GratedTopping

I only found it as a .TIcart for the Win994a...

My thoughts: "Ms. Pac-man" was quite nice on the TI. "Moon Patrol" was the best in the line and a great conversion. The thing I disliked most with that was that even a slight touch to a crater and you lose a buggy. Aslo, the tire didn't pop-off the buggy when you crashed. "Donkey Kong" was certainly better than on the Atari 2600 + it had all four levels (though it surely should have had the springs). The worst from Atarisoft were "Picnic Paranoia" and especially "Pole Position".

Yes, I imagine so (which is why I said "or at least looked at this posting"). I knew that there wouldn't have been THAT many people looking. Still, anything is good.

I was wondering if someone could help with this program from the July 1989 "MICROpendium". Jerry Stern was the author of "RESEQ2", a better way to resequence a program. You can use it to choose increments of different sizes in different parts of a program. Also, when a program is resequenced, even if there is a point where no line number existed, you'll still get the GOTO 32767 statement...but at the end of the new line, you'll see a a remark stating where the line that was being referenced to is located. "REFERENCE 340 TO 350", for example. Anyway, this part doesn't work for me. I get a, for example, "REFERENCE 340 to 64352" (or some impossible line number). Does anybody know what it happening or have a correct/properly-working "RESEQ2"? As for this included version, it is mine but is majorly the same; I've only modified it's appearance, not actual important code: - a little change in some word in the layout - included more characters to be accept in the ACCEPT AT statments - added the part where it clears the screen and tells you to NEW and then OLD DSK#.progname; originally, it just stopped I've checked my listing against that in the magazine and nothing of importance was different. As well, I used the unmodified program from the original "MICROpendium" disk (through the emulator) and the problem still exists. Looking at the 6 or so issues after that issue, I found no fix for the program. I'd love to get it working, as it surely would be a useful utility! RESEQ2.zip

Well, I had nothing to do with the EFONT. Turns out that I got it from the September 1987 issue of "MICROpendium". There, you can use it in assembly or in BASIC by entering in the CALL CHAR statements. Good font! Glad to see over 100 folks have tried "The Hermit" (or at least looked at this posting).

I have lots of early "Compute!"'s in good shape; a few of the "Compute!'s Gazette" magazines (but most disks of programs from them); very old "Byte"'s; lots of various Amiga-related mags from the U.S. and UK; and a few years ago I got 30 or so brand-new looking issues of "Ahoy" for the Commodore 64. I think that was one of the coolest mags and made me want a C64 (which I eventually got). That magazine was chock-full of games in each issue. I remember having all of those old "Enter" magazine (I lost the majority of them) and later on, "Enter" folded mostly -- it got a new section in "3-2-1 Contact" magazine of 12 or so pages, I think. Anybody remember when they merged? I know I have at least one "Rainbow" mag; I used to buy some issues of non TI-magazines, knowing that there was a program in them that I thought I could easily convert to TI. Oh....and I still have all the "99'er" magazines & "Home Computer Magazine" issues. Just a few "Family Computing" mags, too, and some special program compilations from FC. I loved computin' from the mags!!

I never knew of it in the day. Never read about it any magazines, newsletters, or heard from user-groups. I think it was always rare. These days, I know I've checked out so many carts for sale on ebay, asking the seller if he could see if his Invaders had the cheat code; no luck yet. I'll still keep at it 'cause I really want one of these.

So, I'm not sure if I posted this before, but here it is. "TI Invaders", the best "Space Invaders" clone, with the rare SHIFT 838 cheat-mode! Once you press SHIFT 8, the animation on the title screen will pause but you'll still need to enter in the rest of the code. Use it to first select slow speed (Y/N). Then, pick your start screen (00-40). Slow speed only affects the movement of the invaders and they won't speed up their decent. You'll move the same, saucers are the same speed, and all missiles launched or dropped move the same. The word TEST appears next to your score. It's in "Win994a" .TIcart format and works fine. I have no idea where I located the binary code, but I created the cart through the "Win994a" emulator. Does anybody have an actual cartridge of TI Invaders with the SHIFT 838 intact? It is was ever released that way, it must have been in a very, very early batch of cartridges. TI Invaders RARE (WITH SHIFT 838 CHEATS).zip

Yes, indeed. I wouldn't call it AI, but a lot of "AI" books of the time would have identified it as such. Still, it was cool to check out and thought I'd share it with folks. It's too bad I can't find a real version of "Shrdlu" (for the TI or elsewhere). I read up on that and I'd like to try it somehow.

