InfernalKeith

Well, when you suck at sprites, your options are limited.

Thanks man! I didn't mean for you to have to write me any code, but I'll definitely use this with gratitude. The basic premise of the game is that you're picking up diamonds of varying colors - some colors give you points, others take points away, kill you, or do other stuff. Each time you pick one up, all the other diamonds' colors change, leaving you stuck choosing the 'least worst' option sometimes. I figured being able to identify the color quickly, and then change the entire charset's color at once, would make the game fast. The only disadvantage, of course, is that you then end up using up quite a bit of your character sets to have one diamond character of each of the colors you use. More later, hopefully.

But I WAAAANT a built-in command to do it!!! (stomps and pouts) Ah well. It's not like I have time to work on it today anyway. Gonna do some Classic99 work this weekend at the in-laws', so hopefully I'll have something to show for it next week.

Is there an XB command that will tell you the color of a character set? Like, say a player moves to a square with a "*" on it, and the color of the asterisk determines what happens next (and has been changing periodically throughout play). Is there an equivalent to CALL CHARPAT that reports back the number of a charset's color?

Nothing from me, unless I throw good sense to the wind, blow off a ton of work, and finish the game idea I started sketching out on vacation (and then got no further with). It was basically a little trading game with ships sailing on a sea with some ports - I dig the idea and I might still develop it, but probably not in one day. I haven't had any TI time to speak of in the last while, which stinks, but self employment means making hay while the sun shines (Owen, you know that dance). Hopefully I'll get some time soon and can get back to work on some projects. I think I've missed a few of the entries, too, although the ones I've seen so far have been uniformly awesome. I plan to flesh out Thin Ice a little bit for my own release of it, just basically adding a save-score ability and the chance to play multiple boards if you survive the first round. Other than that, it's pretty much done, and for contest purposes the one that's there now is it. The newest evolution of my plan is to finish Enemy Lines (the board game), do the little tweaks to Thin Ice, then get to work finishing up a definitive version of Herding Cats and my quasi-RPG, Downward -- then release them all together as one package in time for the Faire. Which year's Faire? No comment.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Sakanakao#p/c/7E74E32198876508/0/euLdKW_Db1k Fun little project here, and who knows? Doable on the TI via tracker? I'm off to vacation, and hopefully some creative TI time. See ya next week! Keith

I was afraid this would happen... I'm going to have to "out" myself with my real name here, and issue a cease-and-desist to The Codex (if that's your REAL name...). My intellectual property is not a plaything for you retro hoodlums to monkey around with. And your cruel comments about my game's play make me want to walk slowly to the left and right and repeatedly punch at all of you. While ominous music plays. Sincerely yours, Cy Gnosis

I missed the deadline for this month's Retrogaming Times Monthly, so if you go there looking for an Atlantis article, you'll be sad. But fear not, I AM working on it, and hope to have some good news shortly. At the very least, I'm gonna have the program rescued from cassette before I leave for vacation, and hopefully I can then finish the rest of the conversion process via Classic99.

I have some EA carts. They're just not tested yet. Thanks for the kind words, all, and I promise not to post auction stuff here again until next time I stumble into that big of a motherlode of goodies. And Codex, the wacky array of stuff is pure survival instinct. I've owned two record stores in my life, which taught me quite a bit about relying on one category of item to make your living. :/

eBay Store: Exile-Toledo A whole slew of TI stuff in my ebay store is ending tomorrow, including a Super Sketch, a Myarc double-density disk controller, a loaded PE Box, a Rave99 speech synthesizer card, CorComp RS232 and more. I normally wouldn't spam in here about it, but a couple of these auctions have been mentioned already, and I know some of this gear doesn't come down the pike too often. K

I demand to hear speech in this game. "Hello. My name is Inigo Reichart. You killed my father. Prepare to die!"

That depends if you can still shoot possum while ya type, city boy! And good to see your priorities are still straight - Atlantis must come first. I've been following your efforts with that like a nervous scholar watching someone handle the Dead Sea Scrolls. Must not damage only known copy! Sir, I am shocked -- SHOCKED! -- that you would even insinuate that I might somehow damage the only copy of Atlantis we know of. I cherish that tape like its one of my children! I have devoted my life to ensuring its safe transfer to the new century! Now, just let me find something handy to stick under the wobbly leg of my computer desk here, and I'll be ready to work. There we go, and -- uh oh.

