More cool TI books

[Opry99er]

 

 

Some highlights include "Lost Treasure", "Space Flight", "The Devil's Dungeon", "Mini Mancala", "Shark Hunt", "Galactic Monsters", and more!!! I'm typing in "The Devil's Dungeon" today on my real hardware.

 

Love this sh**.....

[S1500]

I had that first one. I typed a few in, but the traffic control game, despite double-checking source code, never worked.

[Opry99er]

Thought I'd give you all a taste of the Devil's Dungeon. Here's the first part of the Legend at the beginning.

 

For many years now you have heard rumors of large quantities of gold hidden in a maze of caves whose connecting passageways lead deep beneath the earth of an occasionally active volcano.  The stories tell of monsters and demons who roam through the caves, poisonous gas, tremors from the volcano, and one man who returned from these perils alive and named the caves "The Devil's Dungeon".

 

After much searching, you have located the wealthy, solitary man who survived a journey through the dungeon; and he has agreed to see you.  Although now very old and in poor health, he tells you everything he can remember about the dungeon.

 

There is much gold still remaining in this maze of caves... And the stories of demons, monsters, and poisonous gas are true.  There are 16 rooms on each level of the dungeon, although many may be blocked by rockfalls caused by volcanic tremors. The number of levels is unknown-- perhaps it is bottomless, for the creatures encountered inside the dungeon were certainly not from the earth as we know it.....

 

This is hopefully cool.

[Opry99er]

Well, I gotta say, I've just uncovered about 10 more cool TI books in my boxes. It's like Christmas over here!!

[matthew180]

Hmm, I had (still have actually) the first one and the traffic game worked for me, at least I remember typing it in. Maybe it didn't work, I don't remember. I was pretty good at coding XB back then so I might have just fixed it.

 

The adventure at the end "I.T." I believe it is called, that was cool. It uses obscurity to keep you from knowing what is going on, even though you are tying in the code. As if writing an adventure was not hard enough.

 

Matthew

[Opry99er]

I'll do that one next. . I love these old books, man. Also found 4 or 5 other "Programs for the TI-99/4a" books... All kinds of cool stuff.

 

I also found a tape that was pretty interesting!! Check out the "Maze Man" thread if you want to see screenshots and pictures.

Edited November 11, 2010 by Opry99er

[InfernalKeith]

Owen, I have a pretty nice little library of TI books, but didn't have either of the two you pictured above. I tried ordering "Terrific Games" recently on Ebay, and got told the seller didn't have it (think they relisted it for a higher price afterward... grr...) Just went over to Amazon and found each of them for under $2 apiece, so I grabbed them up! Love those old books.

[matthew180]

I learned to code from books like that, and getting the monthly computer magazines that used to have listings in them for all the computers of the day. Code, debug, run, hack, see what changes, run, hack, learn, repeat. I still have a lot of those old magazines too, but I'm trying to throw them away (too much stuff in my life), but it is hard.

 

Matthew

[Bones-69]

I have about 30 TI books but never even seen that second one!

[Opry99er]

I found about 15 books... All very cool... All the game books in the reference section of this forum are in my collection--- probably 4 or so spiral bound program books... 6 or 7 SAMS books, most with original tapes!!!

[Opry99er]

Not exactly TI, but by far my favorite computer book... It's how I'm preparing for TurboForth.

 

Thanks to Hal S. from the CTIUG for giving me this book!!!

 

Edited November 11, 2010 by Opry99er

[InfernalKeith]

I actually had that one, it was in that batch of stuff I went and picked up in New York. I ended up selling it because I kept so much of the other goodies in that lot, and because even in my most optimistic moments, I don't think I'm gonna get to other languages besides assembly in my lifetime.

 

I have all those SAMS book-and-tape combos, and I think I have all the spiral-bound Compute! TI books, including a few I never see floating around in the wild. If I wanna take a programming break later, maybe I'll go take pix of the rarer books I have and post them.

[Opry99er]

I'd love to see those! I love books.

[matthew180]

I brought a ton of books to the Faire, not to sell but just to let people look through or use for reference. Never had a chance to pull them out though (except for 1 or 2). Maybe next year, eh?

