adamantyr

Heh, yeah, it's one screen to the left to reach the ruins, but a bit difficult with a low-level party. Here is a zip containing a new PDATA file that should make it MUCH easier. Characters are max level, lots of gold and potions. Drink stealth potions and you're temporarily able to avoid monsters. They wear off unexpectedly, but it should get you to the ruins. Also, these characters are strong enough even with starting gear to not have much trouble with anything on the way. PDATA.zip Adamantyr

Interesting, I had a failure at a different line... Tursi, if you're around, can you investigate this? This definitely doesn't happen in MESS or on iron. Adamantyr

Doh! Guess I was wrong there. I don't have that particular issue except on the archive, just some early 1984 issues. Adamantyr

I know Legends runs fine in MESS, but I've never fully tested it in Classic99. It IS accessing a file before loading the dungeon using a machine language subroutine, so it's possible that's what the problem is. Adamantyr

I'm testing out my copies now... by the way, my bad, the dungeon is one screen away from Wizard's Rock. And I had no problem getting there... how WEAK is your party? You're not playing version 1.0, are you? I got to the dungeon, but when it attempted to load the dungeon, it immediately crashed with an error "SUBPROGRAM NOT FOUND IN 3001". This has the looks of an emulation failure; it may have wiped out a machine language subroutine. Tursi, if you're around, can you look at this? Legends for Classic99: LEGENDS.zip Adamantyr

There are two disks, dungeon and island. You can find both of them on the TI Game Shelf. http://tigameshelf.net/xb.htm Adamantyr

Yeah, you don't use the level system EXCEPT to increase gold/XP grinding speed. Mystical Bears will net you a fortune, should you survive the battle. And you're not in any shape for this. Take note of one of the rumors in the Inn: "Without better weapons, those rookies won't survive one battle in the forest!" Look on the upper-left side of the first map screen. What's that yellow thing? It's a dungeon entrance! A lot of vintage and old-school games were badly designed. You can't use Final Fantasy as good example here, try playing Wizardry, Ultima's I-III, Phantasie, Might & Magic, etc. They're all HARD and demanding. Also, cheating is a time-honored method in old-school gaming to getting ahead. You know enough Extended BASIC to add a couple lines to the GENERATE file... add some numbers to your potion stock and gold inventory when you visit the tavern, for example. You can also just edit the player file too. Adamantyr

It's just starting that's hard. First level characters are really weak. And gaining experience is long and slow. The main thing leveling gets you is more HP and MP, which increases your survival rate considerably. The building on the right side is an outdoor inn, which will restore your party's HP and MP for 250 gold. (It will not raise dead characters) If you set the level to 6, and get into a fight with skeletons (the weakest monster in the game), you get pretty good return with little effort. Keep in mind it's also 6 times more gold and XP per encounter. That's how you can level up fast, one lucky battle and a quick dash back into Wizard's Rock to save your game. Also, don't forget your ranger can cast healing spells too at level 1. Adamantyr

So you were ONE step away from Wizard's Rock, and you weren't able to move back into the city? You're playing at normal TI speed, right? This game is probably not playable at fast emulator speeds, because the real-time monster attacks will come too fast for you to react. As for the general wussiness of your party, yes, THAT is normal. You can get slightly better weapons in the first dungeon which improve your survival chances, but then you're still missing, you just do more damage on a hit. Here's one thing to try. Stock up on stealth potions, use one IMMEDIATELY outside of town, and get to the dungeon on the same screen. There's no monsters inside, only traps, which you are warned about before you walk into them. If you find an "item", leave it be. Find either an exit to another screen at one of the screen edges, or leave the dungeon, saving the screen. That way the item is preserved and all the traps you removed are still gone. Then re-enter, pick up the item, and leave, this time without saving the screen. Re-enter and the item is back. Repeat until all four characters have something decent for armor and weapons. This is pure "old-school" gaming. Adamantyr

What kind of enemies are you fighting? Are you only going 1-2 steps from Wizard's Rock? Keep in mind it's real-time, not turn-based. You have to press 'Q' to bring up the sub-menu if you want to "pause" the game. That being said, maybe it's a decent clone of Phantasie after all... the CRPG Addict is having a heck of a time playing Phantasie III right now... Link below: http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/ Adamantyr

Umm... Not gonna happen. If I'm gonna spend that much time actually learning something, it's gotta be practical. Sorry. hhmmm, assembly language is *very* practical, really You can't believe what you can pull out of that little machine with TMS9900 assembly language. Indeed. Adamantyr

Self-modifying code can also be a real pain to debug as well... after all, you don't have a static "source" to follow. Quite right about it not working on modern systems... just think of all the damage a virus could do with something like this. Adamantyr

