Knoware.no

[Tinyfpga]

Dear Knoware,
Whilst I like your term paleoQLtologists, it is difficult to pronounce. paleoQtologists would be much easier. I find the term and its meaning wonderfully comic and I hope the paleoQtologists also find it so. I enjoy your entertaining view of the QL world as expressed in the second paragraph of your recent post.

I try my best to comment on a number of topics whilst simultaneously learning to use and program SMSQE and suggesting that SMS or Stella in FPGA has a future in the hobby world. I never get a response to the SMS or Stella in FPGA posts.

I have downloaded your game and will be a beta tester, so your score can be augmented to 0.01.
I am actually more interested in testing your QTYP utility. QTYP formed part of the SMS2 distribution and has now become part of my SMSQE setup. It currently does nothing in SMSQE but I see no reason why it should not be useful in some way.

[mk79]

I have no idea how many people have downloaded it, but judging by the feedback to date, Id have to estimate it at, roughly, 0.00.

I really did miss your posting and completely understand your sentiment, apologies.

I did try it now. Impressive boot program to say the least! Of course I usually ignore boot programs and manuals and just execute the executable, so the first impression was somewhat underwhelming when it came to colour choices, which I thought was so unlike you. Tried the boot program afterwards and got a much more polished looking high-colour look as a result

I like Wordle, but I find yours much more (too?) difficult. In Wordle I guess about 60% of the words in 4 tries, the rest usually in the allotted 6. But then the Wordle words are all in almost always "common" words, probably hand-picked. I consider my English pretty good, but... "Rother"? WTF? Or "sluice"? Never heard those.

Last but not least the feature most missing for me is the "virtual keyboard" below. Not to type, but just because it conveniently marks which letters I've already tried!

Still, as always, thank you for your efforts, you know I like them almost always But frankly, one problem regarding their visibility might be that you all put them all in the same thread with a generic subject.

There is also a small SuperBASIC utility for those fortunate enough to have legal possession of QJump's QTYP

I will bet my ass on the fact that Tony wouldn't mind this being available for free, I just don't have a distribution at hand.

[Tinyfpga]

More Knownotmuch:-
There is much to learn about SMS in its various forms, and as mentioned in various posts I have quite a few. I have suggested on a number of occasions that the Q68 or better still the Qzero in a "QL keyboad case" might be a way to deal with the paleo problem.

I looked into producing a QL keyboard recently and realised that the difficulty lies in making the keycaps. Printing concave keycaps and labeling them is not easy. A handmade keyboard is an expensive thing to manufacture.

I have designed and printed cases that take two different off-the-shelf PS2 keyboards and a Q68. One keyboard is membrane based and the other takes a low profile Cherry keyboard. Not "QL style" but an OK alternative.

I have also been toying with ways to connect the Q68 to external sensors, motors and actuators, but as the title suggests I Knownotmuch.

What I do know, is that SMS is a unique system that is uniquely suitable for computing enthusiasts. At the moment the Qgurus or perhaps Qurus do not seem particularly interested in future systems, but then, as TT discovered they never were.

A future for SMS systems may lie outside the paleoQtologist domain. That route was explored in SMS2 but with the collapse of Atari it was a failure.
By converting SMS2 into SMSQE, SMS has been kept alive by the valiant efforts of the Qurus, and for that I am grateful. Without those Qurus there would be Knowware, KnowQPC, KnowQ68, KnowSMSQE, Knowdilwyn, Knownorm, Knowderek etc.etc. (the list of Qurus is quite large and I mean nothing by omission)

[Derek_Stewart]

I am too busy playing the game to give feedback...

Is SMS not s prevursor to SMSQ/E...

I keep hearing about Stella, tead the info on it and looks fine, but where is the demo version or source cofe.

[bixio60]

I have no idea how many people have downloaded it, but judging by the
feedback to date, Id have to estimate it at, roughly, 0.00.

As I am an absolute supporter of ALL your programs I cannot miss any update of Knoware but in this case did miss your post..... sometime it is easy to loose interesting post for different reasons...
Games are not my preferred subject but I gave it a go and I should have somewhere a Qtyp Ita dictionary to test with.
Keep moving on, all your programs are source of inspiration.
fabrizio

[NormanDunbar]

While I appreciate your efforts, there's no way in the world that I will play W*rdle in any way, shape or form, no matter what platform. The amount of hype going around about it is reminiscent of the 1980's when U2 had an album called "Rattle and Hum" which got so much coverage, a number of us in Scotland at the time, christened it "Rattle and Hype". And for all the hype, it was a crap album at that.

