Recent Posts

A Marble Run Kit for Blender

by David Thomas on

I’ve made a kit of parts in Blender for building marble runs.

Marble Run Kit overhead view

There are over two hundred types of track to try out, including slides, ramps, tunnels, spirals, splits and bends. I’ve also built and included variously coloured terrazzo, granite, metallic and transparent materials for a classy looking track.

It’s designed around a basic block size of 4x4x2cm allowing a 2.5cm marble size.

A little demo scene is included.

It’s free - Enjoy! Get it from https://dpt.itch.io/marble-kit

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Dr. Dave's Patented Screen Cleaning Method*

by David Thomas on

Want to clean a mucky computer or TV screen? Read on.

You will need:

Method:

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Chase H.Q. disassembly project

by David Thomas on

It’s been ten years since I started reverse engineering The Great Escape. I didn’t really intend to start another disassembly project but after trying out SkoolKit’s new tape loading and Z80 simulation magic I found myself with a new one on my hands. This time I’m pulling apart the Spectrum version of Chase H.Q.!

Screenshot of Chase H.Q. being disassembled.

Here’s the current state of the disassembly: https://dpt.github.io/ChaseHQ/ and the related thread on Spectrum Computing: https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?p=117562#p117562

See you in ten years!

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New logo renders

by David Thomas on

I’ve made a few new logo renders:

If you’re bothered, there are downloads over on the logos page.

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PrivateEye 3.20 has StrongHelp

by David Thomas on

PrivateEye 3.20 is now available. PrivateEye is a viewer for Sprites, DrawFiles, JPEGs, ArtWorks, GIFs and PNGs. It also has editing features including bitmap effects and rotation. It runs on RISC OS.

Here’s a screenshot of it running in RISC OS 4 via RPCEmu:

Screenshot of PrivateEye showing a recreation of the Ocean Software logo.

Version 3.20 has had quite a few changes. The main thrust of the work has been to reduce the reliance on the Tinct module, that’s used to render alpha channel sprites, and to replace the PDF format user guide with a StrongHelp one. I’ll break the changes down into sections:

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