本周 itch.io Devlog：AI 主题下多款 ZX Spectrum Next 游戏与工具发布

The main theme of the week is AI. Developers who use it now have their own official group, and it filled up straight away: fourteen stories in this issue came from there. The debates were heated, but as always this issue is about the games themselves, and there's plenty to talk about: Super Methane Brothers from the Amiga, the Pyjamarama Kickstarter and MT-32 music on the Next.

New games: Super Methane Brothers, Space Lancer, Orbs of the Overlord, Doody Calls, En busca de Mortadelo, ZX Caverns, Football Next, Derby Day Next, Ribbit Rush, Next On Tap, The Next Scuba Dive, Jumping Jim, Cave Dash, Scramble Next, Tank Zone, Nova Strike, Odd Job Eddie, Thrust, Ping Pong NEXT, Desert Strike, Adventures in Pascal, Uridium, Space Frenzy Redux, Chalice Quest, Save My Dog

Kickstarter: Pyjamarama Remastered

Updates: Next Moto Racer 3D, R-Type, SpecTalkZX 1.4.2, Rocquetball 0.8.8, The Scholar 2.0, Calm Commander 1.7b, Dracula: Free Demo Hints Book

Tools, hardware & emulators: golem-next 1.0, NextNano 1.0, ZX Next Remote, QLNextRemote, Deluxe Pixel, jnext 1.1.39, ZNC Compiler Suite 0.7a, Next Forge 1.1, vForth guide, ZX-Next-Unite 9.7.47, PixULA

In progress & experiments: Orbit, Mr Do's Castle, Formula Next Manager, Adventures in Videoland, Blazing Bombers, Starwake Trail, Flashback, Dune, Antescher 3D, Paul Chadwick's 3D, Clash-free graphics, Lone Charge, Polygon GP for the Next, A Christmas Carol

Community: ZX Spectrum Next AI Dev

Let's start with games you can download right now.

Miroslav Bursa has released Super Methane Brothers, a port of Apache Software's 1993 Amiga platformer. Brothers Puff and Blow trap their enemies in clouds of gas, suck them into their guns and hurl them at the walls, where they turn into fruit, sweets and bonuses. All 100 floors, 8 bonus rooms, 4 bosses and the ending are here, two can play together, and the original music streams from the SD card. The port follows the open-source version by Mark Page, who programmed the original, "floor by floor and object by object", with the music converted by Martin Bórik. You'll need a 2 MB Next and, for now, 50 Hz mode; 60 Hz support is promised for the next version.

Puff and Blow climb a hundred floors full of bugs, clowns, crabs and worse, armed with nothing but gas guns.

You really start to envy Amiga owners when you see the kind of games they had back in the day. Even though this is a late title - from 1993 - it's fantastic, and the port to the Next doesn't feel 8-bit at all. That's what I needed.

MegaVision Software has launched a Kickstarter for Pyjamarama Remastered, an official remaster of the second Wally Week game, made together with the rights holder Antstream. Wally has fallen asleep without winding his alarm clock, and his sleeping self searches a nightmare version of his house for the key - a journey that leads all the way to the Moon. There are two modes: Original Story, close to the 1984 original, and a Director's Cut with new rooms, puzzles and an extended Moon sequence. The graphics come in 256 colours or the classic 16, and the first update hints at a game within the game - a nod to one of the Spectrum's legendary titles, starring Wally. The campaign is mainly about the physical edition, up to 100 Deluxe Editions with a hand-made clay figurine; as of 10 October it had reached 91% of its $8,962 goal, and it runs until 5 November.

Wally Week is back - and this time, waking up is the adventure!

I've been waiting for this Kickstarter for a long time. We haven't even seen the previous game yet - by agreement it is due to appear when the KS3 campaign is fulfilled - but the authors have made it clear that the box of the physical edition will match the first one, so in time you'll be able to line up the whole Wally collection on your shelf.

Alan Norris has released Space Lancer, a horizontal shoot-'em-up in the spirit of R-Type: 8 stages with mid-bosses and bosses, nine kinds of enemy, a detachable pod you can launch forwards and catch on your tail, and a charged beam that pierces straight through enemies. It turned out tough, so there are three difficulty levels.

I decided to try an R-Type game as I saw somebody had asked if it was possible to create one with AI.

