Spectral, a New ZX Spectrum Emulator

[Jimmy Gallagher]

Hello!

As I understand, there is no tradition on this forum to create a separate topic for each emulator to discuss. I ask you to evaluate the functionality of the Spectral emulator update released today:

TL-DR
mp4/mpg recording
joystick autofires
turbosound support
simplified UI and ZXDB gallery
redefineable FN keys
faster ZXDB gallery rendering
fixed game search and loading of 48k games

Changelog
new: ui dialogs
new: mp4 recording
new: mpeg1 recording
new: joystick autofires
new: redefineable FN keyboard mappings
new: added turbosound (turbo-ay) on pentagon128 model
new: revamped main options interface (use shift+click for old behavior)
new: revamped ZXDB cheats interface (smoother experience now)
new: tweakable z80 speed: 50%, 100%, 150%, 200% (7MHz), 400% (14MHz)
new: option to use a few different zx palettes
new: ui expert mode (UI buttons+RMB)
new: update zxdb to latest 1.0.208
new: restored NMI button
new: local files can use & display unicode names now (Windows)
chg: added pentagon128 to the main list of models
chg: add icons next to keyboard mappings
chg: added discord badge to readme
chg: ask user for confirmation before binding command that was already assigned beforehand
chg: be explicit about the licensing terms in the LICENSE file
chg: disallow cursor joystick unless while in BASIC
chg: faster init
chg: highlight current loaded game in zxdb/list view
chg: if available, prefer clang-cl over cl (make.bat)
chg: integrate browser v1 into v2 tab
chg: pure black borders in fullscreen mode
chg: replaced ResourceHacker with a much nicer RC-Edit tool (MAKE, Windows)
chg: search should provide more results now
chg: simplified zxdb gallery controls
chg: tweaked Spectral palette, darker black and less pure white now
chg: ui layout, right sidebar
chg: updated bescii font to latest
chg: zxdb gallery added a secondary worker thread (hopefully faster decoding in most cases)
chg: zxdb gallery speeded up by not doing recolor on 1:4,1:8 thumbnails (since they were already recoloured during 1:2 thumbnails decoding)
chg: zxdb updated stb_image_resize2 to latest 2.13
fix: app titlebar when loading localized files from disk, like Russian ones (Windows)
fix: bottom, overscan lines in pentagon mode
fix: fixed bug that prevented using search toolbar twice in a row
fix: fixed bug that prevented using thumbnail icon after search toolbar
fix: oops! zxdb 48k-only games were wrongly loaded in 128 mode (minder,cerius,nuclear bowls,punch & judy,rebelstar raiders,rubicon,etc.)
fix: partial clipped links could be hovered when fullscreen was in use
fix: replaced discord invite link
fix: search game when no input was provided
fix: x86 build (internal)
lab: grid shader

I am not the developer of this emulator, and I first came across it two months ago. But it simply captivated me with its CRT screen imitation effects! I have never seen such effects in any Speccy emulators before. They are cool!

The emulator has a code repository and issue tracker on Github, as well as a separate support server on Discord (in English and Spanish - the developer is Spanish).

A link to the GitHub repository is here:

GitHub - r-lyeh/Spectral: ZX Spectrum emulator for Windows, Linux and MacOS.

ZX Spectrum emulator for Windows, Linux and MacOS. - r-lyeh/Spectral

github.com

 

[cj7hawk]

Hello!

As I understand, there is no tradition on this forum to create a separate topic for each emulator to discuss. I ask you to evaluate the functionality of the Spectral emulator update released today:

I am not the developer of this emulator, and I first came across it two months ago. But it simply captivated me with its CRT screen imitation effects! I have never seen such effects in any Speccy emulators before. They are cool!

The emulator has a code repository and issue tracker on Github, as well as a separate support server on Discord (in English and Spanish - the developer is Spanish).

Will I be allowed to post links here, or should we leave the search for official pages to the forum users?

I think posting a Spectrum Emulator to this forum would be within expectations of the terms...

Though you might want to make it it's own thread if you're doing ongoing posts.

And you might even want to post screenshots of the "CRT effects" you mention -? I'm sure readers would welcome that also -

I don't think there's anything against posting links to the emulator and git repository either.

Us Sinclair Spectrum lovers would certainly appreciate it -

You could also post to general if you wanted to bring up questions around other emulators, but avoid cross-posting where possible.

David

 

[ajacocks]

Sure, emulation discussions are welcome.

- Alex

 

[parakeet]

I guess I'm out of luck: Spectral doesn't seem to work on an M1 Mac and it also doesn't seem to work with the ARM64 version of Windows 11.

The only thing left to try is using the X64 version of Windows 11 which I will do tomorrow...

 

[parakeet]

Ok, so I finally decided to test Spectral on an X64 Windows 11 version right away and it does work this time.

I won't comment on the various features of the emulator for now but at first look, it's true that the CRT screen imitation effects are amazing! This is really well done!

The full screen mode doesn't enlarge the size of the Speccy screen to occupy the entire screen but maybe it's the way it's meant to be?

This looks like a really nice Spectrum emulator indeed.