retroclouds

Nice! Looking forward seeing this game in action.

I've noticed that you have the SAT right before the screen tiles. I have been studying Colecovision Galaxians and they have a similar VDP setup. SAT at >1B80 Tiles at >1C00 It allows them to write updated sprites AND tiles, without having to set the VDP write address twice. That's kinda cool oh, are still planning on having a seabed in the game ? Looking forward seeing more

I just ordered my 3rd one For those who don't know this device. It has 32K RAM memory and reads compact flash cards that contain TI-99 disk images. This little piece of equipment replaces my peripheral expansion box for most of my requirements. Combined with TI-DIR (file manager running on windows, looks like norton commander), it's a piece of cake transferring TI-99/4A software between your PC and TI-99/4A. All development I do is done on a PC with emulator and then tested on the TI-99/4A itself using this device. A very cool device

Didn't know Cloak & Dagger, but searched a bit and youtube came up with the below. The descending elevator looks doable. Gameplay itself reminds me of Robotron:2084 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltjQU3DNjj8

Working with graphic characters is not necessarily bad. One benefit is you don't have to worry about "invisible" cats if you get 4 of them lined up in a row Just out of curiosity, how many cats will there be on-screen ? Keep up the good work!

Nice! This is fun. We should put those little snippets up on a special page. These kind of small demos have the exact size for being published in TI magazines. I remember typing these in like 25 years ago

thanks. It was just an attempt to do some scrolling in extended basic. yeah, Elevator Action is real nice and quite doable on the TI. Ofcourse I would opt for writing it in assembly language However, I think having a game with a "wall" in extended basic and scrolling left/right during gameplay could be doable. You are basically only redefining one character.

Very nice! I like the one with "HERDING CATS" letters below the eyes

Excellent! Looking forward seeing screen photos and pictures of the notes. This is cool

no not at all, kinda hoping someone picks it up and turns it into a real game

hmmm... not really, too much work. Although I must admit I like Elevator Action a lot and it was the main inspiration for doing this little demo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoR3gaAsHFY

Last week (and this afternoon) I had a little fun playing around with Extended Basic. I tried to see if I could do a scroll simulation and came up with the descending elevator. Dunno what I'm gonna do with it, as it's just a little demo. But thought of posting it here anyway. Enjoy REM ################## REM # INITIALISATION # REM ################## 10 CALL CLEAR :: CALL SCREEN(1) :: CALL COLOR(1,5,8,2,16,2,3,16,2,4,16,2,5,16,2,6,16,2,7,16,2) 15 CALL CHAR(32,"00FEFEFE007F7F7F", 33, "00FEFEFE007F7F7F",34,"0000000000000000", 63, "1818181818181818") 16 CALL CHAR(47,"0000000000000000") :: CALL HCHAR(24,1,33,32) :: CALL MAGNIFY(4) 17 CALL CHAR(36,"1FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF",37,"FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF",38,"F8FFFFFFFFFFFFFF",39,"FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF") 18 CALL CHAR(64,"3F7F7F7F7F7F7F7F",65,"7F7F7F7F7F7F7F7F",66,"FCFEFEFEFEFEFEFE",67,"FEFEFEFEFEFEFEFE") 19 CALL VCHAR(1,5,47,120) :: CALL VCHAR(1,1,34,48) :: CALL VCHAR(1,31,34,48) :: CALL HCHAR(1,1,47,32) 20 DISPLAY AT(1,:"POINTS/00000//LIVES/3" 21 CALL SPRITE(#1,64,7,25,37,9,0,#2,64,7,45,37,9,0,#3,36,10,21,37,9,0,#4,36,10,50,37,9,0) 22 CALL POSITION(#1,A,B) :: CALL VCHAR(2,7,63,A/5) :: IF A<50 THEN GOTO 22 23 CALL VCHAR(8,7,63,6) :: CALL MOTION(#1,3,0,#2,3,0,#3,3,0,#4,3,0) REM ################# REM # SCROLL BRICKS # REM ################# 100 CALL CHAR(32,"00FEFEFE007F7F7F",33,"00FEFEFE007F7F7F") 101 CALL CHAR(32,"FEFEFE007F7F7F00",33,"FEFEFE007F7F7F00") 102 CALL CHAR(32,"FEFE007F7F7F00FE",33,"FEFE007F7F7F00FE") 103 CALL CHAR(32,"FE007F7F7F00FEFE",33,"FE007F7F7F00FEFE") 104 CALL CHAR(32,"007F7F7F00FEFEFE",33,"007F7F7F00FEFEFE") 105 CALL CHAR(32,"7F7F7F00FEFEFE00",33,"7F7F7F00FEFEFE00") 106 CALL CHAR(32,"7F7F00FEFEFE007F",33,"7F7F00FEFEFE007F") 107 CALL CHAR(32,"7F00FEFEFE007F7F",33,"7F00FEFEFE007F7F") 108 CALL POSITION(#1,A,B) :: IF A>83 THEN CALL VCHAR(14,7,63,3) 109 IF A<110 THEN GOTO 100 REM ############################ REM # SCROLL BRICKS AND GROUND # REM ############################ 110 CALL CHAR(32,"00FEFEFE007F7F7F",33,"00FEFEFE007F7F00") 111 CALL CHAR(32,"FEFEFE007F7F7F00",33,"FEFEFE007F7F0000") 112 CALL CHAR(32,"FEFE007F7F7F00FE",33,"FEFE007F7F000000") 113 CALL CHAR(32,"FE007F7F7F00FEFE",33,"FE007F7F00000000") 114 CALL CHAR(32,"007F7F7F00FEFEFE",33,"007F7F0000000000") 115 CALL CHAR(32,"7F7F7F00FEFEFE00",33,"7F7F000000000000") 116 CALL CHAR(32,"7F7F00FEFEFE007F",33,"7F00000000000000") 117 CALL CHAR(32,"7F00FEFEFE007F7F",33,"0000000000000000") 118 CALL POSITION(#1,A,B) :: IF A<124 THEN GOTO 110 119 CALL MOTION(#1,0,0,#2,0,0,#3,0,0,#4,0,0) 120 GOTO 120

