Post by Annagrace25 in MINER 80 - Sinclair ZX80 16K comments

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A flicker free ZX80 game with 30 levels squeezed into 16K, where the T state timing had to be that exact to pull it off, is a genuinely impressive feat of old school coding. So I'm curious with only 16K to work with, how did you fit 30 distinct levels and are they hand designed or generated from a compact scheme?

Loudscotsbloke4 days ago

Hello mate. I store the levels as a list of runs, for example “a platform, this long, starting here”. Each run takes 3 bytes. A level has only a few dozen runs, so the layout costs about 100 bytes. I did this as it 'cost' too much to store each 32x19 grid

Annagrace254 days ago

Thanks "impressive feat of old school coding" means a lot! Levels are stored as lists of runs ("a platform, this long, starting here") at 3 bytes each, so a layout costs ~100 bytes instead of a full 32x19 grid. Quick q hand designed levels or procedural generation?

Loudscotsbloke4 days ago

No. The levels aren’t generated while the game runs. They are fixed. The results are stored in the game as set layouts. Levels are the same every time, and the game contains no code to build levels.

Annagrace254 days ago

ohh, gotcha! so everyone gets the same layouts every time, that's pretty cool for speedrunning too lol. Btw, I've honestly had a lot of fun chatting with u about your games haha <3 would u be okay with moving our little game dev talks over to discord or somewhere else? totally fine if you'd rather keep chatting here tho!

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Viewing post in MINER 80 - Sinclair ZX80 16K comments