Flying Start

Every chapter in this book comes with working code examples — real Z80 assembly projects you can load straight into Klive IDE and run. All of them are bundled into a single archive: download next-examples.zip, unzip it somewhere convenient, and you’ll have the full set of sample projects ready to open.

Each subfolder in the archive corresponds to a chapter. You don’t need all of them right now — we’ll point to the relevant project at the start of each section. For the moment, just have the archive unpacked and Klive IDE installed, and you’re ready to go.

Using Klive IDE with ZX Spectrum Next Development

Throughout this book, you’ll build, run, and debug all the code examples using Klive IDE — an open-source emulator and development environment for ZX Spectrum machines, including the ZX Spectrum Next.

Two Windows, One Workflow

Klive runs as two separate windows: an Emulator window and an IDE window. The emulator is where your code actually runs — you see the ZX Spectrum Next screen, hear the audio, and interact with the machine. The IDE window is where you write code, manage projects, set breakpoints, inspect memory, and trigger builds.

Having two independent windows is no accident. If you have a dual-monitor setup, put the emulator on one screen and the IDE on the other. You get to watch your code run while you write it — which turns out to be a pretty satisfying development experience.

Klive saves window positions when you exit the app, so your dual-monitor layout is automatically restored on next launch.

The first time you start Klive, only the Emulator window opens. Use View | Show IDE to bring up the IDE window alongside it.

What We’ll Use It For

Every code example in this book lives in a Klive project — a folder with a klive.project file that tells the IDE which machine to target, which file to compile, and how to inject the built code into the emulator. You create a new project with File | New project, pick the ZX Spectrum Next as the machine type, choose a template, and the IDE sets everything up.

From there, the typical loop is:

  1. Write (or edit) your Z80 assembly source in the IDE editor
  2. Press F5 to build and inject the code into the running emulator
  3. Watch it run, set breakpoints if needed, and use Ctrl+F5 to step through it

All the machine control commands — start, pause, stop, step into, step over — are available from both windows, so you can drive the debug session from whichever screen you’re looking at.

Finding Your Way Around the Documentation

The complete Klive IDE documentation lives at https://dotneteer.github.io/kliveide/. Here are the sections most relevant to getting up and running:

You don’t need to read all of that before continuing — we’ll introduce the relevant features as we need them. But if something in the IDE looks unfamiliar, those pages are a good first stop.

Installing Klive