InfernalKeith

The two-player element is essential. Each player sends pings out, tries to get a fix on where they are and what's ahead of them in the station, and makes decisions on whether to use up limited power in moving toward objects (which could be opponents) or artifacts, or even battery packs or light switches. Power is also used up in firing lasers. Getting hit with a laser can damage a bot -- if you notice the status lights at the top, they indicate condition of the robot. Yellow and red condition indicates levels of damage to the bot, and a damaged bot will consume much more power per move. Eventually, if the bot gets down to zero power, it shuts off, and is basically a wall for the duration of that level. It's a turn-based game. My plan is to attempt to build in AI where the computer player can either focus solely on the mission, ignoring you altogether... go after you single-mindedly in attack mode... or a mix of the two. That's all still very nebulous right now, of course. Also thinking about a few special moves, like a one-time "power surge" that can effectively cripple one of your bots, but also reveal a large chunk of the map all at once. Jotting those ideas down to implement later, to see if they screw up gameplay too much.

If THAT's legal, then ladies and gentlemen, may I present... ZeroZap.

Dude... gross!

After you've shit the shit games you intend to shit, your shit will itself defecate, and THAT shit will be how shitty my game is. If you're serving up a turd sandwich, mine will be a fecal zeppelin.

Must be the season? I have no excuse to be back at it, my workload is as insane as ever, but I am forcing some TI time into my days recently. Maybe it's a primal urge, as the temperatures drop, to get our TI power bricks overheating for warmth....

That's a great idea. I hadn't thought to approach it that way, largely because I have this thing for level editors... but given the relatively small size of the playfield, a level editor really doesn't make a lot of sense for this game. I will give this some thought. Thanks! I'm gonna try to get some form of the sonar working tonight -- getting the robot to turn, move and send pings to determine where walls and items are. I haven't done a lot with sound effects in recent times, so just getting a few distinctive tones for the different pings might take me longer than it oughta. If all goes well, at least one bot will be "drive-able" in a blind space station tonight.

Adam, If you could point me in the direction of where that's been discussed before (because I feel like I've seen it), or break it down quickly for me, I'd appreciate it. My plan for loading game maps in was to allow a map editor and user-customizable maps, and also to retain a "space station" feel. The game could just as easily be played on a totally random board, at least if I include some of the features I'm considering (a laser to blast out wall pieces, for example, which would eliminate the need for clear paths). But a totally jumbled, random map wouldn't look very "space-stationy."

Okay, I'm probably gonna regret even mentioning it, but I went off on a designing tangent tonight, and I've sketched out the bare bones of what will be a new Extended BASIC game called DEAD STATION. It's inspired by Adamandtyr's Dark Maze game, as well as the Dungeon Key game I mentioned a few days ago. In it, two players (two humans or one vs. computer) each control two robot units. Your robots have been teleported into a "dead station," a space station complex that has suffered a total system failure. Due to the intense radiation, your robots' visual sensors won't work, and even a scan of the station reveals nothing. Each of the bots has been transported into one corner of the station, but you don't even know which robot is in which corner -- only which direction it's facing. To make matters worse, the robots have a finite amount of power, which is being compromised by the high radlevels. Every time your robot moves, or even turns 90 degrees, it uses power. Running into objects drains its strength still faster, and your opponent's robots can leave exploding traps for you, shoot at you, or even start a nuclear chain reaction, all to drain your power. When your robot's power reaches zero, it shuts off and cannot be used or recovered. However, your robots are equipped with crude sonar. You can send a ping in front of your robot, and you'll get an audio cue back depending on if there's a wall, an object, or clear space in front of you. Your object -- to find important artifacts in the ruins of the station, activate the self-destruct, and get your robots to the transporter pods to beam out before your opponent does. The game will feature multiple space station maps, which will load from disk, and the ability to save a game in progress. The computer AI can be set to aggressive (focuses more on attacking your bots) or defensive (avoids your bots, focuses on finding artifacts and completing the mission). Here's a screenshot of one station map, completely revealed. (There are still some game elements missing.) But what you'll see when the game actually begins is this: You have to stumble around in the dark, using the sonar, for a bit, though encountering the yellow triangles will illuminate portions of the station. I'm envisioning it revealing itself in patches, so you could be in a clear zone, sending sonar down a hallway and listening for audio cues to see if your opponent's robot, or an object you need, is down that path. I literally just started on this tonight, so a lot of the game elements could change as I progress. I'm gonna make a real effort to stay on this and have at least a rough working version of it done sooner than later. Keith

