Firstly, apologies that not much has happened recently. I’ve been under the weather for the last few days, so only made minimal progress. However, feeling a bit better, so Tonight I will try streaming Zork!
I am planning to go live at 7PM UK time tonight for around an hour (If you’re not in the UK, see this countdown timer). If you missed it, I’m sorry – but I hope to have a transcript up soon, and will probably do it again shortly.
There will be a tweet beforehand with links to connect to, so if you don’t follow @ZXSpectROM on Twitter, click here to view
Essentially, there will be two aspects to the streaming.
- Primarily, there will be a RC2014, running CP/M, with Zork on it. This machine will have the ESP8266 Wifi bridge, and everything that is sent to the screen will also be sent to http://tzapu.github.io/WebSocketSerialMonitor/ via web sockets. This machine will also be using one of the old parallel 80’s keyboards I investigated in the last Retro Challenge (It’s important to point this out so you’ll cut me some slack with all the inevitable typos that I know I’ll make with this keyboard layout). This will be the live stream of Zork, which is essentially the goal of this Retro Challenge.
- A live stream on YouTube will also take place. Well, live-ish. Apparently there’s a 10 second delay, so that might be a bit odd. However, the main reason for this is to provide a feedback loop for those watching along at home via the YouTube Chat function. I’ll have a laptop set up next to the RC2014 so I can see any comments as they come in. So, if I forgot to pick up an object in a room, or you think I should go north instead of east, you can let me know. It will be streaming video from a webcam too, but don’t expect that to be too exciting. (Seriously, you’ll be watching a 40 year old ASCII based text adventure game being played by somebody that isn’t good at text adventure games, and the webcam footage will be LESS exciting!)
So, that’s the important stuff that you need to know to follow along tonight.
In other news, as I was happy enough with how the prototype PCB seems to be working, I’ve laid out a real board now. The PCBs are currently being manufactured in China, although it isn’t looking likely that I’ll get them back before the end of this particular Retro Challenge. But if I do, then expect an update here! Here’s a sneaky peek at what they should look like though;