A simplified version of the artificial intelligence program "Shrdlu". The TI manipulates a series of colored blocks (shown as letters) following your instructions and telling you - from time to time - how the blocks are arranged in relation to each other. There are four blocks that you are looking at from the front. The world is essentially two-dimensional. You can move blocks around and put them on top of each other, but cannot put them in front or behind others. There are four commands you can give: WHERE IS THE <color> BLOCK (or ONE or CUBE)? TELL ME WHAT YOU SEE (or CAN SEE) SHUFFLE THE BLOCKS PUT THE <color> BLOCK ON THE <color> ONE The original program was from the 1984 book "Exploring Artificial Intelligence On Your Commodore 64" by Tim Hartnell and adapted for the TI-99 by me, Brian H ['GratedTopping'], in March 2009. BLOCKWORLD.zip

I know I've transferred a few of my old cassettes to the PC using a program to read the TI data tapes. I only did that a little -- with pretty good success -- until I discover just transferring files right from the TI to the PC laptop 3.5 disk and then taking that disk to the 3.5 on the old PC tower. Any, as far as I recall, "CS1er" didn't work as well for me as "Tape994a". I can be certain, but I know that I had first-time coversion using at least one of them! It definitely has to do with volume controls on the tape player, too, and a TI recorder or one similar (with volume + tone knobs are recommended). I can't find a working link of the "Tape994a", so I have attached that. I also found my transfer of the "Daddie's Hot Rod", read yo run in "Classi99" Try and see if you can get a copy from the tape and if maybe you can share? Tape994a v3.1 final.ZIP

Yes...the faithful Amiga. It sure does look like that's one of the fonts on that computer. I wonder if I somehow used it from my Amiga, because I liked the look, and made it into assembly on the TI? I don't know how, but I was into that a little bit -- and my brother at the time was more understanding of assembly. Too bad I didn't keep documentation/history of creations then. Thanks for the info.

NOTE: UPDATED VERSION [see first post] - you can now start the SOLUTION file from the LOAD program - SOLUTION is edited a bit; had some ":" in DISPLAY AT lines that weren't needed; also, I removed the CALL SAY statement as that locked-up the "Win994a" emulator - changed other CALL CLEAR statements to DISPLAY ERASE ALL - changed the remark statement in the main program to my ID of "GratedTopping"

Ah, I see. I guess it's common knowledge here who certain identifications belong to. Sorry about that! Did I just send you the game directly in the past or did I post it here? I couldn't find it through a search. I think it'd be cool to change me to "GratedTopping" at the gameshelf if you want. The main program has my name in it anyway, but that can be modified, too. Now that I think about it, I imagine I could have left those REM statements out. There are only 67 bytes of memory remaining once the main program begins!

Hey, Vorticon. Thanks for trying the game! Hmmm...how do you mean 'credits'? You want to put it for download on a website of yours and mention who it was by? Or were you inspired to create a flashy CREDITS program to put on the 'disk'? I think "GratedTopping" is cool; I remember one person somewhere online in the past told me he thought it was one of the best ID's he's seen.

For use in the "Win994a" emulator, here's my version of a big text-adventure game from the November 1987 issue of "Compute!". According to the info in the program, I finished everything sometime in 1988 and updated it in June 2000. In June 2009, I edited it further on the PC. I was just 13 at the time and I think I did quite well. I created my own LOAD program and, from that, you can play the game or read the story first. Also, I put the SOLUTION in a separate file. I don't know where I obtained the EFONT, but I like it and it surely makes it look more professional. The main program is a huge 75+ sector file. To fit on the TI -- even with 32k -- I had to place all the data in a separate file and then add commands to the program to load that data. I really like that I learned of how you can load a program from "DSK.diskname.filename" and the TI will search all disk drives for the program. I notice that I even made use of how to turn the prescan off; that wasn't done through a program that does that automatically. I even kept the save game/load game capability. <WHOOPS. Sorry. I guess I was totally wrong and there is no save/ load function. The game didn't have that originally anyway. I meant to implement it, but I guess I wasn't able to due to lack of memory space.> All of those things were in my original conversion (or from 2000). Any 2009 modifications were very minor and I didn't change much at that time. I guess for another modification, I could put the choice to see the solution into the LOAD program. This was the biggest translation of a game I did. It's been on the TI gameshelf website for a while and I never mentioned that here (I think). Hope someone likes it. (-: NOTE: UPDATED VERSION ATTACHED Hermit, The v1.2011.zip

From ALA software, I have JET STORM BEEHIVE MONSOON I read here that someone had DUNGEON KEY, but it wasn't available to download. I remember seeing another title in the past, but passing it up because I bought JET STORM, that dealt with pigs and a wolf. Does anybody know of that title and maybe have it to share? Or DUNGEON KEY? Any other known TI titles from this company? I think BEEHIVE was a quite-good TI BASIC game.

Can this be available to download?