I liked this game. I only made it to the second level, but I'll do better with a controller. The game balance here is very good.

7 Towers Soft Games has released Orbs of the Overlord - ZX Next Demake, a demake of their roguelite that is heading to Steam. There are three hero classes, and halfway down, past "the rift", the dungeon changes and combat turns into a shoot-out in a three-lane corridor. The Next gives it a 256-colour floor lit only around the hero, smooth sprites and music on three AY chips.

Ninety-nine floors. Fifteen bosses. Every floor generated fresh, every death final, and a shop that spends what your corpse was carrying so the next hero starts a little less hopeless.

Last week Doody Calls - Turd World War from Adrian Cumming was "coming soon", and on 7 October the Next version arrived. A squad of four, armed with a Plunger-47, the Poo-zooka and a toilet brush, fights through nine sectors, defending a golden throne from waves of Doodies and their bosses. Two can play, there are medals, ranks and an online leaderboard over the Next's Wi-Fi, and it needs 2 MB.

It is silly, it is fast, and it is suitable for all the family.

I haven't made up my mind about this one yet. The gameplay reminds me of Cannon Fodder, but the game looks a little rough.

MJB Software has ported En busca de Mortadelo to the Next - the 1987 ZX Spectrum game by Alfonso Fernández that made his name as an artist. Mortadelo, one of the heroes of Francisco Ibáñez's famous Spanish comics, has been turned to stone by a spell, and his partner Filemón must find Professor Bacterio, whose potion alone can break it. The way leads through an isometric maze of more than 190 screens to a big boss at the end, and the music grows more urgent as you close in. The archive has three versions: Spanish, English (Phil searching for Mort) and Portuguese.

Muevete rápido, dispara a los enemigos, salta las trampas, empuja objetos para conseguir atravesar el laberinto de habitaciones y llegar a el final. (In English: "Move fast, shoot the enemies, jump the traps, push objects to get through the maze of rooms and reach the end.")

We already have an isometric maze in Head over Heels - please, someone persuade me to drop everything and compare the two. In the 90s, when I had a Spectrum clone, I absolutely loved isometric games; back then they looked simply incredible.

Martin Ruffe has finally finished ZX Caverns, a ZX81 game begun in the early 80s and abandoned for over forty years, and released it for both the ZX81 and the Next. An alien adventurer descends into the mines of Moria for mithril and jewels, facing dwarfs, spike pits, falling icicles and, somewhere in the dark, a Balrog. The Next version is on GetIt; according to the author, AI helped with the final third of the port.

The ZX81 game that never was completed ... until now.

I missed the ZX81 era, although the machine still stirs many people's imagination. The game looks like a visitor from another universe. At first I didn't even understand what to do, and I still haven't got past the first screen. But this is entirely the author's own work, an artefact from the depths of the 80s, and I'm incredibly happy that the game not only survived all those years but has also made it into the Next library.

Primož Škarget tried out Claude.ai, and after a day and a half and "countless instructions" he ended up with Football Next. The game is still in development, and the author's video has no sound.

This is the first game in Slovenian for the Next and, if I'm not mistaken, the first football game for it (the others are still in development). I really liked the in-game advertising; graphically it sits somewhere between the Spectrum and the Next, and instead of the usual top-down view it uses a side-on perspective with a slight overhead angle.

John Davies's week began with Derby Day Next, "the classic Spectrum betting game, reborn for the ZX Spectrum Next". One to four players bet on six races, from the Maiden Stakes to The Derby, and the richest wins. Weather, going, jockeys and pedigree all affect the result, the horse you back has to be urged on with the whip in rhythm, and between races there are bribes and visits from the taxman. There's even a silly mode with runners such as Sinclair's Swift and Commodore's Pride. It's a first release, and any feedback "positive or negative" is welcome.

Study the race card, read the going, back your fancy, then whip your horse home!

I like the music and the horse racing animation. Proofreading this story, I suddenly realised I hadn't read the game description carefully enough. The whip - that's the secret of winning!

Next came Ribbit Rush, Frogger rebuilt for the Next: five frogs cross a road and a river full of logs, diving turtles and crocodiles. The classic gains power-ups such as Time Freeze and Super Leap, a score multiplier and a moonlit bonus stage for catching fireflies, while eight tunes play on all three of the Next's sound chips. Version 1.2 has turned it into almost a new game: six worlds that change every three stages, from a lily river and harbour docks to a frozen fjord, a desert canyon and a neon city, each with its own traffic, predators and tune.