 

Matthew

[Bones-69]

Here is my collection. Will be interesting to see if there is stuff long time TI'er haven't seen before....

 

 

 

 

[Opry99er]

Beautiful collection!!! I have many of those books, but there are a few that are foreign to me. =) I should photograph my collection as well--- I have alot of dot-matrix program listings too that aren't in a book, but are in paper form, nonetheless. Some of those old program listings on printer paper are extensive... I rememnber seeing a 450 line XB program with liberal use of multiple-statement lines. Good stuff, man. =)

[InfernalKeith]

I have that data and file management book! Until I saw your pic, mine was the only one I'd ever seen.

[S1500]

The SAMS Extended Basic(as well as regular) games book had really good games. There was a full-up Frogger clone in it, but the odd part was it made a croaking sound with the speech synthesizer. How did they do it? I dunno. I remember seeing an article in Micropendium you could make the speech synth make weird noises. Remember using trial & error finding all the different variations of the noises. They probably found one that sounds like a croaking frog.

[InfernalKeith]

I think I have an idea that might be fun for the next contest, or for a series of them...

 

We pick one game out of one of these old books. Maybe not even one of the better ones -- one that could stand improvement. We post it on a Sunday evening, and everyone has one week to modify it and "soup it up" to make it better. Best revised game wins a prize.

 

There's so much source material, this could be something we did once a month for the foreseeable future.

 

What do you think? Too distracting to people's existing projects, or a good quick-thinking, skill-sharpening exercise?

[Opry99er]

This sounds great!! I don't know about one a month... But certainly let's try one and see how it goes.

[ramidavis]

The SAMS Extended Basic(as well as regular) games book had really good games. There was a full-up Frogger clone in it, but the odd part was it made a croaking sound with the speech synthesizer. How did they do it? I dunno. I remember seeing an article in Micropendium you could make the speech synth make weird noises. Remember using trial & error finding all the different variations of the noises. They probably found one that sounds like a croaking frog.

I would be interested in looking at this game.

Does anyone have a download of it, or scan of the program code?

[+Ksarul]

I was looking at the books from Bones-69 again, and I noticed two different books that were strikingly similar: "Tantalizing Games for your TI-99/4A" and "Terrific Games for the TI-99/4A." Are these two different editions of the same title (contents the same) or are they actually different books? Only Terrific Games is up on the book archive and I don't have both variants in my collection, so I just had to ask. . .either way, I have another book to hunt down, so this adds to my hobby fun.

[kl99]

I was looking at the books from Bones-69 again, and I noticed two different books that were strikingly similar: "Tantalizing Games for your TI-99/4A" and "Terrific Games for the TI-99/4A." Are these two different editions of the same title (contents the same) or are they actually different books? Only Terrific Games is up on the book archive and I don't have both variants in my collection, so I just had to ask. . .either way, I have another book to hunt down, so this adds to my hobby fun.

 

The tantalizing one is the UK edition according to The Cyc. The wording of the title is supposed to be the only difference. There is a dutch (Tergende spelen...) and german version (Superspiele...) of the book as well.

[+adamantyr]

I would be interested in looking at this game.

Does anyone have a download of it, or scan of the program code?

I love that one "Homeward Bound". It actually has two speech effects, a croaking frog and a swishing sound when blood gushed out of your frog if he got ran over by a car.

 

They don't render as well on the emulators though; like a lot of custom speech the newer core messes them up a bit. I typed it in long ago, I can find it in my archives and share both file and listing here.

 

I've wondered for years how the author figured out how to make the sounds... nothing about the speech synthesizer was well documented and neither sound seems to have roots with any of the built in vocabulary.

[+Ksarul]

 

The tantalizing one is the UK edition according to The Cyc. The wording of the title is supposed to be the only difference. There is a dutch (Tergende spelen...) and german version (Superspiele...) of the book as well.

Many thanks, @KL99. There is also a French version, although it changes one of the author credits: Les Grands Classiques du Jeu pour votre TI-99/4A