Great question! When I was backporting the Trumbles mission from the C64 I had a look at exactly this, but unfortunately I didn't get that far. It would be very cool, though.I don’t knowing this has already been asked before, Mark, but would it be possible to add the Spectrum missions into BBC Elite?
Here's what I found.
Technically speaking it would be easy enough to add extra missions to BBC Elite, as they're just implemented by a routine that looks for certain conditions, which then triggers the individual missions, storing their progress in a set of flags. The problem with adding the Spectrum missions is that there doesn't appear to be a disassembly of Spectrum Elite out there, so we'd either have to hunt down the relevant code in Z80 Elite and translate it into 6502, or we'd have to write brand new code to implement the missions. The first approach is feasible but is a pretty hefty job, and the second approach would be hard to do accurately, as it's difficult to know all the mission criteria just by playing the game.
At this point I realised that I know nothing about Z80 code and don't even know how the Spectrum missions work, so I parked the idea. But if anyone ever disassembles Spectrum Elite or documents the missions in 100% detail, then a backport is definitely feasible.
I left it on my to-do list anyway, though it's pretty low down!
Mark
Statistics: Posted by MarkMoxon — Tue May 14, 2024 9:52 pm