GratedTopping

On my first try, I did a little change and it worked to my surprise: 12 C=(B-1)+16*(A-1) Of course, I don't understand why, but now the program does as was intended. Your border and screen colours are different. Thanks, Lee, for your assistance. I like your modification, too, and I figure I'll alter the program to allow a person to choose any option. With your change, the text can be a different color; with mine/the original program, the text is the color of the border.

With that change, it did make it interesting and a bit different. Choosing the 'border color' results in the entire screen being the color of choice. Choosing the 'screen color' makes the text the color of choice. I remember there being a different program somewhere in one of the magazine's issues where it had this purpose specifically.

I can't get this to work properly in "Classic99". I haven't tried it in any other emulator. It allows you to chose a border and screen color that will remain in programming mode, even through a NEW command. I found it in November 1985's "MICROpendium". For me, the border color changes properly to my choice, but the screen color is off. Note that I did edit this a bit (including an ON WARNING NEXT, for example), but certainly didn't change any of the CALL LOAD statements. I've gone over it a lot in the mag and can't figure it out. Does anybody have a working copy or know what's wrong? Maybe a correction was published in a later MICROpendium...or "Classic99" just messes-up with it? 1 ! 2 ! XB SCREEN COLOURS 3 ! 4 ! (CHANGES YOUR SCREEN DISPLAY TO YOUR CHOICE OF COLOURS WHILE IN COMMAND MODE) 5 ! 6 CALL CLEAR :: ON WARNING NEXT 7 INPUT "BORDER COLOR? (1-16): ":A 8 IF A<1 OR A>16 THEN 7 9 INPUT "SCREEN COLOUR? (1-16): ":B 10 IF B<1 OR A>16 THEN 9 11 CALL CLEAR 12 C=(B-1)+(A-1) 13 CALL INIT :: CALL LOAD(9984,C,C,C,C,C,C,C,C,2,0,7,15+A,4,32,32) 14 CALL LOAD(9999,48,2,0,8,0,2,1,39,0,2,2,0,8,4,32,32,36,2,0,8,8,4) 15 CALL LOAD(10021,32,32,36,2,0,8,16,4,32,32,36,2,0,8,24,4,32,32,36,4,91) 16 CALL LOAD(-31804,39, :: CALL LOAD(-31952,255,231,255,231) NOTE: in line 16, that's an 8 in the first CALL LOAD, but I see it's turning up as a smiley face. . .

This still remains one of my favourite TI games. I never knew it came out on disk and still have it on cassette. I remember modifying it a bit back then when I was around 14 and thinking I was a programmer by just changing the colours and graphics to my liking a little bit. I believe the bread pieces were originally gray, but I liked them white; the grass was too light, so I made it color 13 (dark green); and the red ants were better at dark red. I'm pretty-sure I modified the spider to a different appearance, too. I'm curious to try my version in the "Classic 99" and see what I did. 'InfernalKeith': The one listed above, can you tell me what minor differences you might see compared to your 1987/disk release? It's all interesting to me, too.

I like the graphics and the spinning of the wheels. It's pretty tough to win; I still haven't after lots of tries, but it's nice. Good work! Thanks for the game.

I love getting new (or 'new-to-me') software for my TI; thanks for all of your contributions.

Neat trivia; I never even knew of this magazine. I'm looking forward to trying out those two games (and debugging them) and hope to find more (either here or elsewhere). Thanks, guys.

Hi. I found this information: There are 3 files extensions for TI Artists's files: 1) _C and _P: standard picture files; 2) _F: fonts files (load them from "enhanced" menu, then "Fonts"); 3) _I: instances (cliparts). Load the instance (from "enhanced" menu). It shows a bounding box which can be moved around with the joystick. Pressing the fire button drops the instance on the screen. So, the files are 'instances' (clipart) and can be used with TI ARTIST.

That's a disk file and should have TIdisk at the end for use with "Win994a" emulator. Every file in it is DIS/VAR format and each file has "_I" at the end. The disk's name is BK. I imagine they are picture files, perhaps viewable with TI ARTIST? However, I can't test it as my TI ARTIST disk file doesn't seem to work with the emulator. The program "TI99dir" doesn't allow me to view the files as pictures, so I'm not fully sure what they are. I hope you would share your games or other TI files when you can. You probably have a lot of good software. (-:

"Espial" was one of the biggest stinkers to me. The graphics weren't the smoothest and the small music-bit repeated forever and it truly got on my nerves. "SUPER Mario Bros." was up-there as being quite bad, too. I appreciated having something that was based on a popular game, but it was really confusing and not enjoyable. The countdown timer was too fast; everything would scroll crazy; the music was annoying; you couldn't go down a tube; nothing really worked. Now, "Beyond Parsec" was a complete turd in the garbage and gets my vote for a worst game. It was two-players only and all you did was shoot asteroids, that didn't explode, and try to make your opponent hit one. The screen didn't scroll; the laser never overheated; there was no lift selection (though it wasn't necessary); no voice; no other enemies to avoid. It was so dull and I still remember my first time playing thinking "What the heck is this?" I was suprised that it was from John Phillips. His "4A Flyer" was pretty-much a toy flight simulator. His "MoonMine" was fine and the "MunchMan II" was a correct example of a followup. I actually liked "Zero Zap" a lot and still think it's good to play. I thought it was creative and I felt it was neat being able to set up the playing field when I wanted. It was cool never knowing if a zero would appear and you'd lose one of the players. I also thought "The Attack" was alright. The numbers counting down...trying to shoot down the spores before they'd combine to form an enemy...it made it a bit intense, knowing something was about to happen, and it was fun to me. I'm surprised so many didn't like them.

neat; did you leave the RANDOMIZE out on purpose?

