The Dandanator Mini is a homebrew peripheral for developing and releasing cartridge games on the ZX Spectrum. This would speed up loading quite a lot, compared to tapes.
Retroworks has an official compilation of their games available for download in the Dandanator Mini format.
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But would it even be legal to use it under the current rule set? If the problem is the length of loading times, most ZXS encodes either cut out the load time or allow someone to skip through it (via YouTube's scrubbing or timed comments) anyway.
I feel like someone using a Dandanator would have an unfair advantage timing wise compared to someone using emulated versions of "authentic" hardware, and because of that it shouldn't be allowed here.
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
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On the other side of legality, I've removed the project page links from the OP since it offers downloads of several unofficial conversions of commercial ZXS releases. I'll admit this is a strange edge case, and my research didn't turn up a whole lot of relevant information, but I'd much rather err on the side of caution here.
As for the actual usage of it for TASing, my immediate reaction is to classify it under the same rules we use for language choice and emulation improvements: Using it is fine to decrease loading times, but deceased loading times won't count as improvements by themselves. Note that this is personal opinion only and not an official statement or ruling from the site as of yet.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family.
Now infrequently posting on BlueskywarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
As for the actual usage of it for TASing, my immediate reaction is to classify it under the same rules we use for language choice and emulation improvements: Using it is fine to decrease loading times, but deceased loading times won't count as improvements by themselves. Note that this is personal opinion only and not an official statement or ruling from the site as of yet.
Regarding the use of this device/system for creating cartridge format ROMs/images of games in order to shorten loading times: I offer this discussion/submission regarding doing a similar thing for Commodore 64 games.
In that case, it was decided to not be allowed. While I was originally the one suggesting the faster cartridge conversion approach, the discussion(s) helped to shift my own perspective/understanding regarding what should be acceptable for the site.
Because of this prior discussion, I am of the (current) opinion that this method should also be disallowed for ZXS. If staff/community, however, feels that it should be acceptable; then I think we need to revisit the possibility of C64 cartridge conversion being acceptable as well.
Even though my current opinion is to disallow, I can stand by a decision either direction so long as it’s consistent between the two systems (and possibly others that end up with a similar situation in the future).
The issue with the Dandanator Mini is that it's a homebrew peripheral, and as such can be made to do pretty much anything. If it's just about loading times, we have SD card readers that just dump a snapshot of the game straight into memory - why bother with the cartridge emulation?
If converting from tape to cartridge via a homebrew peripheral is allowed, can I just edit a tape file to remove the loading screen? There's less changes to code in doing that, and plenty of people did that back in the day.
Personally I'd rather stick to "official" releases hardware-wise, and as close as we can get to that software-wise as well. As much as it's annoying seeing every microcomputer encode flooded with comments about the loading, I'd rather that than what's effectively starting with a savestate.
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personally i’d rather stick to the original licensed hardware rather than use a third-party peripheral that wasn’t originally included with the system.
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DigitalDuck wrote:
The issue with the Dandanator Mini is that it's a homebrew peripheral, and as such can be made to do pretty much anything. If it's just about loading times, we have SD card readers that just dump a snapshot of the game straight into memory - why bother with the cartridge emulation?
If converting from tape to cartridge via a homebrew peripheral is allowed, can I just edit a tape file to remove the loading screen? There's less changes to code in doing that, and plenty of people did that back in the day.
Personally I'd rather stick to "official" releases hardware-wise, and as close as we can get to that software-wise as well. As much as it's annoying seeing every microcomputer encode flooded with comments about the loading, I'd rather that than what's effectively starting with a savestate.
While I see the value in allowing 3rd party tools to convert games into a different format to avoid loading, there's indeed a question of how legitimate and authentic the result is, and how do we restrict it to something that makes sense to the community as a whole. Interestingly, if a big part of the community prefers the current strict standard of no unofficial converters, that's a valid stance to take and we can't ignore it. And personally I can't come up with arguments that would be able to push the consensus towards allowing unofficial converters under some clever conditions that make sense to everybody involved...
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