How's everyone's BASIC contest entries going? Adamantyr

Hm... based on my own experiences while programming in BASIC, I think you're a little over-ambitious with what you can accomplish... Just tracking 26 letter commands alone is a LOT of code space. A small example of how I'd implement it: 50 CALL KEY(3,K,S) 51 IF (K<65)+(K>90)THEN 50 52 ON K-64 GOTO 100,200,300,400,500,600,700,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Keep in mind you have line limits as well, ON GOTO and ON GOSUB have physical limits to the number of options. You can get a little extra line space by EDIT'ing the line, which gives you an extension of about a line at the cost of efficiency. Adamantyr

Cool, thanks Jon! I figured it was from another platform. The TI version is scaled back in places (shorter text messages, less elaborate elevator and bank graphics), but also has non-ASCII graphics and colors. Not a bad port, really. Additional: While 99'ers occasionally complain about the sound on their machine, at least in comparison to the SID chip, WOW is that PET machine chalkboard-scratch NASTY... *wince* Adamantyr

Here's another obscure game. It was one of the first games we played regularly on the TI, loading it from cassette. I found it pretty fun as a kid, and it's still rather challenging now. As to where it came from, I can't remember... we must have gotten it from a friend on cassette. The game was adapted for the TI from another source, and the names of the adapters are on it as well. Anyway, this is another surprisingly deep BASIC game with good game play and some challenging victory conditions. And if you think I'm lying, go ahead and try it and see what happens when you hit an underground spring... As a special treat, I have two versions: the original BASIC and a version that works in Extended BASIC by forcing the use of the extra character sets through a clever set of machine language routines. This was a MERGE script I got from the Yahoo 99'ers group some time ago. Not sure where it's gotten off to... BASIC version: Extended BASIC version: Adamantyr

If you had your TI hooked up to a TV using the RF modulator, you could get cases where the first two and last two columns were cut off. Usually only the first and last were really bad, but the curve of the video signal sometimes made the edges hard to see on both sets of columns. With a composite monitor, you don't usually have problems seeing all 768 positions. I wouldn't worry about it, program for the full-size screen. Adamantyr

I am stuck on 13. I can't open the path to the 3rd emitter. And you have downloaded the latest version on the thread? Because it was missing a corridor. If the chamber is isolated, your version is old. Adamantyr

So what's the highest level anyone reached? Anyone solve level 13? Adamantyr

I tested out loading sections at a time, but it's really bad for performance. The architecture of disk sectors doesn't work very well with it, because you have to load a lot of waste data in one record and extract only a small part of it. So each map is self-contained, and no further loads are done while scrolling for map data. I have a 4k buffer, so you can have up to 64x64 tiles, or any size lower, which is quite sufficient for my needs. Adamantyr

Yeah, it's much more efficient. Probably a bit of a performance hit, but for level generation that should be fine. It doesn't work so well with values over 100, but with screen data in BASIC we rarely need that. And you can always use two bytes, it's still more efficient than the numeric data. Also, use an Excel spreadsheet to do all the crunching of values into letters if need be... WAY easier that way. Adamantyr

Here's a complete listing of the program: You're probably wondering what the heck the level data is... it's encoded, structured as follows: 0 - End of data 1 - Single character (row, column, character) 2 - Horizontal line (row, column, character, length) 3 - Vertical line (row, column, character, length) 4 - Box (row, column, character, vertical length, horizontal length) 5 - Go to next DATA statement and continue There is also one single line that contains additional dynamic data, at most the starting position and backdrop character in the first three positions: 0 - End of data 1 - Buttons (count; location column, row, column) - Always writes a blank character at the location 2 - Power Ball (row, column, direction, affected row, affected column, character to place) - When the ball hits a node, the latter data is used 3 - Zappers (count; type (horizontal or vertical), row, column, length) To store values visibly beyond 9, I just use the associated ASCII character. So the letter A, value 65, represents the value 17 (65 - 48). For characters, I print the actual value. This is tricky because characters beyond 126 have no normal visible key... however, in TI BASIC, you CAN print them using the control key. They are detailed in Figure 3 on page III-4 of the BASIC User's Reference Manual. Unfortunately, they don't transfer via cut-and-paste to Classic99 correctly, so I have to hand-enter them in the emulator afterward. Adamantyr

Consider each numeric data value is costing you 4 bytes, compared to the single byte a character in a string would cost. Even the added code to process strings is more than compensated for by the gain due to compression. Adamantyr

Why not store the level data as strings instead, use 0-9 as characters? And values beyond 9 just become the ASCII characters above that. That's what I did in Aperture. Adamantyr

How many were you shooting for? Like I said, I was ready to drop a level or two if need be... As is, 16 levels in Aperture is basically the limit. And if I'd been too creative on some and added too many elements, it may not have fit. Also, if you haven't already, use DATA statements and a loop for character and color initialization. Do NOT use a bunch of separate CHAR statements. Adamantyr