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vanpeebles
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Re: The background to my presence here

Post by vanpeebles »

We need more QL football games! A viddy printer would great! bzztbzztbzztbzzttbzzzt


Derek_Stewart
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Re: The background to my presence here

Post by Derek_Stewart »

Hi,
vanpeebles wrote:We need more QL football games! A viddy printer would great! bzztbzztbzztbzzttbzzzt
Hi,

Football Manager on the ZX Spectrum is written in Spectrum BASIC, I have done some work to convert over to the QL.

The only thing is the UDG characters, but predefined QL 2nd fount with characters defined should solve that.

There is a results screen, which could use the Biddy Printer idea.

I will dig out the listing I have working except for the UDGs.


Regards,

Derek
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vanpeebles
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Re: The background to my presence here

Post by vanpeebles »

Sounds good! :) I'd love to make some gfx for it!


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TMD2003
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Re: The background to my presence here

Post by TMD2003 »

vanpeebles wrote:Sounds good! :) I'd love to make some gfx for it!
Steady on, there!

This is the F.A. Cup title to which I refer. It's rather short on graphics, I am very familiar with it from modding it when I was younger, and that's why I think it'll be the ideal introduction into trying to do my own QL programming - I don't have to worry about all those LINE and BLOCK and FILL commands (useful though they are), and WINDOW #1 and WINDOW #2 and trying to keep track on how many WINDOWs I have open...

I suppose it could be enhanced with some graphics, though - say, a drawing of the F.A. Cup at the end of the simulation when we know the winners.


Spectribution: Dr. Jim's Sinclair computing pages.
Features my own programs, modified type-ins, RZXs, character sets & UDGs, and QL type-ins... so far!
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RalfR
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Re: The background to my presence here

Post by RalfR »

vanpeebles wrote:Sounds good! :) I'd love to make some gfx for it!
That would be great, I always long for such!


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vanpeebles
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Re: The background to my presence here

Post by vanpeebles »

I was thinking more for the football manager game, I could make some scr file easy enough for the replays and title screen etc. How would you have players running over the top?


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TMD2003
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Re: The background to my presence here

Post by TMD2003 »

Aaaaaaaaaaall right, enough talk of football and running before I can walk...

Am I being dense here, or is there no way to change (admittedly unregistered) QemuLator's aspect ratio? If I set the Zoom under "View" to either 100% or 200%, the pixels aren't of a consistent size. As I understand it, to get the correct 4:3 aspect ratio with 512x256 pixels, it should be scaled 2x horizontally, 3x vertically, and that gives a final screen size of 1024x768. That's fine, it's not a million miles away from a Spectrum screen with border scaled 3x each way (960x720, in most cases). Zoom 200% is, rather absurdly, 1020x691 - close in the width, but no cigar.

I've managed to stretch the screen manually to exactly 1024 PC-pixels wide, but the height is stuck at 694. If I move the bottom of the window, all it does is reveal more microdrives, rather than expand the QL screen area. Changing "WindowHeight" in the .QCF file doesn't appear to do anything.

So I went back to QLAY through DOSBox and took a screenshot in monitor mode - the white and red windows together are 512x202 pixels, so the WindowHeight I tried in DEFAULT.QCF was 202. Then 404, and 606... no joy at all. No change in the aspect ratio. Whatever I do, it's wrong. I will notice. I will be drawn to the pixels running down the centre of the screen that are different heights. It will drive me mad.

What am I missing here?


Spectribution: Dr. Jim's Sinclair computing pages.
Features my own programs, modified type-ins, RZXs, character sets & UDGs, and QL type-ins... so far!
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Andrew
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Re: The background to my presence here

Post by Andrew »

WindowHeight sets the maximum window height when you click the maximise icon or you scale the window with the mouse. So if you want to make a 768 pixels height windows set WindowHeight to something more than that.
But probably won't help you to achieve a 4:3 ratio
I tried to set a 4:3 ratio when I first installed it - but no luck. As far as I could see, on my computer, QEmulator window is always between 4.40:3 and 4.45:3 ratio, depending on window size.
Well, I got used with that.


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TMD2003
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Re: The background to my presence here

Post by TMD2003 »

The headaches continue.

I tried QL2K, and it seemed to be what I was looking for, after a few tweaks. I made it run, used the JS ROM instead of Minerva, the screen was at 1024x768 in the correct aspect ratio, but it was running far too fast and had executed a program I didn't know what there and stopped at line 5540 (or there abouts). It was going fine, so I copied over the new Build 101 files and tried running the 64-bit version...

...the Windows cursor turned to its swirly-blue-circle for about half a second, and nothing happened. I tried again, nothing happened. Nothing.

I tried to edit QL2K.INI, and somehow it was back to Minerva and a French keyboard. And I couldn't save what I'd edited, as if it was all saved in a folder that required administrator privileges. And yet I'd done it on the secondary hard drive, where I keep all my Sinclair stuff, rather than in the usual Program Files on the primary SSD.

I took out the build 101 version and ran the old build 095 version. Nothing.

It started up once and now refuses to do so again.

At the risk of repeating myself, am I missing a trick that should have been obvious - and why would the folder have been made an admin-only job? Of all the things I've come across on Windows over the last 27 years, this one's the oddest. None of the changes I'm making to the QL2K folder are having any permanent effect - I uncheck read-only, it stays as read-only. I try to change the user group it's in, it stays as what it was. And is this what is stopping QL2K from running?

At least if I have to go back to QLAY for a while, it has a nice set of red and white graphics that I can draw a brick wall to bang my head against.

EDIT: ...so I uninstalled and re-installed QL2K, and managed to get it running again. ONCE. It won't start up a second time. Also, I did restart the entire computer the first time it did this, with no improvement in its ability to start. And on the reinstall, I found that whatever I do, it stops with this error at line 5530 - a line that doesn't exist because there is no program in memory. I can only conclude that QL2K is completely borked.

Back to the drawing board...


Spectribution: Dr. Jim's Sinclair computing pages.
Features my own programs, modified type-ins, RZXs, character sets & UDGs, and QL type-ins... so far!
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janbredenbeek
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Re: The background to my presence here

Post by janbredenbeek »

TMD2003 wrote:Aaaaaaaaaaall right, enough talk of football and running before I can walk...

Am I being dense here, or is there no way to change (admittedly unregistered) QemuLator's aspect ratio? If I set the Zoom under "View" to either 100% or 200%, the pixels aren't of a consistent size. As I understand it, to get the correct 4:3 aspect ratio with 512x256 pixels, it should be scaled 2x horizontally, 3x vertically, and that gives a final screen size of 1024x768. That's fine, it's not a million miles away from a Spectrum screen with border scaled 3x each way (960x720, in most cases). Zoom 200% is, rather absurdly, 1020x691 - close in the width, but no cigar.
The aspect ratio of QEmulator is fixed at about 1.5, which is the original QL's aspect ratio. Even the registered version doesn't have the possibility to change this, but does have a pixel smoothing option.
If you want an exact pixel-to-pixel mapping, try QL2k which is a port of QLAY2 with sound, better timing and a 64-bit version available. It supports several screen sizes including 1024x768 which gives an image which is pixel-aligned but stretched vertically. This is because the original QL's pixels were not square-shaped like those of modern flat-screen monitors.

Jan


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