Vorticon

Not really, as the problem is with the unavoidable use of GOTO... I would just kill for a CASE statement, a WHILE DO loop and RECORDS just to name a few. I finished the rough coding at 2am this morning, but as expected the program is still full of bugs. But much more problematic is the fact that it uses 3 large chained XB programs that loop back to each other, and the loooog pauses that happen when one section is loading turn the game into an exercise in frustration. The only way to mitigate this at the current stage is to run the game under Classic 99 emulation in overdrive mode. I may be able to improve the situation a little by prescanning, by how much remains to be seen. I will be off to Chicago in about an hour, and will try to debug the program at the hotel tonight. See you there

I would also add that this is a good time to document all the little routines you test out because you will likely need them in the future for larger programs. For example, you probably want a screen clearing routine, a keyboard input routine and a binary to ASCII routine to display data, just for starters. Remember that in assembly you will need to create all the essential utilities you take for granted in higher level languages, and if memory serves me correctly, the sooner you get these worked out, the easier your future programming will become. Good luck and keep at it because it's very rewarding in the end

Well... I had planned to reserve one of the executive suites so that folks could pop in and set up equipment or talk 'shop'. Last week I had to pull back from those plans for a few reasons. Fortunately, I didn't announce my intent It looks like a Saturday morning commute to Evanston is more likely, though if a few things settle down I may chance a Friday night arrival. I won't know until Thursday at the earlies. It is also doubtful that the cooler of adult beverages (or Diet Coke, Matthew!) will be tagging along this time either but there is always some hope. grin PS - That was my room last year, Vorticon, it's just that Marcus helped me break an RGB monitor and all things went south from there. Or did that start from the cooler contents? I honestly do -not- remember You are probably correct (on both counts!) I'm still trying to finish up the beta version of my new XB game before the Faire, and will likely still need to do some more coding on Friday night in order to have something relatively demo grade by Sat. The game is called Clear for Action, and is a naval combat simulation in the age of sail based on an original game of the same name for the Atari and TRS80 computers back in 1984. It's already too large to fit into one program, so now it's in 2 parts chained together, and I will more than likely need to break it down into 3 parts before it's finished... While I'm at it, please allow me vent and say that I never programmed something so large in XB, and I can categorically state that XB (and Basic in general) is a very poor fit for complex and lengthy projects due to its extreme lack of structure. There is so much spaghetti code in my program with all those GOTO's that I'm afraid to let it go for too long for fear of completely losing track of the general program structure and flow. Had I done this in Pascal, I would have been long finished by now and it would have been a heck of a lot more readable as well as efficient. There! I feel better already

I have to leave Sunday morning unfortunately...

Last year we had 4 people in Marc's room and it was just fine.

Yup, that'll do it... We'll miss you, and there is always next year!

Marc, are you attending this year? There is a rumor that you are working on something interesting

Sign me up. If I leave early on Friday morning, I should be in Evanston by 1-2pm.

OK can we get back to the Faire topic now? If we're going to have a gathering on Friday too, I might consider leaving Thursday night so I can have all of Friday available. How many of us here are up to this? I'll also post a similar question on the Yahoo site

I'm totally giving Hal the credit he deserves, please don't take it otherwise. He held the Faire together all these years, and I'm glad he continues to arrange it. But I only live 3.5 hours drive away, however, some people are traveling from other continents! IMO, *one* 5-hour day (we always seem to have to wait for the mom-to-mom sale to be over at noon before we can get in...) in a small room, with no separate space for presentations, is hardly a "Faire", and hard to swallow for someone coming from so far away (like the UK, or even anyone who has to fly in). I simply want to expand it a little and make it more worth-while for those who are less interested in the "good ol' days", and more interested in hacking code and hardware, trading gear, checking out rare stuff, etc. I'm with you, but I'm still glad we have a Faire in any form and someone still willing to put it together. I for one certainly don't have the time or energy to pull off something like that... Did you look into some meeting space at the Best Western for Friday?

Tursi, you also need to be there. This is not subject to discussion. You have been warned, sir.

Yeah, we talked about format after the Faire last year, and it stirs a lot of controversy and emotion. Hal runs the Faire the way he has been for the last 20 years, and he deserves a lot of credit for keeping it together. At this point though, there seems to be more "Faire" than "TI" in the event. As for more days, rooms, talks, etc., to do that stuff you would have to: 1. charge people (which just may kill the whole thing), and 2. get more people to come (which I don't see happening since we are already an extremely small community, and divided too.) Technically the Faire *is* three days... If you were to come and be around on Friday, then there will be TI stuff to do, at least this year there will be. Saturday is the main "event" at the library, and afterwards, personally, I'm planning on continuing the hacking sessions at the hotel. Sunday was typically the "everyone goes home" day, but if people wanted to continue with presentations, hacking, sessions, etc. then there is no reason not to do so. Now let's be fair to Hal here. The actual main event on Saturday IS the Faire, not Friday or Sunday, or even Sat night, and it is strictly TI. I agree though that the content has gotten softer over the past 2-3 years mainly because there are not as many developers around anymore. I also think that presentations should be kept at 10 min max with at least 45min to an hour in between to allow people to connect and talk shop. It's a real bummer that the Library kicks us out so soon, so maybe we should get a conference room on Friday afternoon and have a pre-Faire of sorts.

