adamantyr

Ah that's right... I forget where I read about it, it was an article somewhere, where someone (must have been from DataSoft) expressed shock and dismay that Texas Instruments expected Zaxxon to be portable within such a tight technical confine. I'd have loved to have seen Pooyan on the TI. Ever since I saw it on my brother's TRS-80 Color Computer, I love the colorful graphics and hectic gameplay. I've mused at times doing a port myself, but I got other TI stuff I need to finish first, no distractions. It doesn't surprise me that TI hardware was difficult to work with. I do remember reading somewhere (again, I don't recall the source) that the Atarisoft developers had nothing but base TI's and the Editor Assembler. I'm SLIGHTLY skeptical of this because some of the things done with games like Donkey Kong are pretty advanced.

Not a problem for me, I got several monitors that work just fine. In fact, I may see if anyone here wants to purchase one. Only stipulation is I really REALLY don't want to ship anything, so pick-up is vastly preferred. I'm not a huge fan of how the TI composite signal renders on modern TV's. I mean, it's sharp as heck, VERY readable on light colored screens. But the lack of a CRT means the original "glow" effect is gone, and colors get a little muted and muddy against black screen.

Excellent! I presume you mean to use the Adventure cartridge and Adventure Editor? I think the last time I tried to put together an adventure on it (a "Prisoner" one), I quickly found my imagination outstripped the 12K of memory available. I've considered at times that it would be fun to write a new text adventure engine that could utilize the full 32K RAM and disk system of the TI, so that a larger more opulent adventure could be written. Granted, Infocom adventures ARE the best, but there is something nice about the simpler two-word text adventures.

That's interesting because both the TI Tech Pages and Classic99 contradict that.

I just tested this in Classic99 and it worked as expected. ABS on a value of -1 converts it to 1, which fails to set the equality bit, as it's not equal to zero.

Hi, I got a TI console without a box, I was curious if anyone had a spare box they could send me to store it? Just the box will do, the interior styrofoam holder isn't necessary. I tried getting one on eBay, but the guy (charging $9.95 for shipping alone) REFUSED an offer of $5. Dude, it's an empty box. Seriously.

For the TI, this would be a sound CHIP upgrade. Which you wouldn't have to do much to improve it. There has been expansion cards for the P.E. Box to add a better sound system as well, such as the ForTI card.

A big part of why I find many of the TI games boring is that they are shallow and simple. Basic shoot-em-ups that you wouldn't spend more than 30 minutes playing. This in itself isn't a surprise, since the platform was originally intended to be a console. (And in that, wow did they fall short compared to the MSX, which is considerably better designed for both cartridge AND disk/cassette gaming.) The 32K / Disk system upgraded TI would be a much better platform for more nuanced and deep gaming, but unfortunately it was difficult to acquire during the active phase of the TI-99/4a (1980-1983) so most of the best games on that came out long afterwards. That's one reason I'm doing my CRPG... it's the kind of game we never had. (P.S. I'll be hopefully starting beta testing with external people next month.)

I think it gets a pass because it's actually a pretty good implementation of the game. Yes it's a simple game, but on cartridge it responds quickly and well. It's also way MORE exciting and thrilling to a small child than any of the education carts were.

There was no Zaxxon on the TI. Sega literally told Texas Instruments they were insane when they said "You have to fit it in an 8K ROM". Burgertime is a pretty bad port. In particular, the developer(s) didn't seem to get that restarting the music AFTER every sound effect is a horrible effect. To elucidate on my post from earlier, Star Trap has the look from a screenshot of being a cool Star Wars arcade game, or even Star Raiders. Instead you get a static unmoving screen, recycled Parsec laser sounds, and other than bitmap drawn lines for laser blasts, something that could have been easily written in Extended BASIC. On a cartridge for $29.95. A total freaking rip-off.

Star Trap

Sadly, TI's cassette system wasn't nearly as advanced as some other systems. My brother's TRS-80 Coco actually could play and search for specific files on the tape; it would just not read the data if it wasn't the right file.

Pole Position is pretty good. If you enjoy racing games it's nice to have.

Not on the TI, no. The TRS-80 systems regularly had 2-line contests in magazines; they could go up to 255 characters in a line, AND you had insane BASIC parsing that allowed NEXT after ELSE. I think my favorite though was just "NEXT" without a variable, which meant "end ALL ongoing loops here."

I'll check tonight and see if I have any duplicate game cartridges you don't have and are worth having.

TI's Pac-Man is defintely slow... it looks like they ARE using multi-plexed sprites to achieve ghosts with different colored eyes, I had heard from someone they were using character patterns but the behavior doesn't match. One thing I noticed is the chase algorithms do NOT match the arcade, where each ghost has a separate chase tactic. At one point I had all four just following me everywhere.

