I've been adding some support to the Oakley standard library for the LoRes screen mode of the ZX Spectrum Next, as well as some code for creating palettes and floating point number support. I've created two demos that use the new code: Stripes Displays some stripes.

I've made quite a bit of progress since I last blogged about Oakley. I might actually be able to release an alpha version in the next decade! Better Numbers * No need to specify the type of number anymore, e.g. you can now write 12 rather than 12b.

The ZX Spectrum Next uses 9-bits for its colours, giving a total of 512 possible different colours. The Next's palettes are only 256 colours in size however. The default palette uses 8-bit colours of the format RRRGGGBB, generated by the taking the numbers 0 - 255 in order.

I've managed to get my new programming language to a state where I can release a demo that is vaguely interesting. Here is a video of the demo running on the CSpect emulator: Yes, it's a bouncy snake thing. Here is the Oakley source code: using

After many years of moaning about various other languages I've decided to try and write my own, if only so I don't have to listen to myself moan about such things any more... The idea to do so originally came from the Facebook group for the