That's great Klaus! We'll hook up on Friday afternoon.

There is so much more the XB in the right hands... Very nice

Come on Matt! You have to come! The Friday night get together is really a re-acquaintance with fellow TIers who haven't seen each other for at least a year, and having a beer or too during that time is fine but certainly not the purpose of the gathering. I would definitely be up to joining you and other hackers later on (like last year) to discuss tech topics. I'll even bring along my little ELF computer for show and tell as well as my CP/M card. If you guys are up to it, I can also bring a wargame to play. As for Sat night, well, the pub crawl is a crazy but beloved tradition, but one does not need to get drunk to still have fun. Besides, we can still have all sorts of interesting discussions during that time. I'll be happy to share the cost of a small conference room for Friday if you want to research it. Who else is interested in this other than you, Willsy and myself?

The best way to craft sounds is to think about what they're made up of. A cannon is an explosive "whuf" sound, followed by a high-pitched whine of the cannon ball, going from high to low as it approaches the target. The explosion can be done just using the noise generator: 100 FOR I=0 TO 30 STEP 5 110 CALL SOUND(-200,-7,I) 120 NEXT I The high-pitched whine is a little more difficult, as BASIC will tend to stutter a bit... try this: 130 FOR I=1 TO 10 140 CALL SOUND(-500,2000-(I^3),0) 150 NEXT I The trick here is to start at a very high sound, but descend at an exponential rate, but still only have around 10-20 sound changes to make it fairly fast. Or you can just forgo the whine sound and stick with the explosion too, maybe add a reverb effect to it instead. Yes, I've read the same article, but it's easy to recreate here. What you need is to use the multiple voices at high pitches, each slightly different, and have it fade over time: 100 FOR I=0 TO 30 STEP 6 110 CALL SOUND(-100,3000,I,2000,I,1000,I) 120 NEXT I The fun of sound effects is playing around until you find the right ones! Adamantyr Thanks! I'll try these out tonight.

Sure.

I'm also at the Best Western - The Best Western University Plaza - I think it's a block or two from the Library...? Depends how much beer you have in you . 2 blocks is about right.

Hi. I'm looking for an XB sound routine that generates the sound of a cannon. I am terrible at this sort of stuff, so if anyone here has something along these lines, would you mind sharing it? I also need one with sounds of swords clashing, but if I recall correctly, 99'er magazine had a sound article that included this very particular sound pattern. I'll see if I can locate it. In case you're wondering, I've decided to create a new XB game between now and Faire time so I can have something interesting to present because unfortunately it does not look like Ultimate Planet is going to make it in time (not even close). It's going to be quite a squeeze, but I think I can make it given how speedy XB programming can be. Forth would have been nice, but I don't have a good grasp of it yet...

I'll be there and staying at the Best Western. Looking forward to seeing you all

it's the second worst news this month after Steve Job I concur, although the sad reality is that most of us have day jobs and other interests that make the creation of new games, especially in assembly, quite laborious. My Ultimate Planet game is still dragging on, mostly because it is competing with my many other hobbies, so I have given up on a "delivery date" and will just work at it whenever I can. I'm sure many other TIers out there share the same dilemma...

This looks like fun! Certainly seems better than using my standard flatbed scanner...

Wow! Nicely done!

Man I loved the 80's! I bought my TI then and we had such amazing music such as this track. Someone please invent a time machine!

Hex-based wargaming has been around for quite a while, starting with table top games beautifully crafted and wickedly complex rules in the 60's and 70's Ultimate Planet is actually an adaptation of such a game although its original rules were simpler (I talk about this in an earlier post under this thread). If you are interested in this type of games, I would highly recommend the V for Victory series for the PC which were released in the early 90's and can be found online (hotud.com) although I own the original games. You can still run them using DosBox under Win 7. Another option is the modern Hearts of Iron III which you can still purchase, although this is quite a daunting game with all sorts of strategic, tactical, economic and political aspects and covers the entire WWII conflict and may not be your best first exposure to this genre. As for ZDefense, I downloaded it on my Android phone and will be playing with it a bit later today