Keilly: Spectrum Version 3

Monday, May 21, 2007

Spectrum Version 3

I've completed work on a new version of my ZX Spectrum Widget:


Relive the glory days of the 80’s guiding Miner Willy through the ‘Solar Power Generator’, defeating Doomdark near the ‘Mountains of the Moon’, or just programming your next BASIC masterpiece.

Important upgrade instructions:
The widget update will copy over the game file directory, so if you’ve added new games to an earlier version: Save the game files, then upgrade, then copy the games back.

Download v3

Older Versions are here

New in version 3.0
- Custom resizing - drag the widget to your preferred size, up to 1000x800 (larger sizes require faster machines)
- Basic (10 PRINT "Neil Rules! "; 20 GOTO 10)

New in version 2.2
- Sizing bug fix
- New games

New in version 2.1
- Compact size when not in use

New in version 2.0
- Sound
- .TAP file support
- Faster and smaller emulator
- Kempston joystick support (use arrows and ctrl)

Pull those bedroom curtains even tighter together and ignore your mother calling you for dinner.

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger is required. If you're using Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, Show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget's icon in the Widget Bar to open it. If you're using a browser other than Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, unarchive it and place it in /Library/Widgets/ in your home folder. Show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget's icon in the Widget Bar to open it.

Legal
The widget comes with a few legally provided games (see below).
You can add more games by flipping over the widget, pressing ‘Open Game Snapshot Folder’ and adding your own games to that folder.

Only add files that you are legally allowed to - e.g. In some countries these can be games you have purchased. Copyright laws vary from country to county, so check them if you are unsure.
Don't pirate games!

I believe the owners of the supplied games allow their games to be freely distributed (according to the web-site World of Spectrum). If you are the copyright owner of one of these games and you would like it removed from the widget distribution contact me and I will be happy to remove it.

The widget is based on the Qaop Java emulator - which has it’s own page here

Troubleshooting:
Requires Java v5.0. If you are seeing a red 'X' in the corner, then Java isn't set up correctly. This is most probably fixed by:
- Open Finder
- Navigate to Applications->Utilities->Java->J2SE 5.0
- Open Java Preferences
- Ensure version is set to J2SE 5.0

11 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi, love the Speccy emulator! Is there anyway of saving a game/snapshot?

Cheers,
Will.

PS. Made your widget 'Frankenwidget' of the week on my podcast British Mac.

Neil Cochrane said...

No loading and saving snapshots yet. Maybe in version 4.
And thanks for the recommendation.

Anonymous said...

What a fantastic bit of work! Great job! Been a while since I've played any of the old speccy games - ahh heady days..etc... Was wondering if you know where I can get some more games to add?

Cheers.
Dazz

Neil Cochrane said...

World of Spectrum has lots of games.

Anonymous said...

Hi; great widget and Speccy emulator!

Do you know if this will work in the iPhone (or would you create an iPhone version) one devkits etc & third-party development is authorised?

cheers,
Michael.

Neil Cochrane said...

It requires Java, once/if ever the iPhone supports Java than this should work with little modification.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for your fantastic emulator! I'm hoping that you didn't give up on it, because there is still room for a lot of improvements :)
If I could choose I'd definitely love to see the support for the .TZX format and for the savestates.

Ciao.

Anonymous said...

Probably I'm asking for a feature that is impossible to add... but it would be *really cool* if your emulator could automatically save the state when you exit from the dashboard, and reload it automatically when you re-enter the dashboard... so anybody might play a game for some minutes, go back to work and restart to playing from the very point where he (or she) left some hours before.

That would be totally awesome :)

Anonymous said...

OMG, this is truely awesome!!!

Even comes with my fave game Saboteur. Ist there a v4.0 on the way? Love to see a snapshot/save feature and type in my own game which I've still got printed out somewhere ;-)

Cheers,
R.

Neil Cochrane said...

Thanks Anon. Currently I have no plans for further development of this.

Anonymous said...

Has it stopped working or is it just me? Thanks for everything!