Everyone likes a game of Frogger!

I like the title screen animation. It's hard to form an opinion about a game in ten minutes, but I've seen a lot of Frogger games since the early 80s, and this one certainly doesn't look like a childish attempt to copy the classic.

The third was Next On Tap (AI-assisted), a Tapper-style arcade game: pour pints and slide them along four bars, from a saloon to a space cantina, before the customers reach the taps. Among the regulars is a bespectacled scholar called Claude who, once served, stops to write a review and blocks the bar. In version 1.1 the second level of every venue is mirrored and Claude himself pulls the pints; there are also three new tunes.

Gets very hectic after just a few levels, unless thats just me being rubbish at playing it!

Compared with John's other projects, this one looks rougher, and that stops me exploring it more deeply and appreciating how its ideas go beyond the original.

The fourth, The Next Scuba Dive, is a remake of Scuba Dive (Durell Software, 1983): collect pearls from snapping oysters, dodge the sharks and get back to the boat before your air runs out - by day and by moonlight. Version 1.1 adds three different maps and a sonar that points the way to the boat and the nearest pearl. Further updates have followed since.

I didn't find any major errors. The intro has some very interesting visual effects. Graphics aside, the game feels finished; in the 80s it would certainly have been warmly received.

The fifth, released back on 2 October, is Jumping Jim, a reimagining of the Spectrum classic Jumping Jack: the author calls it his first attempt at making a retro game with AI - unfinished, but fully playable.

For me this is a tough game. TJ has made a separate video about it.

And the sixth is Cave Dash, a puzzler inspired by Boulder Dash: dig, collect gems and dodge rockfalls in caves that are generated afresh every time.

Grab your pickaxe and head underground!

I've always loved Boulder Dash games, both the originals and the mods, so it's great that this one has made it to the Next. The graphics have been redrawn for the computer's extended capabilities, and I like them. The gameplay is fast - you have to keep up!

Alan Norris spent the week polishing Next Moto Racer 3D (12 "retro inspired" levels, released on 4 October): new bike sprites, brake lights, louder engine and tyre squeal, and sparks from the wheels when skidding.

I don't think I've run the final version yet, but if you're a fan of motorbike racing - and there are already two games of this kind for the Next - tell me which one turned out better.

Alan's Scramble Next got a major update over the weekend: six stages (mountains, city, cavern, fortress, tunnel and outer base) and the enemy base at the end, after which the game loops, a little tougher; a parallax mountain backdrop, music on the AY chips, a stage-clear bonus and a hi-score saved to the SD card. As a bonus, the author has also ported it to the 48K/128K Spectrum and to PICO-8.

It was created by Claude AI, as a test of what is possible.

Nika's note: the scrolling is the classic Next approach. The tilemap is a 40-column ring buffer: every 8 pixels one new column of tiles is written just beyond the right edge of the screen, and hardware scrolling does the rest, leaving the CPU free for the game.

And one more prototype from Alan: Tank Zone, a tank game in wireframe graphics.

Testing Vector Graphics on the Next, it works pretty well!

Nika's note: the six 8K pages of the Layer 2 buffer are mapped one after another into $0000-$BFFF, so pixel (x, y) simply lives at address y*256+x. For vector graphics, where a line can cross the whole screen, that's especially handy: no bank switching in the middle of a line. The game runs at 25 frames per second with double buffering.

Alan's latest is Nova Strike, a first-person shooter drawn entirely in glowing wireframe lines on Layer 2: six stages of dogfights, asteroid fields and tunnel runs to a core you must destroy, with every lap tougher than the last.

Nova Strike is a vector-style arcade shooter in the tradition of the 1980s coin-op classics.

A vector game? Why not, given that the technology allows for it? From a technical standpoint, I can't find any fault with the game. It's a fast-paced, exciting space shooter. The beauty of vector graphics is that AI can't ruin them, even if you tried - a line is a line, after all. Right now, you can just hold down the fire button and forget about it. It would be good to add an overheating mechanic where the gun either stops firing or fires with long pauses. The game is engaging, especially the tunnel sections. Gameplay video.

