retroclouds
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Posts posted by retroclouds
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I downloaded the zip file, extracted the KEYAREYOU file to my classic99 DSK1 folder and tried to load it.
What happens is that I get the same error code 50.
In there I opened the disk image you uploaded and extracted the KEYAREYOU file to the same classic99 DSK1 folder.
I didn't do a binary file compare, but there are differences in file size. I presume something went wrong during
your conversion process.
The attached file is the version I extracted via TI99DIR. It now loads fine in classic99 but doesn't play right though.
Guess that emulation in classic99 can't handle speech that perfectly.
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I like flower beds
A few years ago they had a game in the MSXDEV competition called "BeeZ". That game has a beautiful flower bed.
It looks like normal TI graphics mode to me, so something as nice as that should be possible in XB as well I guess
(*) Picture copyright Darkstone Team. MSXDEV'06 entry "BeeZ" -
***UPDATE::: Also implemented the "lives" and "level" values in the top right of the corner...
-The honeycomb graphic for the top right of the screen and the flower bed on the bottom of the screen are both on paper, but not coded in yet. Very cool looking stuff. The vid in the original post was just a tester for the SPRITES and "canola" field. I'll have the rest done up in a video here very soon. Thanks
Owen
Very nice seeing "Honeycomb Rapture" in the RGPC
I wouldn't worry about the game being done in XB.
Actually some of my favourite TI games are written in that language.
Using assembly language is certainly not a garantee for getting a great game.
I Checked your video and am looking forward seeing more.
I'm especially interested in seeing the flower bed.
Do you alreay have an idea what colors you will use ?
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At first the ship was going to be made up of 4 sprites (64x16 pixels) aligned horizontally. This is the maximum number of sprites horizontally, and then the ship could only have one color. Sprites would make it very easy to move the ship in any direction, maybe even let it lay low in the water and eventually let it sink. Later I got the idea to let the world move around the ship, so the design got somewhat stationary with only 2 sprites for the top of the ship to allow clouds to move behind.
I also wanted the ship and the subs to be different colors, but now I’ve gotten used to the dark idea of the scene.
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Yeah, letting the ship lay low in the water would have been cool. But the game will be nice without that feature nonetheless.
Perhaps the ship could start burning when it takes too much damage or you could change the shape of the ship.
Looking forward seeing the explosions.
Hope this doesn't all sound to cruel being in the X-mas spirit and such
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Man... This is looking awesome. I might not even enter my piece of crap XB offering now. You really do some nice stuff, man.....
Hi there!
Seeing your previous game "Lemonade Stand", I'm sure your new game won't be anything like a piece of XB crap.
Even within XB limitations, it's important to see new homebrew games pushing the TI forward.
I for one, would love to see your entry in the RGPC competition
Why not just post your progress here at AtariAge. This is the place for getting user feedback,
which I know helps pushing the motivation.
At least it did for me, while working on Pitfall
retroclouds
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Classic99 is my emulator, so I can speak with more authority there.The disk paths should be relative, but if they aren't working, just open up Classic99.ini and make sure they are set correctly. (There's no GUI config for disk setup yet). Note too that Classic99 does not support disk images - only individual files.
Umm... how would I do that exactly? Right now, the ini file contains a section like this:
[Disk1]
Type=0
and so on for Disk0, Disk2 etc. I suppose this is what should be changed, but I don't know how it should be changed, and I also don't see where this would be documented so that I could do the change correctly.
I just checked my classic99.ini and it looks as below. Don't know if this all required for the current classic99 version, but at least that is what I have.
[Disk1] Type=1 Path=DSK1\ FIAD_WriteV9T9=0 FIAD_ReadTIFILES=1 FIAD_ReadV9T9=1 FIAD_WriteDV80AsText=0 FIAD_WriteAllDVAsText=0 FIAD_WriteDF80AsText=0 FIAD_WriteAllDFAsText=0 FIAD_ReadTextAsDV=1 FIAD_ReadTextAsDF=1 FIAD_ReadTextWithoutExt=1 FIAD_ReadImgAsTIAP=0 [Disk2] Type=1 Path=DSK2\ FIAD_WriteV9T9=0 FIAD_ReadTIFILES=1 FIAD_ReadV9T9=1 FIAD_WriteDV80AsText=0 FIAD_WriteAllDVAsText=0 FIAD_WriteDF80AsText=0 FIAD_WriteAllDFAsText=0 FIAD_ReadTextAsDV=1 FIAD_ReadTextAsDF=1 FIAD_ReadTextWithoutExt=1 FIAD_ReadImgAsTIAP=0 [Disk3] Type=1 Path=DSK3\ FIAD_WriteV9T9=0 FIAD_ReadTIFILES=1 FIAD_ReadV9T9=1 FIAD_WriteDV80AsText=0 FIAD_WriteAllDVAsText=0 FIAD_WriteDF80AsText=0 FIAD_WriteAllDFAsText=0 FIAD_ReadTextAsDV=1 FIAD_ReadTextAsDF=1 FIAD_ReadTextWithoutExt=1 FIAD_ReadImgAsTIAP=0
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Wonderful, wonderful work, though I must admit I would like to see the ship be a different color (perhaps some dark grey if its in the pallette) over the subs. Regardless, great job and I'm looking forward to the final version.
