Assembly Language for Arcade Games and Other Fast Spectrum Programs

ZX Computing

Patrick Cain

Two Books from McGraw Hill, one for each of the Sinclair machines. The ZX81/TS1000 Home Computer Book by David C. Foyt is a mixture of computing made easy and a reference manual. As with so many of these publications its really a case of finding the particular author or style of presentation which appeals to you. At £9.95 its not cheap but worth looking at as it may be just what suits you. 307 pages. Spectrum Assembly Language Programming for Arcade Games by Stuart Nicholls at £17.95 is 160 pages of advanced programming techniques. Speed is essential for most games and many simulations and this book concentrates on getting the most out of the machine. It is intended that it will be used in conjunction with an assembler and that the reader already has some familiarity with assembly language programming. The idea, and one I applaud in theory, is that there are plenty of books which teach Machine code mechanics but few indeed that demonstrate techniques of programming with it. The book contains several subroutines which can be used in the readers own games and include Colour printing, Plot, Draw, Circle, Counting, Random Nos. Keyboard, Movement, Sounds, Attr. Point and Screen$, The printer, Convertng programs. Plus a breakdown of routines and the usual plethora of tables. A tape of the programs is available and, surprise surprise, all the programs are compatible with the McGraw Hill "ZX Spectrum Machine Code Assembler". Just the ticket for the programmer who has progressed beyond BASIC but has not yet reached the stage where he/she automatically thinks in HEX when programming.