Magnetic Scrolls masterpieces remastered for the Spectrum Next

[ZX_Tsugi]

Great news! I've been looking forward to this for some time. Indeed, I bought Jinxter in 1989 for the Amstrad PC1512, but as it only had 512K it didn't show any graphics.

With regard to Wonderland, on that same PC1512, the memory was eaten up very quickly, even when not displaying graphics and the map, etc. Have any such problems arisen on the Next port so far, or have you found a way to mitigate them?

Thank you for all your hard work.

I have not had any problems with Wonderland on the Next so far. Wonderland will use the same UI as the other Magnetic Scrolls games on the Next. It will not use the Magnetic Window windowing system used in the original version of Wonderland. Magnetic Window was a full-featured cross-platform windowing system comparable to Windows 3.1 and I would guess it was a very tight fit for the Amstrad PC1512 with only 512 KB of RAM.

The main challenge with Wonderland for the Next is getting the animation support in place. Wonderland has images for almost all locations in the game and many of those images are animated.

Thanks for replying. I remember that it was the room with the animated piano and chair where the game would start complaining about low memory, and closing every window but the one for text seemed to make no difference.

I've played it a bit on Dosbox recently, but I'm sure I'll enjoy it more on the Next.

[dave18]

Hi, I've being playing The Pawn so a bit (and progressing slowly!). However I've started to get what I assume is an error message saying "waaaa - unhealthy sp!!!!!". I assume it means the stack pointer is potentially out of whack?? Having said that it isn't seeming to crash the game or anything, is it a bug I should report somewhere?

[Stefan123]

Hi, I've being playing The Pawn so a bit (and progressing slowly!). However I've started to get what I assume is an error message saying "waaaa - unhealthy sp!!!!!". I assume it means the stack pointer is potentially out of whack?? Having said that it isn't seeming to crash the game or anything, is it a bug I should report somewhere?

Hi Dave,

There is an intermittent z88dk optimization bug that could explain this problem. If you can reproduce the problem, can you please save the game prior to the bug happening and send that save file to me at stefan.bylund99@gmail.com.

[Stefan123]

dave18: I just connected the dots and realized that you're the author of the Bubble Bobble conversion for the Spectrum Next. I've been away on a trip so I haven't had the time to try it yet but it looks absolutely amazing!

[dave18]

Hi Stefan

When the error occurred I reverted to a previous save. However, just using 'restore' to load the old save didn't get rid of the error, I had to reset, reload The Pawn and then restore my game. Since then it's never come back, so I don't think it is replicable from a save. The error message appeared while talking to Honest John and then consistently appeared at the end if every text message regardless of whether I changed location or just typed a command. Sorry to be so unhelpful

[dave18]

Ps. The magnetic scrolls adventures have been to perfect way to reset my brain from the bb conversion, however, tie hoe to rake using shirt, seriously!

[Stefan123]

I will try to talk to Honest John and see if I can reproduce the problem

Yeah, there are two quite far-fetched inputs in the pawn. The "tie hoe to rake using shirt" thing is one of them and the other is how to put the damn plant in the pot which is even weirder