Thank you. This is the TI-99/4A palette ...
The first color being “transparent” for external video input (genlock), but it’s never been used much. The real hardware and most emulators render it black. Sprites basically have one color and transparent (just showing characters beneath).
I was intentionally making up the ship as a silhouette (lighting from behind somehow), and then using only one color. I don’t think the gray available is good with the background sky as is, one could then chose a night theme instead etc.
Again thanks for input. I appreciate it.
I think the destroyer should be black, black as the night.
From all the colors it fits best. In my opinion the other colors let the destroyer look like .... a candy ship
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Well, I like them both.
that is real nice. I must say, I also like them both.
This make it almost impossible to pick the best one.
I would go for the one that takes less code space
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How about "damage"?
That’s good input. Would something like this work ? Eh, it’s a sliding pointer on top.
Maybe with penalty on player speed and/or number of depth charges, when you get into the danger zone. Or maybe just an annoying alarm sound.
I like the "DAMAGE" indicator a lot. Dunno, would be cool if the indicator starts blinking slowly/fast when you get into the yellow or red area
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....
Oh, and then I tried to find another program, "TI99 PC", which is supposed to read my TI disks on a PC 5 1/4" drive. Since I've got an old 386 with such a drive, I thought I could use it to convert up all my old TI disks which contain a lot of programs written in Extended Basic. But somehow the only download link I can find is on the following page:
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and strangely, the download on this page seems to be broken, as are many downloads on that page.
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Regarding PC transfer using TI99-PC and omniflop, you might want to check here:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ti99-4a/message/68159
... and here
ftp://ftp.whtech.com/pc%20utilities/Using%20OmniFlop%20with%20TI%20floppies.%20vers%201.1.pdf
... and here
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Joystick, menu selection, initial game and exit routines added. Level changed to Lives and for now with small hearts. The hearts really won’t do it for the scene.
Looking forward giving this a shot tonight when I get home from work
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I put this in the TI-99/4A OLUGs....
Yep, you heard it right.
There will be a few changes this time. So, please read on and send me e-mail if you are interested in doing the following:
I need several people to do particular jobs to get this done. Whether or not you decide to do more than one is up do you.
1) Spreadsheet maintainer/counter. I will create a form like last time, and give someone control of the form and resultant spreadsheet. It will be your job to keep track of pre order numbers. For this next order, we want either 100 or 250 - that's our goal. If we take forever to get to 100, we'll order 100. If not, we'll order 250 if we get to it.
2) Packager/mailer - You will be responsible for packing the boards (they will already be in ASD bags, assembled) in a box with peanuts to send out to people (after they have been paid for). You will weigh them, and communicate with the invoicer, below, regarding weights so that the invoicer can determine postage costs. After doing all that, you will mail the packages. The invoicer can work with you to pay you back for postage/boxes/peanuts.
3) Invoicer - someone who will invoice each person via e-mail for their quantity of boards. You will be responsible for sending out invoices to people. Most boards will go out first class mail, and some will be Priority, etc. You will need a Paypal account to make it easy, and will charge people for the board + shipping/handling. The shipping/handling fee includes the mail cost + $1 for the box/peanuts (approx) + a small offset for the Paypal fees.
4) Interface to ACC Electronix - that's me
Now, on to the fun part.
ACC Electronix will professionally be making the boards this go-around. The boards will be made by PCBExpress, be RoHS compliant, and be professionally assembled. A test fixture will be made by PCBEXpress to electrically test the PCBs before ACC assembles them.
ACC is charging just about what we were charging before for assembled boards.
If we order 100 from them for this second batch, they will be $1,494, or $14.94/ea. If we order 250 from them, they will be $2,475, or $9.90/ea. That's *assembled*, folks.
If we go through this second batch and order a third batch, 100 will cost around $897, or $8.97/ea assembled. 250 would be $1957.50, or $7.83/ea.
ACC will charge me a $400 fee up front, and then the rest is due within 30 days. So if we don't get this done within 30 days, some folks will have to help with financing.
Bob Carmany and I will still be offering our EPROM burning services. If someone wants to volunteer excess cart cases for the group, we can build that into the cost.
Thoughts, everyone? How's $9.90/ea assembled sound? Get 250 orders and you'll get it!
This is great news. I will be ordering some fome my future homebrew games.
Already have quite a few cart boards from Jon and they are all of the fines quality!
