Simon Owen wrote:
> Chris Pile wrote:
> > To ensure Defender ran at a constant (99.9% of the time!)
> > 50-fps, all available horsepower needed to be squeezed from
> > the old Z80!
>
> And from what I remember of the code, you certainly did squeeze out every
> last drop! The disk protection was equally crafty, and remains the only SAM
> title that neither SamDisk nor MakeSDF can image from an original disk.
> Though after a bit of detective work with SAM DICE, I have managed to create
> a working image of it with the protection intact.
>
> Si
Ahhhh, yes - the Defender disk protection... Funnily enough I was toying with
several
ideas when I did that - some more devious than others! In the end ('cause I'm
such a
lazy git) I chose the one which was easiest to implement! ;-)
There is actually another version of Defender - but unfinished and never
released. It's
basically the same, but with a few optimisations and tweaks to improve its
faithfulness
to the real game. There are several areas in the "public" version which (to
this day) I'm
not too happy with. There's also a chunk of extremely poor code (nothing more
than a
cheap patch) that I deserve to have had my hands cut off for writing! ;-)
Still, it's probably a little late in the day to go digging around in 8-year
old code! :-)
I've a couple of unfinished (around 7 or 8-year old) projects on a CD
somewhere. An
unfinished (but basically functional) chess engine that Gordon Wallis
(HEXDidn't) did
some *very* nice graphics for. I also started on a version of one of my
favourites - the
Taito classic QIX - which I was hoping to get as close to the "real thing" as
possible...
Mmmmm, perhaps someday I'll get around to finishing them... Perhaps... :-)
Chris.
