The Codex

Ah, it's just as well, since I would have had to sue them for using Reboot in the title. I already did that with my own RPG remake, which by American law gives me complete and perpetual ownership of the word.

One could do that by changing the original's giant ducks into proper dragons.

Just letting you all know that work on the book is continuing. I've got a lot of plates spinning at the moment, but I hope to have a version to share with you all soon. Thanks for you patience!

Fab! Thanks as always for these great resources!

Cheers gents, makes me happy when my tools are useful. Means more great games on the way! I've debugged the image import and you're right Owen, it was not "sticking". That was due to a recent change. I've fixed it now and also implemented the map counter and text cursor that Filip asked for. Oh, and I have color image import working pretty well too, though it's very finicky about your image having the TI colors exactly correct. Anyway, I'll probably rush another version out tomorrow so that you all will have the latest changes. Thinking about combining all three tools together (map editor, character editor, sprite editor), what do you think about the map editor being the "main" interface, with the extended character selector taking up the left side? The character editor and sprite editor would be "pop-outs" that you could show or hide from the character selector panel. Maybe I'll create a version like that and you can see what I mean.

I'll test out the character image importer here too, Owen. Perhaps I screwed something up when I rewrote the button handling. And the "view all maps" idea is a good one. I'm planning on having a "gallery" page in Charcot that lets you view all your created sprites, no reason I couldn't do the same in Magellan for the maps. It may not be exactly what you're after for Beryl, but will get you closer to that goal. (And we can always create a custom version of it later as a Beryl-specific version to include as a game editor.)

Oh, and in case you're wondering what the reference to Charcot is in the post above, it's the sprite/character editor I'm working on. As you can see, it already has support for the extended character set. I'm going to move that into Magellan once I figure out how to fit it in there with the character editor widget. It's possible I might merge these two programs together at some point, so that there are three tabs, one for editing characters, one for assembling them into sprites, and one for drawing them onto maps. The name of the program is a reference to Jean-Martin Charcot. Like Magellan, it's named after a visionary that I respect. Both names are also chosen as they link in some why to the program's function (Magellan for maps, Charcot for "char" [character]). Anyway, I'll start a thread for this once it's more functional. There will definitely be some kind of integration between it and Magellan, and both will read the same kind of data file.

Thanks for the feedback gents. Owen, the reason your import doesn't work is that Magellan only supports black&white image loads at the moment. I'm planning on adding color import, but I'm trying to come up with the best strategy for Magellan to guess which pixels are foreground and which are background. In the meantime, here is the complete list of features under consideration, including those just asked for. They are color coded from easy and planned to possible to unlikely and/or hard as corn. Support for lower mem (0-31) and upper mem (144-256) character sets Binary export DSK format export ColecoVision export Map Counter Text Cursor Tie app with Charcot for sprite editing Import color character image (and derive colorsets from) Copy region Column/Row number overlay Drag-and-Drop character image between buttons Proportional Rotate Metadata/Code assigned to map segments Undo/Redo Cast your vote on most wanted, or add anything else you desire to the list.

Bah, I refuse to acknowledge any series called Final Fantasy that contains more than one game.

Another release out the door. Wanted to get this out there for Owen, Filip, and Bones in particular as it has features each requested. Now you can make maps of different sizes, scroll the editing area, type directly onto the grid, and a few other goodies. I think this is nearing a proper release state, just a few more needed features and we may be ready. Thanks again for all the continued support and feedback! Grab version 0.7 from the head post as usual.

I've got some level generating code I came up with a while back for a roguelike board I was on. You're welcome to look through that if you're interested Owen, though it's more fun coming up with your own. I'm actually very happy with the random board generator in Helm Of Wooldridge, I think it's pretty decent for a short XB prog. Anyway, let me know if you want to see the code, or if you just need basic tips and tricks for making your own.

"Technically" a fist to the face is four fingers and one thumb, but since I'm curling my pinky under then this shouldn't hurt you like a "real" fist to the face would. Seriously, looking forward to your viewport solution. I can see a lot of utility value in routines like that, since I often create games with a control interface surrounding the play area.