So, this GameBase for the TI is no longer? What happened??

NOT the "99'er"... Does anybody have a Win99 disk file or Classic99 files of programs from this old magazine? http://www.abandonware-magazines.org/affiche_mag.php?mag=87&page=1

My brother and I got a kick out of "Zero Zap" and thought it was a good idea. I liked the BASIC version of it from an old TI book, too. I still have the original "Super Marios Brothers" and manual and I remember being so happy to get it as a child -- but disappointed, too, since I had received better games. Some worst titles: - MunchMobile - Super Marios - Facemaker - Star Trek - Video Games 1 - Mind Challengers - 4A Flyer - King Of the Castle - Beyond Parsec (the least original and playable)

as do I; thanks for the info

I always enjoyed Mr. Knecht's music programs for the TI. He had a lot of tunes and I felt his programming was top-notch. I remember as a child enjoying his Christmas-music compilations during the holiday season and enjoying the graphics as well. Not long after ordering a Christmas disk from him, I learned in a "MICROpendium" issue that he passed away at just 43 (I believe). His widow still sent me the disk I ordered before I knew of this. I wanted to share one of his disks (for use in Win994a) in remembrance and for Easter.

[DOUBLE POST; SORRY] I always enjoyed Mr. Knecht's music programs for the TI. He had a lot of tunes and I felt his programming was top-notch. I remember as a child enjoying his Christmas-music compilations during the holiday season and enjoying the graphics as well. Not long after ordering a Christmas disk from him, I learned in a "MICROpendium" issue that he passed away at just 43 (I believe). His widow had still sent me the disk I ordered before I knew. I wanted to share one of his disks (for use in Win994a) in remembrance and for Easter. Great Hymns programmed by Bill Knecht.zip

I would want it to be closer to the 4a and some things I would require... - console BASIC retained and updated Extended BASIC built-in for option two; I liked the one from the past that had "Draw n' Plot" accessible to allow better control over graphics; I want major ease in creating lots of graphics (by lines or circles, for example) and so-many-more characters able to be redefined + more colours - 32k standard - I don't like the silver consoles; I think they are ugly and the power button stunk; the gray consoles always seemed nicer to me; if it had to be silver, the on/off button would have to be just like on the gray 4a versions - cartridge slot allowing you to push it down into the console - wider keyboard; better ENTER key + number pad - SD card capability a plus; want to easily transfer data from TI to PC/PC to TI - true lowercase - built in speech synthesizer, with any word accessible and no need to use Terminal Emulator II - ability to play MP3's and use of a great sound card - easy-connection for a 3.5 drive - let's call it a TI-99/OK (new machine would be OK -- and it sounds close to the cool 4a)

I'm using the most-recent version of Classic99. It seems that RPT$ is not working correctly. In a program line, I tried a CALL CHAR(143,RPT$("80",) <note -- that's supposed to be an 8 but it shows up like a smiley plus there are two "))" on the end> and the error is a string-number mismatch. However, just typing that in, the character is redefined properly. Is this something that was mentioned in the documentation? Did RPT$ work properly before?

I second that! I have free time to work on it. Let's see what you have?

Updated it a bit: - CALL CLEARs are now DISPLAY ERASE ALL (it's how I like it) - main-character's walking sounds are gone (slowed things down) - other sounds' lengths made shorter (I never even realized, though obvious, that a command following a CALL SOUND won't execute until the sound is completed) The CALL COINC detection still isn't the best, but it's all fun. Does anybody think that the CALL LINK which apparently allows monitoring of keyboard and joystick in one statement, could actually slow things down somehow?

I liked this game but it is true that it isn't as responsive as it could be. I know I cut out one of the sounds made when the oxygen is being depleted (two was unnecessary). I imagine that making the main character not have a walking animation would help with sprite COINCidences. Maybe making the 'squiggly line' that you fire move slower could help in that area, too. Changes can be made to the program further down in the line numbers without problems, I believe. I know that I read somewhere, probably in a MICROpendium, about how you could still 'unhide' and retrieve assembly code that was hidden in an ExB program with ALSAVE. I think it had a companion program for that purpose. It seems that I used some code that was supposed to help improve responses from joystick or keyboard and I have no idea where I got that from and would like to see that again. I'm not sure it helped much, though. Perhaps in CPU overdrive under "Classic99" it would be better? I think this performed much better on the real hardware.

Thank you!

You've got to save the nuclear reactor from a meltdown. A very cool game from an issue of "Home Computer Magazine". Years ago when I typed it in, I altered it by including instructions/story from the mag. I've tightened the code and tried to make sprite coincidences better. Later, I added some assembly language routines to speed things up using a utility called "ALSAVE" (which allows a normal Extended BASIC progam to save 'hidden' assembly along with the program). So, don't edit/resequence or it will get messed up. MELTDOWN.zip

Anybody have a working RESEQ? If so, could you share it and tell me what was wrong with the program?