Does 'De Tijdmachine' exist for Spectrum ZX?

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Garry
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Does 'De Tijdmachine' exist for Spectrum ZX?

#1 Post by Garry » Sat Dec 21, 2019 4:15 am

'De Tijdmachine' by Gerton A Lunter (in Dutch) is currently listed as being available for the BBC and the Spectrum ZX. I have the BBC version and BASIC source code for another version, but the other version is clearly not for the Spectrum ZX and I'm not sure what dialect of BASIC it is. Or maybe the source code is for some Spectrum BASIC that I'm not aware of. (I'm not a Spectrum user.) The screen grab is for the BBC version. There's also a BASICode version that's not listed on CASA.

After wasting several hours searching for a Spectrum ZX version that I can use in an emulator, I've come up with a blank. Alex Dijkstra's solution says it's for the Spectrum ZX version, so it must be out there somewhere, unless Alex's solution is wrong.

So, can anyone prove that the Spectrum ZX version actually exists? If you've got a copy as a tap file, tzx file or BASIC source code that I can convert using bas2tap, feel free to send me a PM.

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Re: Does 'De Tijdmachine' exist for Spectrum ZX?

#2 Post by Strident » Sun Dec 22, 2019 11:16 am

It seems likely there was a Spectrum version... it's listed in the Speccy archives, and Gerton was the author of a well-know Spectrum emulator (WinZ80).

I guess you could ask Gerton himself, directly...

https://www.genomicsplc.com/team/dr-gerton-lunter/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/gerton-lunter-3476b2/

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Re: Does 'De Tijdmachine' exist for Spectrum ZX?

#3 Post by Strident » Sun Dec 22, 2019 11:25 am

There is also a direct email address on this page...
https://www.rdm.ox.ac.uk/people/gerton-lunter

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Re: Does 'De Tijdmachine' exist for Spectrum ZX?

#4 Post by Strident » Sun Dec 22, 2019 12:12 pm

I presume you have this BASICODE source?
https://github.com/robhagemans/basicode ... JDMACH.BAS

From...
https://github.com/robhagemans/basicode

Which sounds interesting... Designed for broadcast, users would use a translator on their machine to convert the generic BASICODE to the version of BASIC that would run on their system.

De Tijdmachine exists in this generic BASICODE format... but the code itself suggests it was developed on the Spectrum...

30000 REM
30010 REM DE TIJDMACHINE
30020 REM EEN ADVENTURE
30030 REM
30040 REM GESCHREVEN DOOR G.A. LUNTER
30050 REM BORDINE 44
30060 REM 8604 AD SNEEK
30070 REM
30080 REM OP EEN SINCLAIR ZX SPECTRUM
30090 REM MAART 1988
30100 REM
30110 REM COPYRIGHT NOS HILVERSUM

Seems like an intriguing system, anyway.

The translators exist... so I guess it should be possible to translate the BASICODE into Sinclair BASIC...

example: https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 96&id=7951

(There seem to be different editions, so perhaps one released a little later might work better)

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Re: Does 'De Tijdmachine' exist for Spectrum ZX?

#5 Post by Strident » Sun Dec 22, 2019 12:16 pm

I think this is the most recent BASICODE translator for the Spectrum...
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 96&id=7953

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Re: Does 'De Tijdmachine' exist for Spectrum ZX?

#6 Post by Strident » Sun Dec 22, 2019 12:26 pm

(For those who are interested, you can play the BASICODE version in the browser through this site. It's listed in the Best of Basicode 6 collection, accessed in programs.
http://robhagemans.github.io/basicode/#programs )

Image

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Re: Does 'De Tijdmachine' exist for Spectrum ZX?

#7 Post by Garry » Sun Dec 22, 2019 12:53 pm

Thanks for your help Gareth, as always.

I think the remarks in the BASICode version are used to identify the game and provide some info (like modern-day meta data) when you list the game in the JavaScript BASICode interpreter. Even so, this is the BASICode version, not the original Spectrum ZX version. If you just want to play the game, you can use this version or the BBC version.