Submission: Python Platform: Extended BASIC Written by: Adam Haase Instructions: Move your python across the road to safety on the other side! Score more on each pass, but gets more difficult. Controls: Joystick #1 V9T9 Disk Image: python.dsk

Joystick required. Dodge the cars and get your python across the road as many times as you can! 100 CALL CLEAR :: CALL SCREEN(4) :: CALL MAGNIFY(3) :: CALL COLOR(9,12,2,10,2,15,11,13,13) :: FOR I=128 TO 140 STEP 4 :: READ C$ :: CALL CHAR(I,C$) :: NEXT I 110 CALL CHAR(96,"000000F0F",97,"0",104,RPT$("8000",4),105,"0") :: CALL HCHAR(23,1,105,128) :: CALL HCHAR(10,1,112,192) :: FOR I=1 TO 31 STEP 2 120 CALL VCHAR(1,I,104,2) :: CALL VCHAR(23,I,104,2) :: NEXT I :: CALL HCHAR(3,1,97,224) :: CALL HCHAR(16,1,97,224) :: CALL HCHAR(6,1,96,32) :: L=1 :: S=0 130 CALL HCHAR(19,1,96,32) :: N=MIN(3,1+INT(L/2)) :: Z=2 :: FOR I=0 TO 1 :: FOR J=0 TO 1 :: FOR K=0 TO N-1 :: C=1+K*80+RND*60 :: V=(J=0)*MIN(4+L,48)-(J=1)*MIN(4+L,48) 140 CALL SPRITE(#Z,136+4*J,3+INT(RND*14),20+I*104+J*32,C,0,V) :: Z=Z+1 :: NEXT K :: NEXT J :: NEXT I :: CALL SPRITE(#1,128,14,176,120) 150 CALL JOYST(1,Y,X) :: CALL COINC(ALL,I) :: CALL POSITION(#1,R,C) :: IF I THEN CALL DELSPRITE(ALL) :: GOTO 110 160 IF R<16 THEN CALL DELSPRITE(ALL) :: S=S+10*L :: L=L+1 :: DISPLAY AT(12,14):S; :: GOTO 130 170 CALL MOTION(#1,-X*4,Y*4) :: A=A+4 AND 4 :: CALL PATTERN(#1,128+A) :: GOTO 150 180 DATA 01030303010000000003070E0C0C070100808080E0F0381838F0C000000000C0,00010101070F1C181C0F03000000000380C0C0C08000000000C0E0703030E080 190 DATA 000000000304047FFFE75B3C1800000000000000FECE87FFFFE7DA3C18000000,000000007F73E1FFFFE75B3C1800000000000000C02020FEFFE7DA3C18000000

Submission: Cannon Platform: Extended BASIC Written by: Adam Haase Instructions: Aim your cannon at the target and attempt to hit it! 10 points for every successful hit. Controls: S and D to raise and lower angle of fire, E and X to increase/decrease power. V9T9 Disk Image: cannon.dsk

100 CALL CLEAR :: CALL CHAR(128,"03060C183060F0FC1818",130,"8142241818244281FF8199A5A59981FF",136,"0") :: CALL COLOR(14,13,13) 110 CALL HCHAR(24,1,136,32) :: CALL VCHAR(23,1,128) :: CALL SPRITE(#2,131,7,185,48+RND*96) :: DISPLAY AT(1,1):"SCORE:";SC :: A=0 :: P=10 120 R=185-32*COS(A) :: C=1+32*SIN(A) :: CALL SPRITE(#1,130,2,R,C) :: DISPLAY AT(3,1):"POWER:";P 130 CALL KEY(3,K,S) :: IF K=68 THEN A=MIN(PI/2,A+0.1) :: GOTO 120 ELSE IF K=83 THEN A=MAX(0,A-0.1) :: GOTO 120 140 IF K=69 THEN P=MIN(P+1,30) :: GOTO 120 ELSE IF K=88 THEN P=MAX(P-1,1) :: GOTO 120 ELSE IF K=32 THEN 150 ELSE 120 150 Y=-P*COS(A) :: X=P*SIN(A) :: CALL SOUND(-100,-7,2) :: CALL SPRITE(#1,129,2,176,5,Y,X) 160 FOR I=1 TO 3 :: CALL COINC(ALL,K) :: CALL POSITION(#1,R,C) :: NEXT I :: IF K THEN 180 ELSE Y=MIN(Y+1,10) :: CALL MOTION(#1,Y,X) 170 IF R<188 THEN 160 ELSE CALL DELSPRITE(ALL) :: GOTO 110 180 CALL DELSPRITE(ALL) :: SC=SC+10 :: CALL SOUND(-100,2000,2,3000,2) :: GOTO 110 I threw this one together for the contest. It won't win, I don't think, but fun to put together. Use S and D to change the angle of the cannon, and E and X to increase or decrease power, and space to fire. 10 points every time you hit the target. I have NOT tested if every location is accessible, nor if the coincidence checking is thorough enough to always get a hit. For 9 lines though it's pretty decent.

I've finished the 3rd world disk, just one to go!

Very cool! Welcome to the forums!

TI Extended BASIC permits multiple statements in a single line. It's not quite as voluminous as other 8-bit machines, like the TRS-80 Color Computer which allows 255 characters, but it's enough you can write something decent in 10 lines. The good thing about such contests is that we always get a lot of participation here; there's plenty of XB familiar programmers on the board.

Per the seller, he used it just fine with a transformer.

I don't use Magellan for my game, no. That's partly though because I built my tools for map creation on the TI awhile back. And I have other metadata (lighting and elevation) that is stored along with the tiles, something that's beyond Magellan's boundaries.