The comp.sys.sinclair Crap Games Competition 2021: 25th edition extravaganza!

[TMD2003]

ANNOUNCEMENT:

I know nobody's paying any attention to this thread any more - I assume I've had my last QL entry (though I may be surprised?) but after some DRAMA elsewhere, I'm going to have to pick through this thread from August onwards and throw some of it down the memory hole.

So I suppose I should say cheers to Dilwyn or whoever it was who decided that it was OK to edit posts from more than a few hours ago, because that's what I have to do now.

[dilwyn]

ANNOUNCEMENT:

So I suppose I should say cheers to Dilwyn or whoever it was who decided that it was OK to edit posts from more than a few hours ago, because that's what I have to do now.

?????????????

[TMD2003]

ANNOUNCEMENT:
So I suppose I should say cheers to Dilwyn or whoever it was who decided that it was OK to edit posts from more than a few hours ago, because that's what I have to do now.

?????????????

What I mean is, you didn't decide, whenever the decision was made, that there was a time restriction on editing posts - because there is on Spectrum Computing (4 hours, I think) and World of Spectrum (1 hour), which means I'm having to ask permission to be able to edit my own posts from August. That isn't a problem here, and I will do so... shortly.

I've just had to revise twenty reviews and I'm checking all the links and references are OK now.

EDIT: all the links from pages 10-12 are now fixed and certified to be working.

[TMD2003]

END OF WEEK 50:

The canonical end-of-competition flurry continued unabated, until yesterday. And to think that I was originally planning to run this competition between February and November. Got to say, I'm glad I did it this way.

This final week's four contributions were:
#56 - Avoid Santa, for the 16K Spectrum by Firelord (which didn't get any demerits!);
#57 - Psycho 3, for the 16K Spectrum by Luny;
#58 - Dragon Tale (demo), for the Spectrum +3 by Enrique Pimpinela Santos;
#59 - Advanced Fishing Simulator, for the Spectrum +3 with ULAplus! also by Enrique Pimpinela Santos.

That's the end of the last of the weekly round-ups. I never missed one, and that's because I run a tight ship. In just over five hours, it'll also be the end of the competition. I fully expect these to be the final entries, but you never know what might happen right at the bitter end...

Cheers to everyone, everywhere, who made a positive contribution (and anyone who might just squeeze a 60th entry in before the door slams shut).

I'm now finalising the Awards Ceremony! I don't expect anything to change in it at this stage, and I'll be revealing all over the weekend.

It's been an exciting journey.

AND ALSO: don't think this means I've left the QL world. I've still got more to do with it.

[TMD2003]

WE'RE CLOSED!

The final total was 62 entries - three of which were right at the last minute. I'll update on these in due course, then it's time for the AWARDS!

[TMD2003]

The final reviews of the year are now available!

First... it's Giannis ("Firelord") again. He couldn't stand to see this competition end on 59 entries, and sent in a 60th. I was obviously cynical about what Avoid Trees (16K Spectrum) would be, but I was sort-of-pleasantly surprised. It's a very basic skiing game - with "quirks" rather than terminal problems - adapted from a 140-character BASIC program thread on WOS five years ago that Giannis just dug up. It serves a purpose, and that purpose is to ensure I didn't get stuck on 59 entries.

Salvador Camacho has been a trooper this year, and - at the risk of repeating myself - couldn't stand to see this competition end on 59 entries, and sent in a 60th. But because Giannis got there first, Salvador's entry was #61. I'd usually say it was lazy to retool a previous entry, but this serves a purpose, and that purpose is to ensure I didn't get stuck on 59 entries... even though I already wasn't. Presenting Rudolph Practices - if you've been paying attention to the rest of the competition you'll recognise this one.

And finally... Andy Jenkinson's last chance to get an entry in until 2023 was a "nano-game", High/Low Continue, crammed into a single line of Spectrum BASIC, with the sole purpose of demonstrating that CONTINUE actually has a purpose in a BASIC listing. The "game" itself... threw up so many coincidences that Agrajag spontaneously reincarnated so that he could scream "COINCIDENCE?" in my face before once again being killed by Arthur Dent.
(This final entry - similar in size to Tobias Fröschle's one-line QL listing from earlier in the year - is a shining example of HOW TO DO IT when submitting something that won't even fill one page of the screen on a Spectrum. It's the Honda Beat of programming, the complete opposite of an Oldsmobile diesel.)



And that's your lot.

I'd already written the Awards pages - there are four of them, now - when these last entries came in, so I'm going to have to adjust the ranking tables that took bloody ages to translate to HTML. There are a few bits and pieces to clean up on them, as well.

These will be revealed tomorrow, alongside the Bullseye Bonus Game and its lesser siblings.

[TMD2003]

First of all, with the competition over, I've made the Awards pages.

A huge round of rapturous applause and a quick rev of the Patio Sprintette to Lee Prince, who won Most Crap Game Of The Year with Advanced Adding a TXT File to an EPROM Card for a Z88 Emulator Simulator!

And the keys of CSSCGC Towers for 2022 are handed to Andy Jenkinson, for the Least Crap Game Of The Year, the superbly playable and tuneful (if you like the Cranberries) Zombie Dice.

There are other pages with commendations for those who deserved it, buckets of beans flung at those who committed misdemeanours, and some statistics, including the full final standings, and the reveal of what the six games were that I've had in the website's title graphics all year. Someone from this board is in the commendations... who is it?

Meanwhile... there are also BONUS GAMES, and these have been given special double-length accounts into the processes behind their programming, rather than a formal review.

The Minor Bonus is three remakes of Daniel Aguilar's Magiapotagia from early May. I thought that if this program had been made on the primitive micros of 1977, when nobody outside a computer lab knew what a computer was, it would have been treated as if it was actual magic. But could any of the Apple II (with Integer BASIC), the Commodore PET 2001 or TRS-80 Model I (with Level I BASIC) handle the algorithm used to shuffle the cards? The short answer is "yes", and it works on all three, even if some were easier than others. I call the package Magiapotagia 1977.

The MAJOR BONUS, the one that's the result of this competition breaking through 50 entries, is The Ring of the Inka - Sir Clive Edition, a heavily revised, improved and thoroughly debugged version of the original from the 2018 CSSCGC. Volker Bartheld, one of the authors, asked to do this midway through the year, but probably didn't bank on us both spending about a month testing, debugging, optimising for memory, and adding new features...

The original version of the game couldn't be completed as there were vital objects missing, and times where it would stop with errors. All these have been eliminated. The game can be completed - I should know - but you'll now have to deal with a kleptomaniac Shaman, some undead guards that are very good at their job, a decreasing stamina level that will require finding some excellent survival food, a magic effect on the Ring itself... and to make it look nice, there's a custom character set courtesy of Damien Guard's ZX Origins.

This is now a superb text adventure, and the only thing that qualifies it as a Crap Game in any way is that the parser is slow. It also now works on 128K models, which it didn't before, and in addition to the microdrive version, there's a (128K-only) tape, and three different discs (+3, +D, Beta).

Happy adventuring... and, maybe, this could be a candidate for a QL port...