The Codex

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/

Thanks for the kind words all, and for the VDP dumps retroclouds. I'll get onto engineering them into Magellan, and will take a look at your suggested list of improvements. I do have a gallery mode under consideration, and I've also begun implementing the code for swapping and replacing characters. Cheers folks!

Brilliant graphics! Good work there.

Thanks! Feel free to send them on, I've got a bit of time to do some additional work. Also send any ColecoVision materials you think would be useful, or anything else that is compatible with the TI palette and data types, and I'll be glad to support those too!

Yes, it helps to think of the game as a set of modal states. That's exactly how ToDR works, with a set of states (high-level modes) and sub-states (various conditions within a given mode). Then within those states you have the current action. For example, you could be in the Party state, Trading Items substate, with the current action being "choose who is giving an item", "choose item to give", or "choose who to receive item". Likewise you could be in the Battle state, Player's Turn substate, which current actions including "do melee attack", "do ranged attack", "cast spell", "use item", etc. Any given moment in the game is described by this concatenation of states, and user/computer actions result in the movement from one state to the next. Pretty much the same thing you're talking about, just took a long way around of reiterating and saying "you're on the right track".

Will nobody recreate the true nostalgia of owning a TI and release their games on cassette tape?

Wow, good work! Really looking forward to trying this out for serious development!

I would say make it a focused book (Assembly for TI-99/4A & ColecoVision Games, say, or anything that shares similar architecture). It might seem at first that a niche book would limit the audience, whereas a larger one would appeal to more people (Programming In Assembly), but there are literally hundreds of the broad ones and your niche book could be the only one. As for printing, sell it through a Publishing-On-Demand site like Lulu, BookSurge, or Lightning Source. That way you don't have to purchase a print run in advance, it's done whenever someone orders. I've bought a number of books from Lulu and they are good quality, plus they have a book store built right into their site to promote and retail your own work.

Heh, I'm actually thinking along similar lines for the Helm game, buddy. I'll let you know where I get with that. I really need to wrap up Magellan, Tadataka, and Yeti, and then I can start BR&THOW (hopefully in assembly).

Cool, glad you got it going.

Woo, Japanese style console RPG! Or possibly an early Ultima-like. Either way, it gets a Anything to keep from finishing the other one, eh? (Just teasing you man - I wandered away from the four year hell of ToDR many times to work on stuff more immediately rewarding, so I understand the desire.)

Thanks! As for the background, right-click the color palette to set the background color. The button with a B on it should change to match that (unless you click that B button, which toggles background coloring on and off). You should see the background color getting set to your selection when you paint, or if you use the coloriser brush. Let me know if this doesn't work for you and I'll take a deeper look into the code to see what might be up. Also, if it doesn't work for you still, please attach your .tad file and I'll check that out as well. Cheers!

New version posted, lots of goodies added - TI Artist support (load and save), selection saving, and corrected assembler output are the highlights. Feedback welcomed!

Just added exports for TI Artist files with TIFILES and V9T9 headers as well (thanks for the sample headers Tursi). Not much left now on this release.

Okay, figured out the artifacting problem (obscurely enough, it was due to me using Buffered reader/writers in Java instead of FileStreams). Tadataka now reads TI Artist files (either RAW or with 128-byte headers like TIFILES and V9T9 formats), writes RAW files as well, plus has the corrected assembler output. And it allows you to select a portion of the image (byte-offset regions only) and save it as a new data file or an assembler fragment. Should have the new version posted tonight, watch this space.

Good plan man. I like that approach as well, focusing on the team instead of the minutiae of individuals. Again, something the Shining Force games get just right - most characters have one kind of weapon and armor which you can upgrade throughout the game, and occasionally commission custom pieces of, all of which helps keep the story going without bogging down into "who should get the great cutlass and who should get the serrated sword?" Not only does it make it cleaner to program, it also shifts the play mechanics onto story and strategy instead of the typical "numbers racket" of optimising equipment.

Just my opinion on how to approach it. Obviously this will not exactly map to your game, as you will have a different palette of options and choices, but this kind of grouping makes sense to me. Player Management - Change equipt weapons, armor, accessories - Spend any level-up points (if this is not automatic) - Cure any status modifications (poisoned, injured, etc) Party Management - Change party order - Rest - Enter shop/inn/etc Inventory Management - View inventory for character or party - Use item - Trade items between player - Drop/Destroy item - Examine item (Get item description & known properties) Spell Management - Cast spell - Examine spell (Get spell description & known effects) Game Management - Load/Save - New Game - Quit - Go to Options Screen Player status should be obvious without having to bring it up, such as by coloring hitpoints and spellpoints (green for full, yellow for some gone, red for critically low), and with icons or letter codes for special statuses (poisoned, confused, enraged, paralyses, slept, etc). Changing game settings (menu colors, display options, key input mapping options, etc) should have their own menu system and not be intermixed with the gameplay menu. The player should be able to get to this menu at any time though (as with the "Go to Options Screen" item above).

Fantastic man! Can't wait to give this a play!

All this GPL talk has gotten me more curious about the language itself now. Is there a GPL development package anyone would recommend, either for the TI or for modern computers? It's never too late to pick up another language.

Heh, no problem, it's good to point these things out in case I haven't found them yet. I'm working on debugging that now, I suspect my bit-reordering might be a little off still. Ah, sorry Walid, I posted the version with the old Magellan ASM code, instead of the new Tadataka format output. I'll get that posted soon, I want to finish up the TI Artist import and the image artifacting as well. The ASM output will list the bitmap size as byte-columns by rows, instead of pixel-columns by rows. Is that the best way? I'm guessing so, since the TI doesn't support sub-byte data rows as far as I know. Once the ASM output version is released, I'd appreciate it if you could tell me if the data renders properly. I suspect that I'll need to reverse the bit-order again when writing the data out, but I'll wait on that until I see how this goes. Thanks all!

Good idea, thanks, I'll add TIFILES support as well. I've been wanting to do that in both programs but have been putting off going back into my ToDR code to see how I parsed it the first time. Much easier if I can use your stuff as a starting point! Yes, I'm aware of the artifacting. I don't know if it's because I am having to reverse the pixel bit order, but it happens consistently with a certain color pairing. It may be that I need to pre-process the incoming color bytes as well.

While I'm a big fan of abstraction, it's an architectural conceit more suited to powerful machines that can support that kind of layering. Early home computers really needed speed, and I think the lethargy of the TI's BASIC may have hurt it somewhat, especially when compared against the (relatively) nippy BASIC on the C64 et al. Certainly TI BASIC was accessible and powerful in the right hands, as seen in the latest competitions, and the ability to invoke assembly from it helps a good deal, but think how much better it would have been had the language run directly on the metal.

Worked out importing TI Artist data. The next release will include the ability to load the RAW output from Tursi's Convert9918 application, as well as the ability to write those files itself.

Thanks Filip! Only one correction, the link to the Java download needs to be updated: Get Java Once I create a permanent page for Magellan on my website I'll post that URL as well. Thanks again for managing this very useful list!

First usable version of Tadataka is up for interested parties to play with. Still a number of features to come, but I'm proud of the toolset available from the get-go. I really like the Clone Brush myself, and the Coloriser. Helps to have a good starting image however. Anyway, hit the first post in this thread for a download and the latest screenshot (featured an imported version of a lovely space painting by the great space artist Chesley Bonestell).