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ColecoFan1981

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Posts posted by ColecoFan1981

  1. Posted

    42 minutes ago, pixelpedant said:

    An intention on my back burner for a while has been a plan to take my TI-99 software manual archive online at some point in an appealingly organised and accessible way. 

     

    It feels silly for everyone to have to just maintain their own collection in this regard.  And it's worse yet for every new or returning community member to have to hunt this content down individually, when it's honestly spread all over the place so chaotically.  WHTech is great and all, but it's not exactly user-friendly and discoverable.  So I figured organising my own manual library and making that library searchable and accessible to others could go hand in hand.  Anyway, I've made a manual library at my hitherto never-used eponymous domain:

     

    https://pixelpedant.com

     

    Currently, there are 242 titles with at least one scanned manual version.  Though many have multiple manuals or scans thereof and the total number of manual scans was actually 304 at last count.  That's all thanks, ultimately, to the members of the community who've gone to the trouble, over the past years. 

     

    Virtually all manuals are in PDF format, though some ephemera I've included along with them are not (image of the game disk, advertisement in MP/99er, or that kind of thing).

     

    It's pretty intuitive.  Lots of manuals, searchable, browsable, and classified by software vendor, software media, and the nature of the software.  It's a work in progress and will always be, but it's already very, very large. 

     

    Partly, I needed to get my manual archive in order, but partly, when it comes to manuals, I just want there to be something more inviting than WHTECH for folks exploring the world of the TI-99 for the first time in a while, or for the first time altogether, looking for relevant documentation.  After all, in a world dominated by flashcarts and emulation, most people, most of the time, don't have the manuals for the vintage games they play. 

     

     

    Right, since many browsers are now blocking FTP sites once and for all, so this is cool how you intend to move all these files from WHTECH.

     

    ~Ben

  2. Posted

    2 hours ago, mizapf said:

    There is actually no limitation. You can turn on the sound processor, and it will continue without control. It is probably caused by the automatic sound list processing. Since it loads the sounds from VDP, there is no way to query the current VRAM pointer, so when you interrupt the music played from the list, you don't know where you were when you want to continue. But no one needs to use the built-in sound list player.

     

    (You may also use GROMs for sound lists, but typically, third-party games use machine language and the VDP.)

     

    Just checked: The current position should be copied in 83CC, so that could be possible. Maybe it is just a "worst practice" phenomenon? (Everyone using the same bad example.)

    I do believe there may be errors in the program code that result in all these sound-related interruptions. Something like, for example, an LDA instruction instead of an LDY or LDX.

     

    ~Ben

    • Like 1

  5. Posted · Edited by ColecoFan1981

    I'm guessing you guys were Beatles fans - wouldn't say that just from Taxman, but Super Taxman 2 plays When I'm Sixty-Four at the title screen, so... :P

    Speaking of The Beatles, they had a song called "Taxman" released in 1966 - it was penned by George Harrison.

     

    Its lyrics dealt with the oppressive British tax system implemented by Harold Wilson, the then-leader of the then-governing Labour Party, of which out of every pound sterling the group had earned at the time, 95 pence went into taxes, hence the lyric "there's one for you, nineteen for me," referring to when the pound sterling was pre-decimal and consisted of 20 shillings. Wilson is name-checked in the lyric "Don't ask me what I want it for" whereas Edward Heath (of the Conservative Party) is mentioned in "If you don't want to pay some more."

     

    "Weird" Al Yankovic wrote and recorded a parody of the song in 1981 called "Pac-Man," which was the same year Brian Fitzgerald's Apple II Pac-Man clone we're discussing here was released... "Weird" Al didn't commercially release his version at the time, due to the success of "Pac-Man Fever."

     

    Sample lyrics:

     

    Let me tell you how it will be

    There's one for you, nineteen for me

    'Cause I'm the taxman, yeah, I'm the taxman

     

    Should five percent appear too small

    Be thankful I don't take it all

    'Cause I'm the taxman, yeah, I'm the taxman

     

    ~Ben

  11. Posted

     

    Please check TPR's post a few posts back and tell me what are Chris requests there. He says, that he would prefer if porn isn't promoted on the ColecoVision. For me that is a clear statement that what he wants is not so much about CV trademark use in game (otherwise they would have requested the publisher to remove instead of a fan page), but that he wants to control the content and what can and can't be promoted for the CV. He believes the CV is his platform. He seriously believe that.... funny

    So it isn't about consumer confusion, it is about control. So your guidelines won't be enough for them.