Mystery Mania You're the city's greatest homicide detective. Can you solve the case? This is a nice program that creates murder-mystery logic problems for you to solve. You have a choice of 32,001 different situations. As well, there are five difficulty levels and each one generates a slighly different game for the chosen game number. You can try and solve it all through what you see on the screen and rely on your memory, get a printout and figure it out then (certainly recommended...but, I don't know how this can be done through an emulator), and also ask for a hint. You can keep asking for hints and, eventually, the solution would be revealed. The clues/hints are in the form of, for example, "Fred Craig weighs 210 pounds." or "The suspect who was carrying a white umbrella is not the one who has brown hair." Using the information, you can try and deduce who the killer is. Each hint eliminates one suspect and explains why. There is no hint option on level one. This is my version of an original program (only for the at-the-time IBM PC/PCjr & compatibles) from the December 1987 issue of "Compute!". I modified it around that time for the TI, adding statements, formatting things as I wanted, and changing commands as needed to still keep the printout option. I was just 13 at the time and I felt good about my conversion even though it was all a text-based program. I see that I knew of using DISPLAY ERASE ALL as a different way to clear the screen (which apparently saves a couple bytes instead of CALL CLEAR); the CALL LOAD to disable the sprites in Extended BASIC to get a teenie speedup; and I understood commands to use a printer and of subprograms. Looking over the listing, I think it's funny to see that I changed the listing and used first and last names of some of the suspects to folks I knew at the time. Even my first name is in there! I forgot all about that and it gave me a chuckle on 1.23.2011. With the same ol' magazine back in hand, I found and fixed a couple of minor mistakes...almost 25 years later! (-: It all seems to work fine, but I don't know about the printing function. Nevertheless, even if something is still wrong, I wanted to give it to the TI community. - Brian MYS-MANIA.zip

Oh yes, I loved typing in programs on my TI from magazines and I remember... - photocopying pages from issues of "Compute!" at the school library (and being disappointed when I found a TI-specific program from very early issues torn out) - checking out programs for errors and being excited about finding and fixing them before a "real" fix would be revealed in a future issue - purchasing the "Compute!'s TI Collection, VOLUME II" at a "Waldenbooks" in 1986 when I was a young lad of 12 - I always appreciated how the TI's commands were easier to understand; the C64 peek's and poke's looked so annoying

Hope you keep your original code. 'Horrendous' as it might be, I want to see it. I'd like to have it right now, actually. (-: What other conversions of programs from "Compute!" or elsewhere have you done?

* Whoops, that's right. Line 121 had a mistake that prevented the quotation marks properly being shown around a couple letters. I fixed that. I guess during my last revision in the day, I never ran it after that last change! * I was wrong about it not being mentioned about the pause/restart keys...they WERE originally mentioned inside the program. I thought I was a cool kid and added that info myself! * Also...it seems that there always was a character-by-character routine, but it wasn't used for every message. I know that I added a bunch of GOSUB statements and I tried to better-arrange the flow/appearance of the program. * I see that I also added a CALL SCREEN(2) right at the start before the CALL CLEAR. I always remember doing that in any BASIC program since I wanted the screen to 'disappear' as fast as possible; I never liked that the screen turns green at the start of any program. So, this would be a good thing for the GAMESHELF. If you want to just put the original at the site, maybe folks would like that better. Or maybe a zip file containing the original and my version? TID FIXED.zip

This game actually is from "Compute!" magazine [#55; December 1984]. Here's the story/info from the introduction page in that issue: http://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue55/dark.php It's not noted in the info, but you can freeze the game by pressing [P]ause and continue by pressing [R]estart. From my text file of thoughts on all the software I have: "....paced for children, this became one of my faves back then. I used to photocopy various TI games from the school library's magazine collection and I specifically remember getting this one & liking it a lot." Some changes I made (not recent; back when I typed it in): - modified some of the colours to what I thought looked nicer - added a routine to print messages on the screen character by character instead of just with PRINT statement and scrolling - removed REM statements + added a couple in the beginning (I like programs to have the name mentioned in the first three lines) - CALL KEY statements changed to CALL KEY(3,?,?) instead of (0,?,?) - added the colour-cycling at the end - removed 98 PRINT "ADVANCE (A)/NO ADVANCE (N) "; 99 CALL KEY(0,K,S) 100 IF S=0 THEN 99 101 IF(K<>65)*(K<>78)THEN 99 102 PRINT CHR$(K) 103 AD=-(K=65) I could find no purpose for this and whatever it was supposed to be for was apparently not implemented. The "AD" identification was never referred to again in the program, so it seemed worthless. - CALL CLEARs the screen before stopping if you choose to not play again *** NOTE: FILE ATTACHMENT REMOVED; SEE FIXED VERSION BELOW ***

Bert & Ernie? Yes, I was amazed back then at it! I haven't heard it in ages; lets see how I recall it... Hey Bert. Hey Ern. [no "ie"] I was wondering if you could do me a big favor, Bert. Ah, sure Ernie, what is it. Well, I would like you to pretend you are angry with me. I should pretend that I'm angry with you? Mmm-hmmm. You see... (Bert turns red) ... 'cause you're so good at getting angry. ---- I remember some program that used SPGET in Extended BASIC; something called "Verbose" from the 99'er magazine days. It helped combine parts of two words in the vocabulary already to form new words. And I know there was a commercial product in the past, maybe from Asgard, that allowed any words in XB.

I hope this isn't abandoned. I'd very much like to see it.