Ta mate, glad you like, and do let me know if there are any problems with it once you've tried it all out. A pleasure doing business with you!

In that case, look for your phone number to feature prominently in some very questionable Craigslist postings shortly. To hell with your safety man, I want to play your RPG. (Seriously, glad you're okay bro. How'd the gigs go?)

Ah, sorry about that man, didn't even think of it. But I would've rung you in if I knew you were around. I was really suprised that Owen didn't pop in, as he's usually on at that time. He might still be on the road with the band though. He was coming home through Nashville, hope he didn't get flooded out.

Hmm, could it be a Dr Who game for the TI? That would be fab if so. Almost every platform had some kind of Timelord game, from the BBC Micro's Doctor Who And The Mines Of Terror through the Amiga's Dalek Attack all the way up to the web games in the works on the BBC site. The TI really needs an incarnation of The Doctor as well. Tangentially related, I did a remake of Daleks for a "games that could have appeared on the TI calculator" competition a while back. The best version of this old terminal classic is the Amiga one. Anyway, good luck on your own Doctor game, if that's indeed what is being alluded to.

Once again we are on a spookily similar wavelength. I've considered doing that, and I might still, though it takes it away from the look of the original manuals. It's nicer on the eyes, certainly. Likewise, the two-column approach may work out as well. I can certainly recreate the feel of the original type-ins by strategically omitting and mistyping content. Then we can include a separate sheet of errata in the book, which contains at least one error itself.

Prolog is cool, one of the better AI languages. And for anyone who as played with Lisp, try Scheme, it's kind of a next-gen Lisp that is more graspable to the average user. An overlooked language that is fun if you think like an engineer is Icon. I played around with it on the Amiga and it has a spartan efficiency that's refreshing. Meanwhile, I notice unhuman has selected a TARDIS avatar, presumably outing himself as a Doctor Who fan. Yet another unsettling coincidence between him and me. I've been a fan of the show since the British originals were shown over here in my teens. I also once owned a large, cantakerous boxy blue car with the custom license plate DR WHOM.

Quick, must post before the board crashes again! Here's an updated sampling of the manual, this time with code listings. This thing is easily going to be a 64-page book now. Since there is more than one page per game, I've moved the programmer's name to the second page. Might have to move it back though if the odd-number-of-pages-per-game makes it look crappy when printed. Let me know if the fonts are too big or too small or just right, baby bears. Ta! TI_Manual_demo2.pdf PS - All programs have been RESEQUENCE'd 100, 10 before pasting into the book, and I added spaces after all the commas so that lines would wrap nicely. Hope this doesn't screw up any code by making the lines too long to enter.

Fortran is the inspiration for BASIC, which is probably why I grok'd it so well when I encountered it, having started off with BASIC (and LOGO and Lisp). Pascal seemed baroque to me and I didn't really get it until I worked with C. Then the syntax made sense and I started to see how loose BASIC (and Fortran) were. But I still have a place in my heart for Fortran and would like to have a go at again, if only for nostalgia's sake. Any versions of COBOL you've got, you can keep.

I expect I'll be adding support for the second character set eventually (already been thinking about ways to implement it). Do I also need to allow for setting the indidual foreground/background color for each character, or is that not possible in any mode?

Hah, just had a breakthrough! Sussed out a different approach to managing the scrolling and it worked. Now I should be able to add custom map dimensions. Thankfully I started the application as being agnostic about map sizes and just make 32x24 the only choice, so it shouldn't take too much retrofitting to get other sizes supported properly.

Yes, I'm still planning on implementing custom map sizes. The main thing holding me back it implementing a scrolling canvas. This is easy in Java for some component types, but is going to take some serious finagling to get it to work with the map canvas. Still, it should happen eventually. Thanks for the comments in the meantime, glad folks are finding the improvements worthwhile!

Oo, I'd love a copy of the Fortran compiler when you've got that ready! I enjoyed it much more than Pascal in school, though both are fine learning languages.

Good idea Bones! Turns out typing on the map is shockingly easy to implement, so I've added it just now. A few more changes and I'll have another version to push out shortly, as I expect you could benefit from this right away.