to blast away at a wall to continue on…
Posted Aug 24, 2014
4 min read
July's Program: Block £ Spear
Sorry, still no Joust. It’s not where I want it and I’ve spent July working on my novel instead. That isn't to say that I’m going to leave July without a program of the month. Instead I’ve pulled from my original site to bring you one of my favorite programs, Block £ Spear…
Posted Jul 23, 2014
3 min read
June's Program: Monster Maker
Okay I haven’t finished my remake of Joust yet, nor did I want to wait until the last week of the month to get an article out. Instead, I offer you Monster Maker as June’s monthly program. It’s pretty straight forward and anti-climatic against the power of today’s programs…
Posted Jun 08, 2014
3 min read
May's Program: Joust
I actually started working on May’s program of the month, Joust, about three weeks ago. My goal was to update the program to a faster and more fluid MCODER version. Sadly, things haven’t gone so well…
Posted May 28, 2014
5 min read
April's Program: Flywheel
April has been a crazy month. I decided to try something new, pushed along by an unexpected event. I'm writing a book. I joined NaNoWriMo just after last November's event so I didn't expect to do anything until later this year. The surprise was there CampNaNoWriMo event in April…
Posted Apr 27, 2014
3 min read
March's Program: The Ball Redux
For March's program of the month, I drew inspiration from one of my older demo’s, The Ball. Like many young kids from the early eighties using BASIC, I took a stab at animating a bouncing ball. It is a a relatively easy program to write depending on how complex you want to make the math…
Posted Mar 29, 2014
4 min read
February's Program: Time
For February, I give you Time, a simple landing game with a twist. Using the “Z” and “.” keys, you maneuver your craft to each successive landing pad. If you miss the landing, keep trying but be careful. Run out of time and it’s game over! How high of a score can you amass…
Posted Feb 16, 2014
4 min read
January's Program: Fireball
January’s program of the month, Fireball, marks a first for me. Although I’ve used a few different methods to type in my programs, I’ve always gone back to a Windows so I could use EightyOne to generate the program files and images…
Posted Jan 05, 2014
5 min read
December's Program: Dollar Sign
Winter has set in and it is time to close out the year with a simple game. Dollar Sign, December’s program of the month, is that game. All you need to do is move your character, which surprisingly looks like a dollar sign, into the inverse, dare I say it, dollar sign…
Posted Dec 30, 2013
3 min read
November's Program: SNUNCH ML
For November, I’m looking both forwards and backwards. Although I wrote SNUNCH in 1983, I added a corrected version to my first ZX81 web page in the ‘90s. SNUNCH was my early attempt at writing a PAC-MAN like game. Note that I said like, not clone. My goal was to be inspired, not to copy…
Posted Nov 30, 2013
7 min read
October's Program: Space Dock
Since it's been a few months since I've presented an animation program, I hereby offer October's program of the month Space Dock. Written when the space shuttle program was in full swing, Space Dock depicts a shuttle launch for its scheduled docking to repair a satellite…
Posted Oct 19, 2013
4 min read
Doing Some Fall Cleaning
I took a break from educating myself on z80 machine code, more on that later, to fix a few things that have bugged me about the site. They are minor and probably will go completely unnoticed by most, but I wanted to make a quick note for future reference. Hey that’s what blogs are for, right?
I spe…
Posted Oct 01, 2013
3 min read
September's Program: S.M.P.
October’s program of the month is S.M.P. or Sinclair Memo Pad. A simple scrolling editor that allows you to take a couple of quick notes that last as long they are on-screen. Since the space key also acts as a break, which will stop the program, S.M.P. uses the newline key instead…
Posted Sep 21, 2013
3 min read
ZX81 Nixie Clock
While searching for some code examples I ran across this inventive hardware expansion. Michel created a ZX81 Nixie Clock and has been kind enough to share his creation with the world through Facebook. Okay, silly me had no idea what a Nixie was…
Posted Aug 29, 2013
2 min read