Just watched the vid. Nice, nice, very nice :thumbsup: Looking forward seeing more Actually I played around with Extended Basic last week. The first time in 22 years or so. I forgot how powerful it is. It's not really lightning fast, but you can really do some amazing stuff with it

Beautiful, very beautiful :thumbsup: By the way: I'm currently finishing my utility+tutorial for handling realignment issues & code references accross multiple banks

Very nice. So does this mean a cartridge EPROM is planned ? Would love to play this game on my barebone console I have in my living room

Just gave it a spin in classic99. Collision detection works real nice :thumbsup: Just an idea: Do you think it's possible to let the bees flap their wings or would that bee to cumbersome in extended basic ? I'm looking forward seeing the flower bed

Now, that is what I call interesting stuff As the clouds will move rather slowly would having a decompressed version in VDP be an option ? You could work on it in "parts" divided accross multiple frames and once complete, move it into the pattern table. Then again, such logic would also take some code space to implement. What I did in the cartridge version of Pitfall was to "page-out" certain parts of scratch-pad memory to the VDP, use the new free space as work-buffer and when finished "page-in" into scratch pad again. That works pretty well. However, I did not use any compression techniques in Pitfall! so looking forward learning on how you proceed

Thanks for the detailed description on how you proceed. That is very interesting stuff. Oh on a sidenote, did you know a TMS9918 VDP implementation was done in javascript (using canvas for drawing). It's part of an MSX emulator written in javascript. Check here I have some plans for doing a utility that will be using this VDP implementation. As far as the RGPC naming is concerned, no use in changing its name now, with only a few more weeks remaining

Interesting stuff Just out of curiosity. How do you test the animations and convert them to patterns ? Have you written an own converter for that ?

This a cross-post of my topic in the Atariage homebrew section. Next week I will be contacting the folks that are on the pre-order list for the first batch. If all works out well, cartridges can be sent out by the end of February You might also want to check out my blog here.

The Pitfall! cartridge for the TI-99/4A is becoming reality! I finished debugging and testing last week and the EPROMS and PCB's for the first batch are currently in the works. You can see a youtube video of the cartridge version here Next week I will be contacting the folks that are on the pre-order list for the first batch. If all works out well, cartridges can be sent out by the end of February

Oh man, you really got me there

Excellent crap grame ... and not that easy, let me tell you.

wow, that sounds real nice! :thumbsup: I just tried it in Extended Basic using classic99's paste functionality. I clipped the call sound statements right here from the post and pasted it in classic99. Nice

Just tried your game in classic99. Somehow I get some weird effects. I can move the mouse over the maze without bumping into the walls. It means I can just move to the right (is a bit complicated as the controls are reversed, joystick emulation?). Anyway, when I get to the exit speech starts but then a "INCORRECT SUBPROGRAM IN 590" happens. I presume that this could be an issue with classic99 in combination with the "speech" output. That is weird though. Also attempted to try it in win994a but failed because I couldn't add it to a disk image. Again, a reason to try it on the bare metal in the next few days, will let you know