I love the looks of their games - the graphics are great. I remember seeing them in 99'er ads years after the fact, and wishing I could get them all. I bet if they were compiled, or rewritten in assembly, all the ones I've played so far would be spectacular "twitch" games -- turn off brain and just shoot/dodge. It's just that the response time can't keep up with the games. To be fair, I only loaded the keyboard versions of each of the ones I recently tried. I dunno if the joystick ones will somehow work better, but I doubt it.

I'd like to have that one, too, it's one of the ones I don't have. I'm planning to release the code for the ones I have now when I get reviews of them up. My laptop troubles are putting a dent in that whole project right now, unfortunately. I think I have a couple of the others already. I'll probably leave Ernie's lot alone unless I really can't resist it -- I spent quite a bit on 'collection' stuff last month.

The ones I've found so far are Extended BASIC arcade-style games. I don't usually see them in the original packaging -- I just got a few, and paid too much for them, which may be why Ernie decided this week to put that batch of them up. My take on them, based on the ones I've played so far, is that they're very nice-LOOKING games, that are so slow and unreponsive as to be unplayable. The ones I've seen are very simplistic, relying on the most rudimentary "turn and shoot the sprite" or "don't hit the sprite" action in the main game loop, yet the input response is still so sluggish that the game ends up being pointless. I haven't spent a LOT of time with them yet, though. And again, they look awesome; whoever did the graphics for them knew what they were doing. I seem to remember a story (on the Timeline, maybe?) of Moonbeam going whole hog into the TI market and spending a lot of money, and winding up losing a small fortune. I do know that they bought a lot of really nice-looking full-color ads in 99'er, and their packaging looks very nice for the time, too. My verdict would be: neat as collector's items, but nothing you're gonna load in to play twice.

Just a little rant as I beat my head against my desk here... the hard drive in my Dell laptop died yesterday. It's a year old and has seen moderate, normal use. I've tried a few recommended tricks, and the computer doesn't even think a bootable disk is installed. It's done. While re-installing software on my older, also-unreliable Toshiba laptop as a stopgap, I went down to the basement to try out three Moonbeam Software diskette games for my 99/4A that came in the mail this week (and that I'll be reviewing on my site shortly). These fragile 5 1/4" floppy disks were made, at the latest, in 1983, and hadn't been loaded in or used for at least 25 years. All three of them loaded just fine on the first try. I don't know what greater truth you can derive from this, but I do know which computer I like more at the moment.

I LOVE those books! I just picked one of them up recently. I like that all that information is making its way to the web, but there's nothing like holding the book in your hand and reading it in bed, or having it propped open next to your TI console. If I remember correctly, I checked both of those books out of our public library a number of times, and I typed some of those programs into the TRS-80's at school, long before I had my own computer. Those clunky old TRS-80's, and the Apple IIe at the library, were even earlier programming/gaming experiences for me -- playing "Amusement Park" (basically a souped-up version of Lemonade Stand, with more things to buy and some crude animation) on the Apple used to enthrall me for hours. Lucky for me, no one else seemed to want to use the Apple for anything; they had a sign-up sheet in one-hour blocks but I remember being told "you can stay till someone else wants to use it" and sitting there till closing time.