    Yes, please do not produce any porno games!

     

    ~Ben

  14. Posted · Edited by ColecoFan1981

    This is what I do in the last room in the castle...

     

    Walk Smurf into near center of the room, then make him jump at the center of the floor, so he can do a long jump onto the skull's head and then another onto the throne where Smurfette is!

     

    The other thing that bothers me is this: why did the programmers not implement points for each unused energy unit? Since it is also how much "time" you have, each unused unit of energy could be 100 points added to your score. For example, if you have 14 bars of energy left upon saving Smurfette, that is 1,400 points added to your score!

     

    ~Ben

  15. Posted

    Is it true that 20th Century-Fox Video Games had planned to release Spacemaster X7 for the ColecoVision in 1983-84, before the video game crash took hold?

     

    Whether or not that's true, I would love to see you program a ColecoVision version of this Atari 2600 game.

    Sample gameplay video:

     

    ~Ben

  16. Posted · Edited by ColecoFan1981

     

    Does anyone here remember the Casio PV line of computers? They were quite rare given their 1983 introduction, since that year saw both the Nintendo Famicom and Sega SG1000 go on sale there for the first time. Casio also marketed two MSX-based computers under the models PV7 and PV16.

     

    Among the video games that were available for it included Namco's Galaga and Dig Dug, Konami's Super Cobra, Amidar and Pooyan, and Universal's Lady Bug and Space Panic.

     

    My questions about the PV line are:

    1 - what VDP did they have?

    2 - what soundchip did they have? I want to think... Texas Instruments SN76489

     

    Thank you,

     

     

     

    Ben Edge

  20. Posted · Edited by ColecoFan1981

    Here's a glitch I happened to exploit while playing Mr. Do! on ColecoVision (ColEm emulator):

     

    I was on scene 4, and the last Alphamonster I needed to go after was the "E" one to spell out "EXTRA" for getting an extra life. But just as I was about to power ball him, a blue Muncher suddenly dropped an apple down my path, crushing not only the Alphamonster, but also me and a Badguy. However, instead of going to the green Extra Life award screen, I instead lost my present life, and after game play resumed, all the letters in the word "EXTRA" became red! This means no Alphamonsters and thus no further opportunities for getting extra lives unless you reset your game! A screenshot of my experience is seen below for you.

     

    post-21978-0-00692100-1487903656_thumb.png

     

    Have any of you tried this glitch at least once?

     

    ~Ben

    • Like 2

  21. Posted · Edited by ColecoFan1981

    Here's my four palette fixes to be used in future editions of ColEm, AdamEm and Classic99.

    It is a spreadsheet as PNG file.

    post-21978-0-58985100-1487879224_thumb.png

     

    In order (from left to right), I have the RGB values for:

    TMS9918/A (as used on the TI-99/4, TI-99/4A and Tomy Tutor) - "tms9918.pal"

    TMS9928A (as used on the ColecoVision, Sega SG1000 and MSX1) - "tms9928a.pal"

    V9938 (original; as used on MSX2 and Myarc Geneve) - "v9938.pal"

    V9938 (alternate - which approximates the actual TMS9928A colors using the seven intensities of the V9938) - "v9938alt.pal"

     

    Please let me know what you think of all four of these. Thank you!

     

    ~Ben

    • Like 1

  22. Posted · Edited by ColecoFan1981

    Joe,

     

    I reworked the TMS9928A palette and set the maximum saturation level to 51%, which is bright enough yet that the RGB values do not read past 1.0 (255):

    01 - Black - 0,0,0 (#000000)
    02 - Medium Green - 62,184,73 (#3EB849)
    03 - Light Green - 116,208,125 (#74D07D)

    04 - Dark Blue - 89,85,224 (#5955E0)

    05 - Light Blue - 128,118,241 (#8076F1)

    06 - Dark Red - 185,94,81 (#B95E51)

    07 - Cyan - 100,220,239 (#64DCEF)

    08 - Medium Red - 219,101,89 (#DB6559)

    09 - Light Red - 255,137,125 (#FF897D)

    10 - Dark Yellow - 204,195,94 (#CCC35E)

    11 - Light Yellow - 222,208,135 (#DED087)

    12 - Dark Green - 58,162,65 (#3AA241)

    13 - Magenta - 183,102,181 (#B766B5)

    14 - Gray - 204,204,204 (#CCCCCC)

    15 - White - 255,255,255 (#FFFFFF)

     

    ~Ben

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