Sinclair ZX Spectrum Software development tools (& reverse engineering)

Every since the very beginning Sinclair ZX Spectrum video games have been reverse engineered to give the gamer extra life, better game play or just fix software bugs that had creeped into games.
The computing magazines of the day would full of readers tips and provide lists of the vital poke addresses and values to make the changes.

And today, even over 40-years after in was released in 1982 the Speccy still has an amazing following.
As well as making new video games for the Speccy there is a lot of activity reverse old titles. Seeing what slick programming tricks the games programmers used to make their 8-bit wonders never gets old.

So here are a few sites I’ve found that I think are useful. If you know of any more please leave me a comment and I’ll add them.

Software development tools (& reverse engineering)

SkoolKit – SkoolKit is a collection of utilities that can be used to disassemble a Spectrum game
https://skoolkit.ca/
https://github.com/skoolkid/skoolkit

Spectrum Analyser – a tool (combination of an emulator, debugger and interactive disassembler) designed to help reverse engineer Spectrum games
https://colourclash.co.uk/spectrum-analyser/
https://github.com/dpt/8BitAnalysers

Spectrum Graphics Editor
https://retrospec.sgn.net/info.htm?id=sge&t=u

Examples:
Chase H.Q. disassembly project
https://www.davespace.co.uk/blog/20230524-chase-hq-disassembly.html

The complete Manic Miner disassembly
https://skoolkit.ca/disassemblies/manic_miner/

Please check out my “8-bit Shack” retro computing channel
and my Tindie store.

Thanks

Technical preservation of Vintage Software

Following on from my post on the Technical preservation of Vintage Computers

I thought I would follow up with a post on the preservation of vintage software, more spectifically preservation examples of video games for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum.

The most popular games such as Manic Miner and Jetset Willy have many dedicate web sites but others not so well followed. Here’s a few gems to check out:

ZX Spectrum Game Disassemblies
https://github.com/mrcook/zx-spectrum-games

JETPAC cartridge ROM disassembly
https://github.com/mrcook/jetpac-disassembly

The Great Escape
https://github.com/dpt/The-Great-Escape

Manic Miner on X-One Console

As promised in my post of 15th October, here’s some screen shots of Manic Miner on my Xmos XC-2 based X-One console. So far I’ve only coded level 1 and I need to add code for the SNES controllers and game play and off course the rest of the 20 levels to finish it off.

The graphics were hand coded by extracting the pixel data and colour attributes for the first level from a Manic Miner ZX spectrum binary. A very mandraulic process involving switching between two editors and a couple of editor macros but it got the job done. I used Andrew Broads and Icemans (Chris Wild) excellent web sites for the screen layout information. The video engine is Yvo’s VDP for the XC-2 which provides up to 2 backgrounds and up to 32 sprites (8×8, 16×16, 32×32, 64×64 etc)

Watch this space more to come.