I have my half-assed RPG idea I still wanna try to do in 30 lines, plus one more idea that (if I get it to work) will be so super-cool, I'll have to only talk to you about it in the smack talk thread. But the Atlantis project comes first. And HOPEfully I can then get to finishing Herding Cats for final release, and finishing my Enemy Lines board game too. Argh! Thankfully, since I've finally joined the emulator world, I can do a bunch of coding while on a family vacation - we're leaving next weekend for a week in Alabama with my sister and dad. I'm sure they won't mind if I spend all my waking hours out on the back deck, drinking beer and writing code... right?

ok, that's a good plan Think this may work. Guess it mainly depends if the BASIC game uses character set 15 and 16, which aren't available in Extended Basic. I don't know what BXB is. Is it used for dealing with the character set issue ? Good luck The game does use sets 15 and 16. BXB is a program that allows you to run such sprite-free BASIC programs in XB while still using all 16 charsets. I haven't tried it yet, so I'm really hoping it works. I have a sick little one on my hands this weekend, so if she doesn't feel better when she wakes up this morning, my TI plans may be shot. We'll have to see how it goes. :/

You expect me to know how to do any of that? Do you see any reason for my original, somewhat cumbersome plan not to work? If I OLD CS1, delete some lines, then save it... then OLD CS1 again, delete the other lines, save THAT... then merge the two half-programs and run it through BXB to make it work in Extended BASIC. Suddenly we can access the 32K, problem is solved. Then we find out what the contents of the data file are that the program loads, replace that with hard-coded variables in a subroutine, and we're all set. I'm hoping to get a bunch of this done tomorrow -- big project is over and I may have some TI time before the next wave of work submerges me.

I want mine released exclusively on Wafertape!

This may be the coolest thing ever. Now I wanna put my game out on a cart!

I'll be putting a Myarc disk controller card and a CorComp RS232 up on Ebay later tonight. I can post links here if you're interested. Other than that, I've got more empty PEB's than I have cards, or I'd love to help out. I'm trying to maintain a full PEB system and a separate TI with a CorComp 9900 Mini Expansion system, plus a CF7+. Still not sure where I'm gonna PUT both of them, but eventually I hope to have quite the war room set up. After doing some work in Classic99, obviously I love the convenience of it, but I think I'm gonna go back to the real thing for development. I just get more satisfaction out of working on my original hardware -- I'm sure it's all in my head, but it's there, so I'm gonna do it. Definitely hoping to do some Classic99 work on the laptop while on vacation soon, though. Being able to take a "TI" with me is incredible -- I remember a few years ago, when I was gonna try to get back into programming another time, and I spent a good chunk of Christmas at my sister's house with graph paper, notebooks and the XB manual, scrawling stuff till 4am that I can't even decipher now. If I'd been able to actually code on the spot then, I might have gotten back into programming four years earlier...

V1.1 high score: 81,400. (Thinly veiled bump to get someone to download the updated version and tell me it's awesome.) *cough*

http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?ff3=4&pub=5574883395&toolid=10001&campid=5336500554&customid=&mpre=http%3A%2F%2Fstores.ebay.com%2FExile-Toledo_Texas-Instruments-TI-99-4A_W0QQ_fsubZ10679102QQ_sidZ18981493QQ_trksidZp4634Q2ec0Q2em322 Put up a few TI 99/4A rarities last night. Fathom, Star Runner, Midnight Mason, Strike Three!, St. Nick, Sewermania, a rare educational cart called Reading Rainbows I've never seen before (w/manual plus student read-along book), etc. A rare "Super Extended BASIC" with manual is also up for sale. As always, buy 5 or more and get free US shipping. Plenty of commons listed in my Store, some as low as $1.99, to fill gaps in your collection. Thanks! Keith

Finally remembered to update this file and the documentation. Version 1.1 is now available on this thread, and in the SSGC contest submission thread. A minor modification, but it makes for a much more fun game. Good luck on the ice!

Thin Ice V1.1 by Keith Bergman THINICE1-1.zip

There was such a game in "Games TI's play", by Scott Singer and Tony Bartels. I have a copy. It's adapted from "Games Apples Play" By Mark James Capella and Michael D Weinstock. At a glance, it's pure text and written in TI-Basic. Adamantyr Scroll down a little bit and check the "Santa Paravia and Fiumaccio" thread. There's a Hammurabi-esque game I salvaged from a commercially-released 1980 tape. Also TI BASIC and all text. I know if you're looking for an exact version, only it will probably do, but that game might still be worth copying and pasting for you.

I have it on tape... if I get the 99/4A fired up this weekend like I hope to, I'll load it, save it to the CF and paste the code here for ya.