Two games have come out for the Fred80 fantasy console - the platformer Odd Job Eddie and Thrust, a port of the 1986 classic, both by "Hostel Hacker" - and each comes with a bonus Next version. Meanwhile John Williams, who created the console itself, has shown a first test of Fred80 running on the Next in two videos. And the Fred80 channel has shown another game for the console, Sushi Survivor, in which a waiter has to keep six tables served.

Fred80 is like a souped up more capable Pico-8.

I'll be interested to follow Fred80's progress. For now, more attention goes to the code and less to the graphics.

Wong TK asked Claude to convert the MSX version of Konami's Ping Pong, one of his favourite games from his Spectrum days, to the Next - and the next morning he loaded Ping Pong NEXT on his N-Go. No ROM is included: you need to put your own copy next to the game.

...a perfect MSX conversion!!!

Nika's note: it isn't an emulator but a "compatibility layer". Konami's code runs directly on the Next's Z80, and only the MSX hardware is replaced: the video chip is translated into the Next's screen and sprites, the sound goes almost unchanged to the AY, and the 11 BIOS routines the game needs were rewritten. That's why a 28 MHz Next copes with room to spare, while the game itself runs at the same speed as on the MSX.

Back on 2 October Sergio Morales shared Desert Strike for the Next in the "ZX Spectrum Next & Next clones" Telegram group - a port of the Sega Master System version - and, asked whether anyone had tried it, said he had tested it himself. We missed it at the time.

Ahí tenéis un regalo. Recién salido de Claude.ai. (In English: "Here's a present for you. Fresh out of Claude.ai.")

AI is increasingly being used beyond the Next too: for example, Dune II has been ported to the ZX Evolution from the 16-bit Sega. I'm sure the Next can handle 16-bit ports without any trouble.

Jörg Pleumann, author of the PASTA/80 compiler, has released Adventures in Pascal: ports of Barry C. Breen's 1980-1983 Pascal version of the classic Colossal Cave Adventure (350 points) to various Pascal compilers, made with the help of Claude Code. One of the ready-made builds is for the ZX Spectrum Next, and it has been played through on real hardware, saving and restoring included.

The goal was to stay as close to the original as possible for each port, applying changes only where the specific compiler needs them.

Where do I find that much time for games of this genre?...

Gian Battista Aicardi has released a free official hints book for the demo of Dracula - Illustrated Edition, which we covered on 28 September: each puzzle gets three increasingly direct hints and then the solution.

Read only as far as you need.

I appreciate this kind of attention to players from the author.

With Claude's help, Gary Pearson has quickly ported the C64 version of Uridium and Uridium Plus to the Next. The download link is in the comments under his post; next, he's thinking of bringing over the graphics from the Amiga version to lose the greyness.

Everything is identical to the c64 even down to the music that Claude decided the best way to get that tune onto the next was to write a Sid chip emulator

The musical approach (like SID) really intrigued me. I haven't played the original game, but I came across its name in one of those 1990s books describing Spectrum games. Despite some minor rough edges, the port feels complete. It's hard to play on the keyboard, though - grab a Kempston.

Steve B Jones has released Space Frenzy Redux 1.00. The first version stays true to the simple idea of the original, with the Next's extra power saved for part two; the author hasn't tested it on a real Next yet, as his is still on its way.

Hope you like it, it's just a fun little blaster.

The graphics have become noticeably better.

Now for things that aren't just for players.

Javier Aguilar Saavedra has released golem-next 1.0 (formerly MT32-NEXT): games and programs on the Next can now play Roland MT-32 and General MIDI music. The Next sends MIDI to an external Raspberry Pi running the Golem firmware, and the sound comes back and plays through the Next itself. The Pi firmware has already moved on to 1.0.1, which adds kernels for the Pi 2 and Pi 3 as well as the Pi 4. The package includes a NextZXOS driver, dot commands for playing MIDI files and the GSEQ library for game music in assembler and ZX Basic; the MIT licence allows all of it in commercial games too. Next on the list: MIDI out through the joystick port, to drive a real MT-32 without a Pi.

Tested on real hardware with a logic analyser: byte-exact output, 31250 baud, event timing within a fraction of a millisecond at 50 and 60 Hz.

