Sources of ZX-Spectrum crack releases intros coded by alx^brainwave.
This sources is a Zilog Z80 Assembler in Alasm format. You should import and compile this source in Alasm ZX-Spectrum assembler (I have used v5.08) to compile. Or convert this source manually for SjASMPlus which is cross-platform.
This intro use some software cheating to get non-standard ZX-Spectrum colour mode, Multicolour with some border effects synchronized for Pentagon-128K 2+, a russian ZX-Spectrum clone. Actually when your code refresh colour attributes every line (at Pentagon it takes 224 CPU tact) by pushing the data using stack you can get the multicolor effects like this one. You can also set a colour of the border when the ray finished screen line output.
Here is a main templated sources and a version for Orbix. Probably other changes lost.
An oldschool and Commodore-64 style cracktro, but drawing the graphics on the screen border at ZX-Spectrum is not also so easy. Both scenes spend a lot of people-hours (years?) counting their CPU tacts and optimize their routines. If you don't know where the demo-scene and into making comes from, please find the info first.
In the end of 90s I was inspired to made not also a crack intro, just would love to fix firm bugs, performance, add TR-DOS save/load, exam some history of game making and all these stuff. In those days cracking games on ZX-Spectrum mostly went to the past, but still here was some revers-research. And yes, Russian users had their specific disk systems, so you need to adapt them from time to time. If you look on ZX-Spectrum archive you'll find a various TR-DOS versions of the same game from different crack teams. The reason is only in making this better than another guys, as the scene tradition.
Looking in the game code in debugger allows you to view a lot of details, some codestyle of the authors, find hidden data, easter-eggs and brings you many happy hours. Sometimes you'll get the hidden messages inside the code tells you why this game is so unfinished (because Martech freeze the development of 'War 1st' game, for example). And the loaders of these games is a very special huge topic.
Another side of this process is signing your work, a cracktro. Here is a place where every team had their unique technique and algorithms to show that your computer can much more than you imagine before. Border and sync effects, multicolours, maths, vector graphics all at your 8-bit computer!
- Alx/Brainwave: crack intro code, font and logo.
- Mmcm/Sage or Megus/Brainwave: crack intro music (various versions of this crack intro contains different music).