Hooray! We have finally finished what we were being worked on during previous months: the brand new emulator for ZX Spectrum and Spectrum-compatible computers ready for playing games from our website. We’d like to warn you beforehand, that we used only 40% of the previous emulator’s code, while the left 60% are new, not practically tested yet technical decisions, which means that you may still have experience some bugs during its work.
So, what are the main differences between the new emulator and the previous one? The main difference is that the new emulator was written completely with the use of Javascript, and this means that you won’t need any additional plugins. The new emulator can be also launched via any web browser and on any device (including tablets and smartphones).
Thanks to Javascript, we have a better sound quality (right now there is 48 kHz sampling frequency compared to 11 kHz in the old version). However, for now the sound quality is monophonic, but it won’t last long.
Dear friends, we were in a hurry to update the emulator and that is why some options are not finished or not implemented yet (that were in the old emulator), but they will be added in the nearest future. We will soon add such features:
- Stereo sound;
- Support of the file format TZX;
- Full support of all versions of the file format Z80;
- Support of Kemston-mouse;
- Save of the game progress on the memory slot (icons S/L);
- Evasion of all browsers’ “habit” to pause the scripts in non-active tabs.
We also have plans to implement completely new features that were not present in the old emulator:
- Support of color palette selection (agree, that some games are better played in the white-and-black mode);
- New graphic modes including noflic, flash-color, maybe we will add gigascreen and 256color, since there are dozens of games supporting these modes;
- Support of Covox 1/2/4;
- Precise emulation of “Pentagon” – right now we have already added the “classic” 48к, “Leningrad”, 128к and ZS Scorpion 256;
- The option allowing to save the gaming progress at any time to the special “zx-cloud” storage;
- Virtual keyboard for playing ZX Spectrum games on smartphones and tablets… and many other options.
We have plenty of ideas concerning the emulator and the website in general. And we also like to know your feedback and thoughts related to the emulator and site’s work – post your comments and share your ideas, we will try to implement them as well.
Yes, and also feel free to report about any bugs that you have noticed during emulator’s work. Thank you for your time beforehand.
Here is the small list of games and programs that are quite demanding when it comes to hardware and that is why these items are great for testing the new emulator:
- Game Savage 3 – complicated one-bit music;
- Game Fire Fly – one-bit music;
- Demo Illusion – the productivity test;
- Demo Satisfaction – test the level of smoothness of graphics, multi-color options, sampled music;
- Demo Vibrations – test the level of smoothness of graphics, multi-color, AY-music.
We think that you need to share this great news with your friends!
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