Nika's note: for a hobby project this is a rare level of quality control. The author didn't stop at "it sounds right" but captured the output with an analyser - and the release notes honestly say that the Pi side has so far only been checked by ear. In practice, the Pi takes the place of the Pi Zero (the two can't be used together) and connects via a 40-pin ribbon cable with power lines 1, 2, 4 and 17 cut.

We missed an important release last week: on 4 October NextNano v1.0 came out, the first stable version of the ZX Spectrum Next for the inexpensive Sipeed Tang Nano 20K FPGA board. CPU speed now switches just as it does on a real Next, and both 50 and 60 Hz modes are supported. A USB keyboard, mouse and gamepad all work, and an on-screen keyboard on a gamepad button lets you do without a keyboard altogether; video and sound go out over HDMI. There's also a build for a real ZX Spectrum keyboard and a wired joystick. Networking isn't there yet, and the author has made a video showing how to flash the board.

All games, demos, BASIC programs and utilities tested so far work correctly

I trust the author and his test results, but as the owner of the complete collection of Next games I'd like to test everything with my own hands - especially as I've been interested in this core for a long time and have two boards, joysticks and other kit. Now I just need to find the time.

Julien Clauzel has released ZX Next Remote, an app that transfers files over Wi-Fi between Nexts: open the SD card of a neighbouring Next or clone, copy, rename, delete - with up to four machines at once. Every file is CRC-32 checked, and after a dropped connection the copy carries on where it stopped. On 9 October QLNextRemote followed - the same for the Sinclair QL, on the Next's QL core or in emulators. The author thanks everyone involved for their help during "this long and intense development phase".

Drive one Spectrum Next (or clone) directly from another - no PC required.

I wish I had Julien's capacity for work. He writes incredibly complex and useful projects.

Anthony Ball is developing Deluxe Pixel with Claude - his editor for pictures, sprites and tilemaps on retro computers in the spirit of Deluxe Paint, first written back in 2019. There's a demo, and a built-in MCP interface lets an AI assistant draw in the editor by itself: "Use Deluxe Pixel to draw a sprite for the Spectrum Next that looks like a...".

...it's accelerated development a hundred fold.

Judging by the documentation, a great deal has been done. I've run the editor, but haven't yet had a practical task to try all its features. I'm considering buying the boxed version when it appears. Although it covers many platforms, it supports Next graphics too, and that matters for the growth of our ecosystem.

Jorge Gonzalez Villalonga has released jnext 1.1.39, a ZX Spectrum Next emulator for developers that checks the hardware's behaviour against the VHDL sources of the core; its debugger can even run a program backwards.

Chris Taylor has updated his whole ZNC suite (0.7a): the ZNC compiler now allows names of up to 32 characters and has new optimisations for multiplication, division and modulo; the NextBASIC Inline Assembler (0.9a) allows labels of up to 63 characters, writes map files and is faster; and the ZED editor (0.6e) handles input more robustly.

Miroslav Bursa has released Next Forge 1.1, an assembler and editor that run on the Next itself. It now has a debugger with breakpoints set right in the source, unit tests that run on the machine and mouse editing, and the assembler has become complete enough to build Next Forge's own source and a real SjASMPlus project, the MXTracker music tracker.

Matteo Vitturi has started a guide for people who know NextBASIC and want to try his vForth: following the Next manual chapter by chapter, it shows the Forth equivalent of each BASIC command, or the closest thing to it, and says plainly where there is none. Those gaps (PLAY is the first) will become his list of new words and tutorials. He is writing it with Claude Code, and every example is tested in a Next emulator.

What follows are previews only: games that are still in the works.

Orbit (working title), the Elite-style space game from Croft Soft Software that we covered last week, now has landable planets, a galaxy, an economy, several ships and more combat.

Still a long way to go but the mechanics are working really well and the game is working on real hardware

Preston Thomas has shown Mr Do's Castle in two versions at once: arcade and Next Edition.

Still a bit buggy, but it's coming along.

I played it on consoles. The graphics here are noticeably better. It should fit perfectly into the "Next" format. Good luck finishing the game.

Roger Boesch has shown Lone Charge for the first time, an isometric commando shooter he has been working on, on and off, for quite a while. There are still glitches, and the sprites and tiles need more polish, but, he says, it's starting to get fun. Its potential shows in the fact that he was offered help with a physical release straight away in the comments.