I've sent Gerton an email, but it was a long time ago that he wrote it, so I'm not expecting anything to come of it. I also tried downloading his emulator on the off chance that it may include 'De Tijdmachine' as a sample program. It looks like a self-extracting archive, but I couldn't do anything with it, not even using DOSBox, because it's way too old for 64-bit hardware and modern operating systems.

The theme of the game is interesting because there are several games based on the same H. G. Wells novel. A few years ago, I translated a German game called 'Die Zeitmaschine' by Stefan Soelbrandt for the Atari 800. This one had graphics. I even translated the German in a couple of the images. This was a bit tricky, as the author had used a non-standard file format.

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Re: Does 'De Tijdmachine' exist for Spectrum ZX?

#8 Post by Garry » Sun Dec 22, 2019 12:57 pm

Hmm. I wonder if the Spectrum ZX version was actually a BASICode version, as the source code I've got is different to the BASICode version on the web site, but it has a lot of similarities,such as the comments. Perhaps it's an earlier version or something? I must try it.

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Re: Does 'De Tijdmachine' exist for Spectrum ZX?

#9 Post by Strident » Sun Dec 22, 2019 1:06 pm

It's an interesting area to research... although I'd heard of BASICODE vaguely in the past, I have never really looked into it that deeply.

It's possible that the other source you have is just a translation of the BASICODE to a different BASIC, I guess. Can you post a link to it, or some extracts?

The fact that the BASICODE source has a comment indicating it was originally written on the Spectrum, would to me, confirm the existence of a ZX Spectrum version... especially with the listings elsewhere and the comment on the solution. (Does Alex remember more, I wonder?)

Whether a translated version of the BASICODE is an adequate substitute for the original Spectrum version may be debatable... It also looks like it would be quite a lot of work to get that BASICODE listing into a format that could be loaded into the Spectrum emulator... unfortunately the compilation it appears on is a disk... had it been a tape, then it would've been a lot more straightforward.

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Re: Does 'De Tijdmachine' exist for Spectrum ZX?

#10 Post by Garry » Sun Dec 22, 2019 1:16 pm

I don't remember where I got it, but here's a zip file with the BASIC code as a plain text file.

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Re: Does 'De Tijdmachine' exist for Spectrum ZX?

#11 Post by Strident » Sun Dec 22, 2019 11:31 pm

Looking at them side by side, that does just look like another Basicode version. Aside from the formatting/spacing differences, it's mostly the first block that has a few lines extra or omitted when compared to the other listing.

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Re: Does 'De Tijdmachine' exist for Spectrum ZX?

#12 Post by Alex » Mon Dec 23, 2019 8:10 pm

Hi,

The game I played to write the solution and still have is a basicfile called Bc2tijd.bas. I played it on a zx spectrum emulator without a basic code translator. As mentioned above the code states it was written on a zx spectrum but clearly to be a basiccode program. For those interested the basiccode games were transmitted on the Dutch Radio (NOS) from 1981-1992. It seems that this game was written for Basiccode 2. The actual game starting at line number 1000 (being the same for all systems) and the lines before line 1000 were automatically added when importing the game depending on the chosen system using the basiccode interpreter.

Kind regards,

Alex

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Re: Does 'De Tijdmachine' exist for Spectrum ZX?

#13 Post by Strident » Tue Dec 24, 2019 12:24 am

Basicode does sound really interesting.

Would it be possible to have a copy of the Spectrum basic file, so we can make the game available on the various Spectrum archives?

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Re: Does 'De Tijdmachine' exist for Spectrum ZX?

#14 Post by Alex » Tue Dec 24, 2019 8:06 am

Bc2tijd.zip
(9.46 KiB) Downloaded 212 times

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Re: Does 'De Tijdmachine' exist for Spectrum ZX?

#15 Post by Strident » Tue Dec 24, 2019 10:25 am

Thanks for that and for your time. I've had a nose at the basic file... it doesn't quite seem to be Spectrum BASIC compatible as it stands... this is the version you ran on the Spectrum?

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