So, I usually find the more something has to be hyped, the less attractive it is. I feel the same way about advertising too. Maybe I'm just a grumpy old git (who said "maybe"?) but I have zero interest.

However, I do, as I said, appreciate your efforts.


Cheers,
Norm.

[mk79]

So, I usually find the more something has to be hyped, the less attractive it is.

Wordle is not a thing around here, so no hype at all. This way I just enjoy it for what it is, a fun little game

[pjw]

Well, thats better! Thanks for your responses! I wont tie up the place by
responding to every comment as that would probably bore the 800+ lurkers
here to tears.

Generally: Its not about the game; its about programming for QL systems!
Thats why it should interest some more people here. If you dont like WQRDLI
make something different/better! Its not that hard! WQRDLI took me about 24
hours (spread over a couple of weeks). Of course, compiling the word lists
took a whole day, but theyre out there now, forever.

I dont see many games or utilities for the QL that catch my fancy. Much of
the stuff found in distros or online are sad old games from the previous
millennium. Of those 80% just look plonky, and/or they crash, or are too
fast, or do horrible stuff to my system requiring a post-use reboot.
Perhaps they work on old systems, but they dont exactly demonstrate that
the QL has any future!

Specifically: I sometimes enjoy the game QWord, which was a super attempt
at making a modern QL game. One thing that put me off it was that words I
knew to be correct were thrown out because they werent in the dictionary.
Really annoying! An update to the program might have offered a solution to
that irritating flaw, but sadly the game flopped in the box-office (I
believe) and so no sequel was ever made. Ditto QL Scrabble.

So my original plan was to add as many words as possible so that would
never happen. The result was, as mk79 pointed out, that some almost
impossible- to-guess target words might appear. Ideally, some words should
be marked as "target" words, with the rest "guess" words. The upside is
that, as opposed to Wordle, you can play as many times as you choose!

The problem of having a philosophy of avoiding all "Rattle and Hype" is
that sometimes things happen to be hyped because they are worthy in some
way or other! The thing that is being hyped is not the problem; its the
sheeple that make all the fuss that are. One's choice should be based on an
evaluation of the thing itself, not on the rattle around it. Thats how I
came to order my first QL, although I had to wait a nearly a year for it to
arrive - which it did exactly 37 years ago on 12.03.22! (Whew! Back on
topic..)

[pjw]

More Knownotmuch:-
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About SMS, its hard to comment on something no one else seems to have - at
least I dont have it. It seems to me that the main difference between SMS
and SMSQ/E is SMS'es uncommon command language. However, SMSQ/E has taken
everything else SMS to a new level, so that reverting to SMS now would be a
massive retrograde step! It would be great to be able to inspect the
command language of SMS. Presumably, it is in a separate module. It seems
unlikely to me (from the little I have been able to glean) that SBASIC and
it could co-exist, though..

[dilwyn]

Having download WQRDLI (and nearly choked myself trying to pronounce it until I realised I wasn't meant to try to pronounce the Q), I still haven't found time to try it out.

I belong to the Norman Dunbar school of thought when it comes to Wurdle, and for the first time in my life I am going to pick on Marcel for something, for his "it's just a little game" comments. If you can totally isolate yourself from the hype and social media, where the weird wide Wurdle world seems to take great delight in showing off their latest result (it took me ages to figure out what the hell all the 'Wurdle 1234 5/6' postings meant), and the fact it made its inventor all that money (but without criticising it as a success story) , then it might just about pass as "just a game". As it is, Norman and I seem to be in fear of being social outcasts because we don't subscribe to all the hype!

That said, as soon as I find the time, I'll try it out as new QL software, rather than the game of ultra-hype. Especially knowing its talented Norwegian author

Meantime, Per might regret his light-hearted comments about a Welsh wordlelist. I've a 220,000 Welsh word list which I'm going through to extract the 5 and 6 letter words as I get time (biggest problem is the accented vowels since QDOSMSQ doesn't have circumflexed w and y and a few other odd combinations which are moderately common in Welsh).

Then Marcel will learn some proper new British words!!! Actually, Welsh is apparently easier for a German speaker to pick up than an English speaker, so knowing Marcel's talents and his inability to refuse a challenge... I remember that Ralf picked up a few words of Welsh quite easily when he visited Wales some years ago (Hi Ralf).