First memory was playing Parsec, Munchman, and a 99'er type-in game called Giants and Dwarfs at my uncle Greg's house when I was nine or ten. We never had a computer or video game system in the house because Dad thought they were a waste of time - we finally got a Bally Astrocade for Christmas from one of the relatives, near the end of its run (probably a deep discount somewhere). Fast forward a while, and I somehow wound up with a Triton Products catalog -- I don't remember why -- and I used paper route money to buy a 99/4A console from them (probably 1987 or 1988). I know I also wanted a Commodore 64, but that seemed unobtainable on my budget at the time. Once I got into the TI, subscribed to Micropendium, and started programming, I was hooked. I wrote several crappy games in Extended BASIC, saving to cassette tape (and occasionally hitting FCTN = and erasing hours of work). I came up with the lofty name "KB Computer Concepts" and put ads in the back of Micropendium, selling maybe a dozen copies total of my software (Memory Motel, Spinner!, and a quiz-making program called Quizzard). The highlight of that time for me was sending my stuff to Jim "Tigercub" Peterson, and having him tell me he thought Memory Motel was a good game. I blew a bunch of my high school graduation money on a stocked PEB, a RAMdisk and a printer. Unable to resist the lure of newer stuff, I also bought a Commodore Amiga. Gradually, college life and young adulthood caused my interest in the TI to wane, and I ended up selling my whole system off to Bud Mills in the early 90's, shortly before moving home from Toledo for a while. Stupidly, I gave all my floppy disks to a friend to format and re-use, and all my program listings and notes got lost, so unless one of the few people who bought my crappy games ever turns up, I'll never see them again. I don't remember exactly when I got back into things. I'd started buying up and parting out old computers and game systems as part of my Ebay business, and I couldn't resist setting the systems up and playing with them. I know I have game notes going back as far as 2005, which was right after I got married, but our apartment at the time had very little space for setting anything up - I had a TI system out on our sun porch, but it was forever getting buried in boxes of miscellanous crap. Two moves later, we're finally in a good place with enough space, and I'm *still* working on my ultimate war room and programming workspace. I tried originally to be very ruthless and sell everything that came in, but now that I have permanent nerd-space, I'm getting way more into the collecting aspect of it, as well as programming and playing. Now that I'm self-employed with two kids, time is scarce, but I still get the same giddy, goofy feeling when I code something and it works that I did in 1987. I've never had time to go beyond Extended BASIC, but I still intend to learn assembly someday and devote more time to creating games. I enjoy making them more than playing them, though I've definitely got some favorites. I think the best memory for me was the immersion in my code, in making programs work, designing something and having it come to life on the screen. I can remember everything about sitting at my desk in the summer, drinking coffee and coding all day long, till my TI's power supply was hot to the touch and giving off that ozone smell you all know so well. I always figured that people who build ships in bottles, or put together 5000-piece puzzles, get the same sense of satisfaction at the end that I did when I typed RUN and it all finally worked. Memorieeees.....

I can see someone finding Parsec dull - it's really repetitive and doesn't have a lot of features - but I think it's got that same hypnotic, zone-out-and-play-for-hours quality that Space Invaders has. That HenPecked song haunts me, man! It's so weird I can't tell if it's like that by mistake, or it's in some weird prog-rock time signature that I'm just not sophisticated enough to get. And yeah, the game's pretty clunky.

I am confused. I seem to recall an ad for "Killer Caterpillar" from Norton Software, but I thought it was a cassette/disk game. Did someone dump it to a cart and release it, or is this a completely different game?

Yeah, hopefully as early as tomorrow. I'm in the middle of moving all my TI stuff down to the basement 'war room' from my upstairs office, so it's all in flux... but it's just a matter of throwing the game onto the CF and bringing it over into Classic99. I'm gonna grab screen shots and box scans for my site, too. It's a shame, by 1983 third-party standards, the packaging is really nice for such a lousy game. Really hoping the different setup gets me working on 99/4A stuff again. I thought having it all in my work space would make it accessible, but it just ended up buried in papers and junk and inaccessible most of the time. Plus, I could never work on my TI without work staring me in the face and saying "be productive, slacker." With all my old stuff down in the basement, away from work, I can hopefully use that as an oasis from real-world concerns and put in some uninterrupted coding (and gaming!) time.

