retroclouds

That game DoorDoor looks quite fun. Would be interesting to see how it compares to the MSX version. Many of the Tutor games are rather of poor quality, but this one might look worth converting to the TI-99/4A. Could you do a short video on DoorDoor? Would be a primer as I havent found any Youtube video of this game in the Tutor version.

Thank you, I will take a look at that and see what is changed :-)Now I have a question are there differents versions for Tutor, Pyuuta, jr and mk2 or are they all the same? I suppose keyboard processing is different between Tutor and Pyuuta jr. I find the Pyuuta jr. very interesting, a TMS9995 game console. Too bad Texas Instruments did not think about that. Would have been a good competitor to the colecovision.

This is very interesting work. A few years ago I started doing a Tutor version of Pitfall but got sidetracked. I remember that at the time the biggest problem was debugging. I used Mame (or was it Mess) for emulation at the time, guess that the debugger has improved a lot by now. Basically there should be many TI-99/4a games that can be converted for Tomy Tutor and Pyuata. Especially the ones were there is assembly source code available, run from ROM and only use scratchpad. Having said that TI-Invaders and Munchman should also be good candidates and perhaps a few of the shortn sweet machine code games.

I have the title screen music in place (which I shamlesly copied from a post by OLD CS1, I apologize for that). Today I started working on code optimization because ofcourse it needs to fit in 4K - which in our world means 4000 bytes right, not 4096 bytes?). Basically I broke my spectra2 library in multiple modules and by using conditional expressions in the xas99 assembler, I can include only the parts I need. Also added a preprocesor bash script which does some useful stuff for me. Long story short; I went from 5740 bytes to 4650 bytes in code size. So the good news is that I was able to save 1090 bytes. The bad news is that I'm still 650 bytes above the 4K barrier. I still have 4 more routines I can move to modules and exclude, so there is still hope Also have to add some basic sound effects and some more bug-fixing to do.

Even though I am generally not for having many subforums, I feel confident that the time has come for getting a new subforum for non ti-99/4a TMSxxxx systems. It would allow getting more visibility. I mean if it could include the Geneve and Tomy Tutor it would already make it worth it to me. We are getting so many topics nowadays (which I am very happy about), that it can get easy to lose track of things. +1 from my side edit: and yes, Id rather see the subforum here on Atariage as somewhere else. Back when I requested the TI-99/4a subforum here on Atariage it was also a bit controversal at first. My idea was to get crossover from the other home computer and game system folks (colecovision) and I think it has proven to work out well.

Don't worry, I'm sure I'll spend a whole lot of time trying to cramm all this in 4k, which is compared to 760 bytes quite a luxury

About 60% of the game done. Title screen done, game mechanics started and scoring + speech implemented. No sound yet. Hardest part still ahead. Finishing game mechanics and optimization for 4k rom limit. Should be doable until march, hoping I dont get distracted too much and that life and work keep cool. Will be a 2 player game unless I find some space for AI after optimizing. Going for scratch pad RAM only. Want it to run on plain 8k guidry boards.

Thanks. That sounds like a good idea. Should be easy to implement :-)

Very cool! What image tool are you using for drawing these nice images? Hey, you could consider a TI-99/4a version as well, it has the same VDP

Added a remark in the their comments' section pointing to our forum here on Atariage

Nice to see the TI-99/4A being mentioned on one of germany's most popular web portals.... Basically the article discusses that todays' powerful computers take longer for displaying a typed character compared to the between 20 and 40 years old home computers. https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Warum-sich-neue-Rechner-manchmal-langsamer-anfuehlen-als-alte-3928697.html

Updated the DevRes thread: * Added Bluewizard alternative "Python Wizard". * Added reference to the community thread "The TI-99/4A Operating System" * Added reference to source code of Hopper and Moonmine * Fixed URL for TI-Invaders source code. * Added FinalGROM to homebrew hardware section. * Use new subdomain aa-ti994a.oratronik.de instead of "atariage.oratronik.de" which I removed. (Don't think its polite to use atariage as subdomain name, hence reason for adjustment)

At the moment it still does, but dunno if it'll stay that way. I'm splitting up the source code in multiple files so that I can include/skip features as needed. BTW, I'm also on Windows. I'm using the Windows Subsystem for Linux which gives me a linux-like environment in Windows 10. The advantage ist that I till have the possibility to access the files with windows tools, which is important as I'm using classic99 for testing. MS has come a long way and that they are embracing linux is very nice. IMHO I would really encourage you to take a look at Ralph's assembler. It's very nice and as it's Python it should run in Windows natively. Also what I like is that it's a command line tool so it's very easy to integrate into your editor of choice. I'm using vi and have a shortcut key "F4" defined for assembling the current file and creating the binary on the fly. With classic99 I only have to reset the emulator and the cartridge is already loaded. So develop/testing cycles are very short.

That is interesting. I'm basically running Tursi's solution (GPU code that clears itself) as described in the F18A documentation page 3.

Yes, I'm adding a couple of F18A functions as well. Do note that due to some of the changes I'm doing there is no full backwards compatibility with the previous release. But all in all, these should be rather small changes. One thing to note is that for this release I'm switching from WinAsm99 to Ralphs' xas99 assembler. Being able to do most of my work in a linux-like environment just gives me a better workflow. I also like that Ralphs' source code is available on GitHub.

ok, looks promising and thanks for trying. Here is a slightly updated version that should also show the F18A firmware revision. test1c.bin

Hoping that Ralph can chime in on this. My question is, if it's possible to detect if there is a finalgrom99 installed ? That would be intereresting if you'd like to use the more advanced features like writing to RAM/GRAM.

Not quite sure where I'm going with this. Basically I'm trying some new ideas, which even some of them aren't even game related. But hey, if it's good enough for games it should be good enough for doing some "serious" work on the TI-99/4a Also doing some bug-fixing as I want to use spectra2 for a game in the game contest. I always saw spectra2 as some kind of "mini"-os and want to enhance it a bit further. Unfortuantely not that much has happened in the last few years. So I'm really sticking to a plan now, that is doing really small steps (as time permits) and see what I can get out of it in 2018.

Could someone please try the attached binary on the real deal? It's an 8k cartridge ROM that runs on the unexpanded console. I've been working on enhancing my spectra2 library with some new routines and would like to check if the Hardware is recognized in a reliable way. It should test the below: 1. Check if F18A is installed 2. Check if speech synthesizer is available 3. List the VDP refresh rate 50/60Hz Thanks. test1c.bin

You might want to take a look at Pitfall! for colecovision where the rope is done with sprites.

I would propose there are 2 subcategories: 4k ROM/RAM 8k ROM/256 bytes RAM I think that is fair, as having less RAM to your disposal can lead to more ROM code :-)

Sure, would give it a try :-)

I want the Espial cartridge for 1.000 EUR which is on ebay right now. It is in pristine condition and packaging looks superb, but 1.000 EUR, jeez.

No particular reason, didn't know this was out there. More than happy to add it to the first post! Thanks for sharing.

I think that you need to swap banks, would explain why the title screen works but not the rest. EDIT: Should it not work out, then shout me a ping and I'll see if I can get an image for the finalgrom. The image was originally made for Jon Guidry carts (inverted) and the finalgrom does not have inverted images.