Speccyal K V0.7 Released !

[phoda]

I can remember when I loaded "Agent X" for the first time. The 5-channel theme was just amazing. The superb World of Spectrum has it in MP3 format - here.

Also, it's amazing how Dan Dare stands a as great game even today. Playing it on the GP32 is a joy.

Now - for some criticisms

Gotta love the TAP support - however, I experience frequent hangups when having somthing already running and then loading a new TAP file. I am using a firmware with Mr. Spiv's Bios.

Sound is not emulated right yet - the big example is Agent X's theme - it sounds all weird on Speccyal and should be a fine benchmark on how perfect the emulator is at reproducing sound.

Key pressing: when selecting roms, coming back from the keboard menu etc. Speccyal keeps reading keypresses. It would be way better if, on the menus and the birtual keyboard, keypresses were read only once and detected again only after a button has been released and pressed again.

Speed - does not look perfect yet. Several games seem slower than they should.

I tried "Xeno" and it gives some weird graphic errors that make the game very hard to play.

When selecting "full screen" border emulation should be disabled by default.

File loading: Speccyal should look first under a specific folder (such as GPMM/SPECTRUM or something) so we don't have to go through a whole bunch of folders to load each file. Another fine thing would be the ability to remember the last folder accessed.

Lack of tape loading error is really a bummer

 

[phoda]

Thanks for the update.

Would be cool if realtime tape loading could be emulated just for the high pitched screaming and flashing lines.

Ahhh... /me gets emotional.. so many good memories. Here's a cool track to refresh you memory:
http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/jikorhon/conde...load_screen.mp3

Cool track! I remeber also hearing a sample of LOAD "" stuff on an Aphex Twin song. I just can't remember which one...

 

[_tyrell_]

phoda>

What more can I say? You said it all. Speccyal's crap
Seriously now, my top priority is TZX support. Then, yes, you are right, there are lots of small bugs or annoying things to fix but it does not keep (I don't believe so) peoples from enjoying it.

_tyrell_

 

[phoda]

Yeah - Speccyal is crap! Specially because it's forcing me to spend a few hours a day playing it. Damn it!

 

[phoda]

Ha! Xeno works - it was a bad SNA file. TAP worked perfect. Also, fullscreen worked perfect disabling the borders - I guess I had a brainfart.

 

[Loonie]

Fine work, _tyrell_.

 

[CU_AMiGA]

Good work _tyrell_! This is a big improvement over the previous version. NewZealand Story now runs! lol Not too bothered about txz support, just want the emu to be polished here and there on the graphics, sound, etc - then we would have a top notch emu. Thanks again.

 

[WhizzBang]

Great work Tyrell, nice to see this hasn't been left forgotten. I tried to play Football Manager with the chatboard though and it crashed when it got to the bit where it shows the match highlights. I have only tried it once mind, and it looked to be a Spectrum bug as the game is written in basic and I got a Spectrum error message about an integer being out of range, but the tap file I am using (from WOS) works fine on PC spectrum emulators. This may just be me though, I shall make a .Z80 file from the .tap and try again soon.