A long time has passed since I last subscribed or contributed to EUG and I never thought anyone would be so interested in my little coding Shipwrecked projects as I see our editor is!

From reading the reviews of both on the 8 Bit Software web site, I noticed that the comment was made that they run very fast on BBCs. This is something I had also noticed at the time - and I made a fix for it which I would like to note for EUG readers.

There is a timing regulation procedure within the program but as I only had an Elk at the time, it never got tested. Hence it never actually worked properly. It can be fixed for BBCs by making the following change before the code of SHIP3 is executed:

      ?&5B7F=10

So a new program with timing fix would be:

      10MODE2:VDU23;8202;0;0;0;
      20*LOAD SHIP3
      30?&5B7F=10
      40CALL&1FCC

Another convenient place to put it is in the cheat loader and this can be done by adding the line:

      65?&5B7F=10

The same 'bug' is also present in Jupiter III as well, but it is not so noticeable as the scrolling screen slows it down. The fix for this is:

      ?&5B7D=10

This makes the BBC speed more or less match the Elk's. You might think it's a bit slow, so if so you can make the 10 smaller (so if you type ?&5B7D=9, it's a bit faster!).

Still on the theme, flex your arcade fingers in anticipation of Shipwrecked III which, although slightly held up at the moment, is almost finished. It combines the best bits out of each of the earlier two games, fixes a few of their bugs and goes back to flick-screen as I agree that the scrolling didn't work that well.

The only problem I have at the moment is that the game design is stuck on a friend's PC 500 miles away with no floppy drive or modem! I should eventually get it sorted out in the autumn though. Of course, then I'll have the whole game on my computer at university but no BBC there to test it on.

All this probably means that EUG won't see it until early December!

Dominic Ford

This fix is certainly very useful on the first Shipwrecked arcade adventure as jumping is made much more manageable. With equivalent lines to those mentioned, the game plays identically on both the Electron, which it was designed upon, and the BBC machines, which it now becomes fully compatible with. On the second Shipwrecked (Jupiter III), the fix is as useful, but the sheer difficulty of the game means that you're unlikely to live long enough to appreciate its benefits.

Both previous Shipwreckeds on the EUG master disks have now had this upgrade tagged on. If you are one of the few people who haven't seen these machine code graphical masterpieces, both were included on EUG #40 in a special (space-filling) feature and can be ordered, with this upgrade already featured, from EUG HQ.

Dave E, EUG #53

Dominic Ford