Next Point

Overview

Next Point is a tennis video game developed exclusively for the ZX Spectrum Next, paying homage to the classic sports titles of the golden era of 8-bits computing. The game takes full advantage of the Next's hardware, featuring digitized sounds, large sprites and colourful graphics.

Development of Next Point started as an idea to participate in the White Next contest, and ultimately won the competition! But we did not want to stop there: the final release will include a total of 15 distinct opponents, each with unique sprites and court strategies, along with additional animations, sounds, intro music and refined playability. 

Credits

Special thanks to my son David, who provided the umpire's voice; to my son Diego, who contributed ideas and some in-game player sounds; and to my wife, whose input helped shape the music and the upcoming sounds for female players.

This game would not have been possible without the great tools used in its development. I’d especially like to thank:

• DOM and the z88dk community for his great work and prompt support on the forums.
• Maziac for his fantastic DeZog debugger, which now supports some basic debugging capabilities of C programs, to which I have proudly contributed.
• Tomaˇz Kragelj for his ZX Spectrum Next Assembly Developer Guide, the most comprehensive resource for Next developers.
• Mike Dailly for CSpect, the emulator used throughout the whole development process.
• Damien Guard for his fantastic fonts which were used in the making of this game.
• Julien Névo for his awesome Arkos Tracker and for his support to bring the players to the Spectrum Next.

This game is dedicated to the memory of my father who bought my first computer — a Sinclair ZX81 — and passed on to me his passion for technology and computers.

Víctor Morilla