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Tried it in both classic99 and MESS. Looking forward seeing more
Just out of curiosity: What kind of settings will the "settings" section allow you to change ?
Thanks for trying it out. Feedback is important.
He heh, I have no idea. Other than maybe setting up the keyboard to substitute the joystick. This is probably more useful on the real deal. I was originally thinking about having different sets of colors, but that’s a no go today. Then you might set the difficulty or starting level here. Could set something stupid like volume of sound. I wasn’t going to have in game music, but if the title music works out fine, which it shouldn’t, because there’s not room for any lengthy musical score there. The title music is probably either going to be military drums or a song which recently peaked at chart position 3 around the world. I’m practicing both tracks on my piano synthesizer to get a just a bit of human touch. Will transfer later using MIDI. Maybe a trainer mode with immortality and no scoring.
Hope you will be able to fit it all in just 8K
Here are some some ideas:
1. I don't think it's a big issue scanning both joystick and keyboard.
Having that, there is no big reason for doing a keyboard setup.
In terms of code size the 'keyboard' configuration will most likely take more
space as scanning joystick and keyboard. I guess most folks will be fine with default keys anyway.
2. Trainer mode with immortality and no scoring would definitly be very nice.
3. At first I was thinking about a code for entering a specific level, but I dunno if codesize will permit that.
However if code size permits, you could also generate a code that identifies your score/level/difficulty level.
On a small companion website you can then enter that code and you will be added to the "hall of fame".
Would be nice for a gaming competition.
4. Looking forward to the sound effects
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Most of the static character patterns are in place. Title screen constructed. Demo attached. Extract bin from zip or rename extension to rpk. Next up ... Joystick and keyboard driver. Title screen selection.
Tried it in both classic99 and MESS. Looking forward seeing more
Just out of curiosity: What kind of settings will the "settings" section allow you to change ?
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Managing velocity
Vertically depth charges moves a bit faster thru the air and slows down thru the water. Mines and torpedoes have constant speed.
Horizontally the destroyer stays fixed, but you can move it anyway. You move to the left and everything else but the destroyer moves to the right and vice versa.
The clouds move slowly (in one direction), but will be affected by your movement.
Also the destroyer accelerates to a certain speed and then deaccelerates to a halt. Of course depending on input from the player. This makes it possible to dodge mines and torpedoes, but also making it somewhat harder to hit those deep sea submarines.
I better start coding ...
sounds very nice.
So, do you think a cartridge run could be made for Destroyer?
That would be really cool. A real new game on cartridge
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Well, MESS does still handle cartridges. There is a new format for storing ROMS.
The ROMS are now in .rpk files (basically a zip file with .rpk extension containing rom and metadata).
Check here:
http://ninerpedia.org/index.php/New_MESS_ROM_format
and here:
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What's that one funky, low-res video mode that's available in assembly? maybe that would be a good candidate for low-rez games, that would get a speed boost.
Guess you are referring to Multicolor mode?
From [email protected]:
Mode 3 (Multicolor): 64×48 mode, very blocky and rarely used. Each 'pixel' can have its own color defined though, hence the name.
Its sprites still have the same resolution as in screen modes 1 and 2.
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have to say, the dept charges look very cool
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ok, got inspired a little and just had to this mockup for the title screen.
You could have the destroyer ship being black and move it slowly from left to right over the logo.
Ofcourse the "PRESS ANY KEY TO PLAY" font should match the SCORE font and perhaps some more useful text
would be better (like points for destroying submarine).
As this will be an 8K rom, don't know if you will still have room for a title screen (compression?)
How about sound effects?
This is great stuff, it was fun doing this quick mockup
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Are you planning to let the clouds move or change slowly? Or will they be static?
Either way, I like the color combinations
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Nice. Looking forward to this one
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Okay, couldn’t help it. Here’s a few mockups ...
The Space Zap screenshot looks great. Guess it would also work well on the Odyssey2 (Philips G7000 in Europe)
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Space Zap would be cool. Just watched the arcade version on youtube
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If you look at the requests you should see that they are going to a server owned by Invision, so this won't have any affect on AtariAge's server. This is one of the reasons they will be charging for this service, as they will have to maintain a range of servers depending on how many of their customers purchase this module (probably quite a few) and how busy those respective chat sessions are.
I am personally not a big fan of Java-based chats, as they typically take several seconds to start running when you load the browser and they typically don't integrate quite as well with the rest of the page (non-standard UI, graphics, colors, etc. often clash, etc). The same is true with Flash-based chats.
As it is not impacting on the AtariAge servers you should be just fine
I second your opion on java applets, they just don't integrate that well.
considering all in all, I think the chat functionality will be a great feature.
Looking forward on seeing how it evolves
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Emulation problems
in TI-99/4A Development
Posted
You are welcome. I guess there is no TI emulator that emulates speech perfectly.
But it is nice reason to give it a shot on the real deal