NextDAAD

Create your own text adventures for the ZX Spectrum Next.

NextDAAD runs DAAD text adventures on the ZX Spectrum Next. Written in Z80 assembly using the Next's extended instruction set.

In addition to the standard DAAD features it adds Layer 2 location pictures up to 320x256 in 8-bit colour, full-screen video cutscenes with sound, AY music and sampled sound effects across the Turbo Sound Next's three chips and DACs, 40 and 80-column runtime switchable tilemap based text display with switchable fonts and paper/ink colours from the full ZX Next palette, mouse input, and games that can span several databases with runtime switching. 

Features

• Location graphics - 256x192 and 320x256 pictures in Layer 2's 8-bit colour modes, each with its own palette, optionally ZX0-compressed, drawn through a bank-allocated cache and a double-buffered surface. Layer 2 graphics can be drawn in front of or behind the text display
• 80x32 or 40x32 text - a tilemap based text driver with per-character colour from the full ZX Next palette, with optional paper/ink transparency
• Title screens - a picture shown at boot over the theme music, needing no changes to your game
• Video cutscenes - NXV, NextDAAD's own delta-video format, played up to full screen with synchronised digitised audio, streamed from the card when a clip is too big to hold in RAM
• AY music - interrupt-driven Arkos playback over the Turbo Sound Next's three PSGs, resident or streamed from the card, with boot autoplay and the classic BEEP tone
• Sound effects and samples - Arkos AY effects, plus 8-bit WAV samples of any length via card streaming, on two concurrent DAC channels that auto-allocate with stealing or pin outright, looping ones resuming after a video
• Animation - The Spectrum Next's sprite layer can be used to add animated aspects to location graphics, and layer 2 graphics can have palette cycling
• Custom fonts and pointers - drop in a FONT.CHR or a POINTER.SPR and the interpreter picks them up at boot, and a game can switch between up to ten of each while it runs
• Custom parser cursor - modify the parser cursor colours, glyph and blink speed
• Mouse input - Kempston mouse with a hardware sprite pointer
• 64KB databases - DAAD game databases up to 64KB in size
• Multi-part games - switch between databases at runtime with flags and objects intact, with per-part assets and saves that load from any part
• Loader intro - the authoring kit includes an optional loader intro that can feature a layer 2 slideshow with wipes, scrolling text credits, AY music, stereo digitised music, or NextDAW music
• DAAD engine - all 128 condacts, the eight-window system, the vocabulary parser with multi-command sentences, the object model, SAVE/LOAD and RAMSAVE to the card, and the DDB text reader
• The Next's memory - RAM detection and an 8K bank allocator across the extended memory map
• EXTERN support and API - load and run external machine code binaries up to 16KB in size, either once or on an interrupt, passing flags, object table, message text etc
• Skills for AI assistants to aid in writing Z80 externs, and DAAD games

The authoring kit is a DAAD-Ready-style workflow. Drop in a .DSF, add PNG artwork, Arkos music and MP4 cutscenes if you want them, and double-click BUILD.BAT: it compiles the database, converts every asset, and leaves a RELEASE\ folder to copy straight onto an SD card. A DSF source file is included with it showing examples of NextDAAD multimedia condact usage.

Requirements

• A ZX Spectrum Next (or an emulator) with an SD card. Video cutscenes need 2MB of RAM and a real machine, and so does a sampled effect longer than 24K - everything else, including shorter effects, runs under emulation.
• A DAAD DSF source file and game assets. The authoring kit builds the DAAD database from source and converts your game assets for you. 
• Windows or Linux, to run the automated build scripts of the authoring kit.