I don't retro-code with AI.

Alan Norris has shown how he is converting his browser racer Polygon GP to the Next. The polygons have already been replaced with sprites - trees, buildings, signs and lamp posts along the track come in nine sizes - so the game will probably be renamed.

The game is still being actively worked on.

Gian Battista Aicardi, author of Dracula, is working on A Christmas Carol, an illustrated text adventure based on Dickens's Christmas story, for the Spectrum, the Next and the Amiga.

Some stories never grow old. And some old computers still have stories left to tell.

Göran Strand and Codex are polishing Formula Next Manager, an updated take on Formula One, one of his most-played games on the Spectrum: races you could once only watch now gain a pit-stop mini-game, radio orders to drivers and sponsor achievements. He wants to finish before KS3 arrives.

Still on schedule but the clock is ticking

It's always good to see developers polishing their projects.

Dan Gibson, author of NextDAAD, has shown a preview of Adventures in Videoland (aka Rollercoaster), the first laserdisc game (1982, Apple II): you have 150 turns to build a radio jammer and stop a bomb from wrecking the roller coaster. On the Next it runs on NextDAAD, and instead of a laserdisc, stills and clips from the 1977 film Rollercoaster stream from the SD card.

An unusual project - I want to see how it all turns out.

Jamie Mallender has given a first look at Blazing Bombers; you'll be able to try it on the Technoshed stand at CRASH! Live.

Here's a little sneak preview of a game we're cooking up over at Technoshed Software Ltd

Even rock stars aren't strangers to video games. It's great that Jamie pays the Next so much attention - not just playing, but writing original music for it too.

Guy Black has shown a one-minute clip of Starwake Trail, a game he's making for the Next based on the C64's Trailblazer.

Miroslav Bursa continues his series of articles (in Czech) on porting Flashback to the Next: the second part is about turning the game's ready-made pictures into the Next's layers, sprites and tilemap.

A ukázalo se, že nejtěžší není převod pixelů, ale pořadí. (In English: "And it turned out that the hardest part is not converting the pixels, but the order.")

Nika's note: the heart of the problem is that the original draws everything into a single picture, so whatever is drawn last ends up in front, while the Next combines its layers by itself and doesn't care about drawing order. To translate one rule into the other, the author needed just one bit - and that's what the article is about.

And a few bold AI experiments. Perhaps just tech demos - or perhaps the foundation for incredible Next games to come.

Mike Cadwallader is testing what the Next can do with PC games and, with the help of AI, has taken on his beloved Dune by Cryo (1992): his videos show the Atreides palace, characters and speech from the CD version, and digital music streamed from the SD card. Eleven days of work produced a 25-minute video. On 11 October he also showed the intro of Dune II: while the mechanics of the first game are being worked on, he fancied playing with the second one's intro.

But it's a very early experiment.

My beloved Dune. Even if these are just experiments, I'm really glad to see that the Next handles the game without any issues. That said, it did feel a bit slow to me. Maybe it was like that in the original too - I wouldn't know, since I played it on the Sega.

Richard Dodds, author of Get Out, has long wanted to walk around a 3D world on the Next, and with Claude he's building one on the Antescher map; early shots show coloured levels, with new ones promised after his holiday.

Loving the journey.

I like the colourful cubes. Looking forward to the continuation.

Chris Chuter asked AI to make a homage to Atari's Adventure in NextBASIC without stepping in himself: on day one, two prompts produced a working UDG game; on day two came a version with tilemaps, sprites and Layer 2 backgrounds; and on day three everything got stuck on the sound and the AI began to "hallucinate". Both games can now be downloaded: Chalice Quest and Save My Dog, technically the same but with different graphics.

I wondered how a zero hands on approach would work, could a longer AI session retain its integrity.....

Your prompts are amazing :) I've completed the graphical version on all three difficulty levels. The gameplay is just right for me - short and not too hard. As Chris doesn't want to publish AI-made games on his own account, he has asked me to host them on mine. For now they are on a temporary page; once I've finished with the news, I'll ask Nika to write a proper page for them.

