The Codex

Thanks, we'll see if any ColecoVision peoples have ideas to add!

Thanks for spreading the word retroclouds! Any ColecoVision folks who would like to suggest changes or output formats are encouraged to post their suggestions in the main Magellan thread. I'd love for this tool to be useful to this community as well as the TI 99ers!

Thanks for the reminder! I haven't done much new with the app lately, but from your excellent suggestion I have updated the first post with the KNOWN BUGS and FEATURE REQUESTS. That's a whole lot of data in one post, basically a developer's log. Let me know what I've missed out on the lists and hopefully I can get back to work on this soon. Cheers!

Cool, another way to get into this language would be sweet!

Glad to hear you're still on it Keith, and sorry about the workload. Equally busy here, which is why there haven't been many updates from me either. Looking forward to this one when you get it done, and thanks again for archiving this lost treasure!

Here are some button icons for the links. They are, in order: Home Page - Atari Age Forum - Screenshot - Video - Source Code - Documentation The text labels are done using TI palette colors. Let me know your thoughts on these, and in the meantime I'll work on doing some TI character icons for the status and languages.

Here's an idea for the first batch, using TI-ish keyboard buttons and commands to indicate project status. See what you think. My other idea so far was using game characters (MunchMan for active, Tombstone City for dead, etc), but it's a little too abstract I think for status icons.

Heh, I might give it a go. Any preferred size, such as 16x16 or 32x32?

Thanks for the bug reports gents, I'll look into those. Odd that the character set doesn't load for you Owen, it shows up when I start the app. Is anyone else experiencing this problem? If so, let me know what OS you are running under please. I see what you're saying about the character swap, trading the images doesn't always work how you think it might. I'll work on that for the next release. And thanks for the VDP info Filip, I'll check into that too. If you could post some more test files for me, that will help speed my error checking and get it working as expect. Cheers all!

Lord a'mighty Tursi, I just got done playing it and that is seriously one of the best mash-up games ever. I love how the actual farmhand goes out to battle the zombies, and how the zombies can ruin the land when you don't survive. Not to mention the game is arcade-fast even under normal CPU. Sterling work on this man and no doubt. It truly makes me happy to play it.

New version is up now, includes source code as well if you're so inclined to look at or tinker with such things. Has VDP import, character swap & replace, and some significant bug fixes. Oh, and an About dialog that tells you what version it is (thanks for the suggestion retroclouds!). As for the new items on the wish list, some of it sounds more doable than others. The hardest one, at least using built-in Java methods, is undo, but that's also the most useful. I'd rather like to have it in there myself. Good idea about doing a memory snapshot retroclouds, I'll look into strategies like that instead of the native methods. The trickiest part will be dealing with destructive edits (ones that are inherently difficult or even impossible to reverse). Anyway, let me know what you all think of the new version, and I hope you find it useful!

Thanks man, I'm gradually getting back to normal here. And yes, the new release contains the tile shifting feature as well. You can replace one tile with another or swap them, either with or without the graphics exchanging as well. I did some test runs with it and it works beautifully, the only downside being is that you have to figure out the numbers of the character tiles you want to swap (though the dialog box does show the associated image after you pick it).

Ah, oops, kinda dropped the ball there during my move. Yes, I'd be glad to post a new version, probably tonight if I can get everything together. Thanks for reminding me, and for the ideas!

Many thanks retroclouds, can't wait to get into this!

Congratulations man, I love seeing a bad idea taken fully to its conclusion! Seriously, brilliant way to combine the games. I can say without fear of contradiction that this is the best 8-bit zombie farming simulation ever written. Looking forward to playing it, and I hope it makes some waves at the Faire!

To me, the best of those classic D&D dungeon crawls are the Eye Of The Beholder series. You can find them all over the web as "abandonware" if you look. Anyway, they are the direct descendant of Forgotten Realms, down to the way the compass looks, only with better graphics and gameplay. And for a more fluid old-school 3D dungeon feel, while staying in D&D world, check out Menzoberranzan.

A bit of a digression, but an action dungeon game that I think could be ported to the TI almost perfectly is Venture from Exidy. It's a lot of fun and the technical specs certainly seem within reach of the TI. See what you all think, and if there's enough interest I might tackle it. Unless of course it's already been done. EDIT - The rather decent ColecoVision port of the game proves, I think, that it's well within the TI's capabilities.

Yes, that should be possible. I'll add it to the request list and see when I can work it in.

Is that really the default font? More ornate than I expected. The ones that load up with Gorf are pretty plain, similar to TI BASIC but with some minor differences. Anyway, thanks!

Love the idea of a semi-reliable teleport "flying" feature! Another idea from the arcades is that one of the pills is a flashing pill (could blink on and off, or red-yellow-red-yellow) that is worth more than a regular pill point-wise (or could confer temporary invulnerability). The flashing pill would cycle around, either on a timer or any time the player collects a pill. This adds a more immediate goal to the level and can lure the player into more dangerous sections of the board in return for a reward. I'm very excited to hear that you're resuming work on this and am looking forward to the final product. Anything I can do to help, just let me know.

Coolness, the tools just keep on coming!

Thanks! Added a dialog that asks for the starting address of the character, map, and color data, which you can specify in decimal or hexadecimal. Tried it on the Gorf title screen and it worked fine, so I think this feature is ready to go. Just gotta wrap up character swaps and there'll be a new release. I'll handle sprite loading in the app once I figure out how I'm handling sprites overall. But once that's in there should be VDP support for that too. This is actually quite fun. PS - I want to include the ColecoVision default font as a loadable option in the next release, too. I assume the one in the Gorf files is that font? If not, does anyone have a dump that does contain it?

Did I get close with the VDP import? If so, next up is the dialog that asks the user to specify all the offsets in the file (where characters begin, where colorsets begin, etc).

Eye-oop, quite right. Didn't peruse the list thoroughly enough before settling on this cat. Anyone with admin rights, feel free to relocate it.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/21/vintage_computer_fair/ Some neat mods and products. Also included a presentation of the new Amiga, which finally seems like the genuine article instead of a bastard reuse of the Amiga name: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/21/amiga_x1000/