Memory fixes
Misifu has been complaining lately. "I'm running out of room," she said, grooming herself on top of the linker map. "795 bytes over the limit. Sort it out."
She was right. The CODE segment was bleeding past 0xC000 like a dog who doesn't know when to stop. Speaking of dogs...
The Dog Incident
Turns out the dog (our beloved 4-legged villain who chases Misifu down the alley) has been secretly carrying around 192 bytes of NOTHING. Eight invisible rows of pure transparency, dragged through every animation frame like a sad empty bin bag.
"He was always a bit thick," Misifu remarked.
We consulted the SP1 library source code (romantic candlelight, a pot of tea) and discovered the `ythreshold=1` default was quietly suppressing his bottom row every single frame. The dog was 16 pixels tall. He thought he was 24.
We set `ythreshold=0`. The dog now knows his true height. He is not taller for it.
192 bytes returned to civilization.
The Cat Incident (480 bytes, or: Misifu Was Also Doing This)
Emboldened by our canine discovery, we looked at Misifu herself. Same thing. 10 animation frames × 3 columns × 8 blank rows each = **480 bytes** of Misifu pretending to be taller than she is. RIGHTC1, RIGHTC2, LEFTC1, LEFTC2, the romantic HANGING frame where she dangles from the washing line... all of them carrying dead weight like a love letter never sent.
We stripped the blank rows. We updated the frame offsets. BORED is now at 336 instead of 448 (she takes less space when unimpressed, which is most of the time).
HANGING is at 384. She hangs lighter now. "I feel 480 bytes lighter," Misifu said, immediately knocking something off a shelf.
The Alley Cat Arithmetic
By the end of the day, the CODE segment had retreated to a civilised address. The dog walks in 32-byte frames. The cat walks in 48-byte frames. Fred (the kidnapped lover in the final level) bounces left and right at `RIGHTC1=0`, `LEFTC1=96`, his heart displayed in UDG tile 134.
The modulo operator (`%`) has been banned from the codebase. It was slow, library-dependent, and frankly showing off.
BANK_6 plays the music. Misifu is somewhere in the middle, probably on a shelf she shouldn't be on, taking up exactly as much space as she needs.
No more. No less.
Compile now is much easier with docker-compose. So it might have future updates.
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*Misifu v5 — "Colored version, now fits in memory"*
*Total bytes recovered today: ~1,400+*
*Dogs annoyed: 1*
*Cats satisfied: also 1, reluctantly*
Files
Get Misifu Remeow (Zx Spectrum)
Misifu Remeow (Zx Spectrum)
IMPROVED remeow. The cat's life is complicated by dogs, darting down the street and in the house, spiders and brooms.
| Status | Released |
| Author | jordi |
| Genre | Platformer |
| Tags | 2D, alleycat, misifu, Pixel Art, remeow, ZX Spectrum |
More posts
- Browser playable with JS-DOSApr 04, 2025

Comments
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Very funny/entertaining write-up of the update!
Thanks!!