We got mail from Brazil, writing that while cleaning out his stuff, he found a copy of Ürtojások. He scanned it and we've uploaded it, another "WANTED!" note can be removed.
We have two more covers added today, they are courtesy of Lacus. Not only the covers, but the programs themselves are new: two educational titles: J Vagy Ly and Kultúrtörténeti Kronológia (XVI. század). The former teaches grammar, the latter teaches history. Check them out (or at least the cover art).
Thanks to both guys for making our collection richer. Keep on looking for retro stuff!
I told you we stored tons and tons of unreleased endings! We must spit'em out in a big hurry, or the folder that contains all of them will explode! And this time, we managed to show you some of the very longer bigger wanted ones!
Do you remember the italian treasure, that mountain made of tapes tapes and tapes again we got in May? Well, dumping old files like'em hasn't been the easiest mission you can argue, but it worked most of the time, luckily. Some scans of cassette covers and manuals have been taken too, and it's now time to spread around some of those gems.
Of the whole cake, this part represents the slice of commercially re-released games. These cassettes were sold in computer stores just beside their original ones. Although few of the programs were games and tools made from scratch, for the largest percentage they're raw hacks unregarding the copyrights, often with no elements changed from the source. At that time, the italian law didn't consider the home computers software production in the same ways as other intellectual property assets, and somebody had thought to make money from this void of rights, either founding short living publishing houses just to copy and release, or releasing compilations of hacked games thru newsstands. Somebody was so much out of law and common sense, to hack'n'release previously hacked material, in order to release it under no publishing rights. Some others changed their view, and tried to pay copyrights to the original software house, purchasing the rights to do that.
Some words about Super 16. Super 16 is a newsstand collection, containing Winter Sports, Yie Ar Kung-Fu (Foglia), Autosprint, Boat Race and Baseball. It has been published as a supplement of the long lasting periodic newsstand publication "C16/MSX" by Editoriale Foglia, with a little paper as software manual plus bonus articles as usual. This must be intended as a first attept for a forthcoming serious cataloging of all the newsstands'releases as "Byte Games", "C16/MSX", "Linguaggio Macchina C16/VIC20", "Computer Set", "Go Games" just to name the notables ones, with their papers and covers. And, yes: the treasure contains an igniting core of those cassettes :)
On another note, we didn't make a news item for a recently released picture. Room 309 was drawn by Leon (C64), but Murphy created a Plus/4 version of it as well. Rumor has it that Murphy is now the coder for the upcoming game "4 Floors" (read about it on Facebook), and he will make a Plus/4 version as well.
The fantastic spreadsheet created by SVS of FIRE crew jumps to a higher level, and it goes overlays! SVS-calc 2.0 makes deep use of the Austrospeed's overlaying technology. Now, a frequent disk access ensures perfect embedding of the single code's operations into the main compiled code, allowing even bigger operations to be performed and saving more memory for user's data. This is the most notable one in a series of both evident and little improvements. The main new features have been listed by the author in a text which comes together with the new manual, colorful and clear to read. Let's see them:
a) PRINTING (to printer or to file -- CBM or ASCII) b) SORT (horizontal or vertical -- ascending or descending) c) CTRL-B for blanking managing d) Blanking is animated by a raster color bar increasing of size. Every 5 completed frames, it becomes transparent to let user view process status. e) RENAME and DELETE options. They are integrated with DIRECTORY. f) GRAPHS can be embedded into current grid. g) AREA SELECTION by cursor movements + SHIFT. Selected area is visualized reversed and can be freely resized. When an area exists it is prompted every time an input is requested (and inside INPUT box by [STOP]). h) NAMES to refer a string with any value (cell coordinates, cells zone, text, formula, another NAME). They can be used inside formulas (ex.: name TOTAL="A1:C20"; formula can use it =sum(TOTAL) ) i) LOAD can be launched just viewing DIRECTORY. j) Flexible CONFIGURATOR (instead of Standard or Reduced versions) on system boot. User can set how many rows and other dimensions in order to leave free RAM as he needs. k) Automatic MEMORY WARNING window message, to warn user when free RAM becomes too little. l) INFO window to show all parameters of current configuration and sheet. m) SCREENSAVER 2 modes + test, with settable delay. n) AUTOSIZING of column width on the basis of contents of all its cells (by Menu or by CTRL-L) o) Separate disk units setting for 1) System; 2) User files; 3) Print outputs. p) New funtions VAL(), DAYS(), WDAY(), LOOKUP(), SECONDS() q) Option to view free memory as Kb or as bytes. r) CLEAR can erase the whole sheet or only a zone. s) SEARCH feature can optionally limit the searching inside the Selected Area if existing. t) [F3] resets screen font after a crash and enables Basic editor :-? u) FONTS selectable and switchable from a working spreasheet (4 different original new fonts) v) Control codes (color, reverse, blinking) can be inserted inside the text of a cell. z) Selectable world-area date format (DDMMYY / MMDDYY) - (Week' 1st day)
Absolutely complete and professional, SVS-calc 2.0 is a little jewel to show big code on slow machines. Just to cite the manual:"...this program needs 1/16000 the memory of Microsoft Excel, and runs on a system 1500 times slower, whereas an F16 fighter aircraft flies 'only' 800 times faster than a walking man". At the same time, SVS-calc_2_0 is not (only) that pretty cool example of fine code's optimization on an ancient computer: it's a tool which must seriously have to be used for actual job's purposes and day-by-day usages, thought to be comfortably used on emulators and set to their chance of speeding-up the whole system.
No words can be enough to deeply describe a so elaborate tool, you have to download it and try by yourself. And who knows, if you'll take advantage from it quite a long time, you'll end to discover the easter egg that lies somewhere into it ;)
