The meeting featured Steven Reid, whose blog, https://www.reids4fun.com/, features his programs for the ZX81 and Timex Sinclair 1000.
Steven’s introduction to programming began in Europe in the early 1980s, when his father was stationed there with the military. His first personal computer was a ZX81, purchased around 1983 for about $150. Among Steven’s earliest projects was a game called Water Bug, and its sequel, Water Bug 2. Water Bug was his first multi-level game, featuring ten mini-games that challenged players to navigate obstacles, chase objects, and interact with switches to progress through levels.
His first serious foray into machine language involved writing a game inspired by Ultima, which he called Gem Quest. This tile-based, rogue-like game pushed the ZX81 hardware to its limits, requiring advanced techniques such as compression algorithms, real-time map loading, and character movement logic.
Ryan Gray and Gustavo Pane discussed their work on the Ts-Pico storage system, which leverages a Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller to provide SD card-based storage.