RETRO The Spectrum - Page 32

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Chapter 7
Playlists
A playlist makes choosing multi-cassette games a quick single click and avoids
issues with mis-selecting les. They are required for games having more than three
cassettes, but can be used for games having fewer.
A playlist is a text le with an .m3u extension, and it merely lists all the
.tap/.tzx/.pzx les for the game, such as:
Game A tape 1 of 2.tap
Game A tape 2 of 2.tap
The lenames within the playlist can also contain le paths relative to the playlist le
location, which give the exibility of placing the .tap (or .tzx and .pzx) les in a
different folder to keep the playlist folder uncluttered.
For example, you could place your .tap les in an TAP Files sub-folder, with the
playlists created at the parent level:
/USB stick/TAP Files/Game A tape 1 of 2.tap
/USB stick/TAP Files/Game A tape 2 of 2.tap
/USB stick/TAP Files/Game B tape 1 of 2.tap
/USB stick/TAP Files/Game B tape 2 of 2.tap
/USB stick/Game A.m3u
/USB stick/Game B.m3u
The playlist le Game A.m3u contains two lines as follows (note that the le paths are
relative, so there is no leading path separator ‘/’), as follows:
TAP Files/Game A tape 1 of 2.tap
TAP Files/Game A tape 2 of 2.tap
Being relative paths, you can move this around easily so long as the example TAP
Files folder stays at the same level as the playlist le.
Note: The playlist le paths use forward-slash (/) as the path separator, not the
Windows backslash (\).
To launch a game through its playlist, navigate to it in the usual way, select it with
M and then launch the game with ENTER.
Once launched, whenever you want to switch to another cassette le listed in the
playlist, press and hold the HOME button and then press S.