It's a piece of crap, but I wouldn't count it, really. I think the poll was for games that a large number of 99'ers had actually seen. If we start counting all the crappy Frogger knockoffs and fake TI BASIC Q*Bert clones that popped up back then, our list would be huge, and full of forgotten moldy oldies. I couldn't stop brainstorming about it today, though, for ways to make it less sucky. I may mess with it if I can get this other TI stuff done and off my plate this week, like I'm hoping.

I've mentioned this before, too, but I think if TI had hung on for one more year, we'd have seen an explosion of new game titles. Many of the mainstream publishers (Epyx, Broderbund, etc) were finally coming around and reluctantly starting on TI projects, which got cancelled when TI pulled the plug. I wonder if TI had released a low-cost bundle, with the XB cart and a standalone 32K expansion, if some of these companies would have been able to make some decent cassette-based games for people without PEB's? Pure speculation now, of course, but people bought Commodore games on cassette well into the 80's.

I've really got to transcribe and post my interview with Michael Capobianco (Not-Polyoptics co-founder). It's extremely interesting to hear him talk of the software market in those times. He said that even requiring Extended BASIC cut into the sales of a title. And disk drives, they almost never bothered, until the end. All those hundreds of thousands of bare-console owners would find themselves with nothing but cartridges, and very little third-party software at their local store... Not-Polyoptics got listed in TI's official software catalog, and he said when updates to those went out, they would get a huge spike in orders. Some games are at least clever or well-created, even if they are now too slow and dated to get too much enjoyment out of (Not-Polyoptics did a TI BASIC Space Invaders clone, "99-vaders," that's impressive to see in action, even though it simply crawls in speed). But Dungeon Key... it's just a badly-made game. There are none of the traits that make you want to keep playing, or master a game. I'm already thinking of using the base code and idea and making a sequel that's actually playable.

Draft of my review is up on my site. A quote: "First of all... there's no goblins, glistening or otherwise. Why would you tell me there are goblins when there aren't any? There's no escaping into the cool night air, either. In fact, I don't think the person who wrote that box copy had ever seen the game in action. It's possible he'd never seen a TI 99/4A." http://www.orphantech.com/reviews/

Hoooooooooooooooooly crap, this game is a piece of garbage. Yuk.

Hello all, I'm working (still) on carving out some TI 99/4A time in my insane life... programming, plus reviewing older games and resurrecting some forgotten titles I've hoarded in recent years. One game, ALA Software's Dungeon Key, seems to be one of those titles that's vanished from the face of the earth. I bought a new, sealed cassette copy of it on Ebay many moons ago, and never got around to actually trying it out until tonight. I'm working on a review of it, which I will post on my website, orphantech.com, shortly. I'm basically doing a "live blog" review -- jotting down my thoughts in real time, as I try the game for the first time. I'll post scans of the cover art and some screenshots soon as well, and I will post the game file here for you all to check out. DATA OK... always so nice to see that pop up when you're loading a 27-year-old cassette for the first time ever. See you at the other end of the dungeon! Also gonna try to take advantage of a relative lull this week to finally finish the Atlantis project discussed previously, and get that game to you, and finish up some work on one of my own projects. Wish me luck! Keith

The auction ended with no bids last night. I'll throw out the offer that if anyone here wants it for $150 plus shipping, I'll sell it to you. If not, I'll probably just hang on to it as a backup system. Thanks! Keith

I don't mind Car Wars, but I'm terrible at it. The Attack, I always feel like there's something I'm just not getting. That AND ZeroZap, come to think of it. Kinda like "this CAN'T be all there is to this game." I get more annoyed by subpar games that came out in 1983. You had Commodore 64's coming onto the market, game production was stepping up to a higher level, and TI saw fit to put out crap like Munchmobile and Slymoids (great backgrounds, dumb game). Compare those to stuff like Microsurgeon, Fathom and Moonsweeper -- hmm, all Imagic titles. I wish Imagic had done Dragonfire or Atlantis for the TI, those are great games they created on some pretty limited platforms.