Paul Chadwick, a programmer with forty years' experience, is building a 3D environment on the Next with AI as his assistant: a large wireframe map already runs at around 20 frames per second, and now he's moving on to filled polygons and waiting for KS3 to see what the Pi accelerator can add. Among the lessons he shared: Codex is poor at graphics and music but surprisingly good at map design - it produced a usable map creator in two iterations.

No where near a full game.

Experiments like this have long been waiting for their moment. Without AI it most likely wouldn't have happened so soon.

Larc Gittesom has used Codex to repaint the graphics of an old game in Next colours - "just messing around", with no release planned. Meanwhile Dean Woodyatt, who is already removing attribute clash from Spectrum games, is asking for games that would benefit and could be shared: many of those he has done so far are marked distribution denied on World of Spectrum.

It would be great if this group could develop tools that at least eliminate attribute clash in Spectrum games; I think that's entirely feasible. But replacing sprites with more colourful ones is interesting too.

And finally, news about the community itself.

ZX Spectrum Next now has an official SpecNext Facebook group for developers who use AI: ZX Spectrum Next AI Dev, which you can join by request. Administrator Adrian Sinclair has explained how the groups now fit together: finished or nearly finished work belongs in the main group, while working questions go to the specialist groups, where you'll get faster answers. The admins ask that when you share your work you're honest about what AI was used for and which model; as Adrian puts it, "AI is like marmite - love it or hate it, but its here to stay".

Treat the main group like a hotel lobby or "reception" if you will. Its a generic place for updates, announcements and wot not.

I didn't expect so many people to start sharing their work, or so much interesting activity behind the scenes. In this group there's no pressure or judgement - just people creating together. I want to wish everyone the greatest creative success. You have a powerful tool at your disposal; the main thing is to strive for perfection in your games - since AI saves you time - so that I can add them to the database with pride.

Briefly, the updates:

• ZX Next Remote 1.5.5, QLNextRemote 1.3.0 and ZX-Next-Unite 9.7.47 (Julien Clauzel): fresh versions only days after the release.
• PixULA 0.1.0-alpha.17 (D0k): a new preview of the Spectrum graphics tool.
• MAME (Xalior, a pull request to the holub/mame fork): emulation of the Next's ESP8266 Wi-Fi module with its AT firmware.
• TJ Live: TJ Ferreira's stream "AI & Speccy Next" on 9 October - AI, NextBench and games.
• Henhouse Harry (Alan Norris): a browser clone of Chuckie Egg that Claude made from his suggestions; no Next version yet.
• 3D: John Williams, creator of Fred80, has tried a 3D scene on the Next and jokes that he still has to learn prompting from the pros.
• R-Type (Andrew Laird): the AI port of the Sega Master System version that we covered last week can be played at CRASH! Live - "it might even be on an arcade cabinet or two".
• SpecTalkZX 1.4.2 "Triton" (M. Ignacio Monge García): the IRC client once again runs straight from the web on the Spectranext cartridge (cartridge firmware 1.0 or later is needed).
• Rocquetball 0.8.8 (Arciel Rekman (RCL)): lots of changes, including a billiards mode for single players.
• The Scholar 2.0 (PigDogBay): right-click a tile to send it to the first free slot, three new subjects (Law, Gastronomy and PPE) and typo fixes.
• 'erbert (Colin Fowle): the author is trying a Boriel BASIC rewrite and asks readers whether to make a faithful conversion or a new game.
• Calm Commander 1.7 and 1.7b (Miroslav Bursa): it now starts as the .cc dot command and returns you to BASIC exactly where you left off; it also runs on a 1 MB Next.
• Technoshed: preorders are open for Special Editions of Xenobrigade Extinction with a soundtrack CD, launching at CRASH! Live; Dougie Do and Websters are back in stock (royalties go to the Stroke Association).

There was so much news this week that I may have missed something - if so, please tell me in the comments below. And on 16-17 October CRASH! Live takes place in Coventry: if you're going, tell us what you managed to play.

By the way, the game James Sinclair and the Temple of the Sun God will be showcased at this event. Pre-orders for the UK version of the game will open there. In the meantime, here’s a teaser: a couple of screenshots from the 128K version that Mario is actively working on. There will be two versions—a classic one and one with ULAplus support.

Love it or hate it, this issue was written by an AI - Nika Claude, who sorted the news, checked the facts and links, and wrote the text. I did the rest.

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