Vorticon
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Posts posted by Vorticon
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This one takes characters 40 thru 47 and roll the character patterns up. And prepare yourself for a nice little surprise.
100 CALL INIT::CALL LOAD("DSK1.BARREL") 110 PRINT : : : : "( ) * + , - . /" : : : : "PRESS SPACE TO CONTINUE" 120 CALL LINK("MOVE")::CALL CLEAR::L$=RPT$("()*+,-./",5) 130 FOR A=0 TO 31::DISPLAY AT(A+1,1):SEG$(L$,(A AND 7)+1,28); ::NEXT A 140 DISPLAY AT(7,3):" "; 150 DISPLAY AT(8,3):" SPECIAL EFFECT CONTEST "; 160 DISPLAY AT(9,3):" "; 170 FOR A=0 TO 7::READ B,C$::CALL CHAR(40+A,RPT$("0",B)&C$)::NEXT A 180 CALL COLOR(2,16,1,5,14,1,6,14,1,7,14,1,8,14,1) 190 CALL SCREEN(2)::CALL LINK("MOVE") 200 DATA 0,1,2,4,6,8,10,4,12,1,11,4,7,2,3,4
Attached zip contains disk for MESS, disk for Win994a and files for Classic99.
This is amazing!
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Run this in Classic99 CPU Overdrive mode!!!! I've attached it... good luck beating THIS game, assholes..... Never again will there be any question who can write the crappest game EVER.
OK I admit it. I had to touch the screen
The graphics are great, but the gameplay is definitely questionable. I smell a winner 
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I was truly disappointed by Alpiner. I didn't like that. Of course Zero Zap was a heaping pile too... But some of your choices I quite liked (Miner 2049'er & Car Wars). And, Indoor Soccer could've been done better in XB. Dunno who got that job, but they should be fired.
Funny
Alpiner is one of my all time favorites 
The vagaries of human likes and dislikes never ceases to amaze me 
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Could you expound on that a little, Vorticon? Not exactly sure what you're referring to when you say "playlist.".
After one is satisfied with a particular sound, it can be added to a playlist which can then be played in its entirety. This is great for short compositions or sound effects. Editing of the playlist individual componenents should also be possible.
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You would need two kinds of exploits. One to get code into scratch pad at a certain memory address, and another to branch to that code. Also, you have to do this in such a way that you don't destroy the BASIC environment, since, after all, you have less than 256 bytes to do whatever it is you need to do, and thus I'm sure at some point you will need to return to BASIC.
While it might be possible, I can't imagine it being very practical once you found the required bugs.
Matthew
I don't see a pratical use either, but the geek factor is there anyway
If I would do something in that direction, I would not let it return to BASIC. That way you'd have 256 bytes of scratchpad to your disposal.
Would be more than enough for doing a sprite demo
There is that one TI-Basic game that loads from cassette tape and uses a sprite. That was pretty clever.
It was discussed on the Y! group a while ago.
Yeah, my next game will be on cassette tape instead of cartridge. Hhmm, no not really
That game is called Morphy by Ermanno Alekine and is available on the TI Gameshelf site. Very cool hack. It runs perfectly fine under Win994a using the included cassette emulator.
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Well, that was my question--- how many users still have a modem on their TI? I'd love to have a BBS operating on my HRD, but I'd have to install a land line. Not that it's an issue, but we are currently looking to move into a nicer/bigger place and when that happens, I'll have my TI set up and ready to operate 24/7 in a room of it's own.
Well, technically it will share space with guitars and amplifiers and such, but it WILL be up and running. Of course, the question then becomes "What can I offer that Richard's BBS doesn't?"
The answer? Don't know.
But I'd like to do it if there are at least 10-12 people who sign into the Reef regularly on their real TI... Perhaps Greg McGill could put a portal to it from his "Keep" BBS. Kind of a little old dream of mine... Anyone remember USVideoTel? My first BBS experience. I was HOOKED, man....I still have a modem and actually use it occasionally
However, with my land line bill hovering around $80 a month with very little use, I am considering ditching it in favor of just using cell phones and skype. I have been pestering Richard Bell about adding internet access to the BBS using a modem emulator, and he has promised to look into it. This can also be applied to any BBS outthere, and is likely going to be necessary if any BBS is going to survive in the coming years. If you ever decide to setup a BBS, maybe it can have a specialized focus to differentiate it from The Keep, such as programming.
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It has been suggested that there be a TI -Tech room at the BW on Friday afternoon evening. Everyone could set up their stuff and have informal discussion concerning all the new events. It is BYOE(quipment) so bring your wares and your ideas. Should be a blast IMO anyway and may be the only venue for face to face discussion if Saturday is packed with lectures er... presentations
Sounds like an appetizer to the Faire!
I'll bring a wargame (Campaign) with me too in case someone is interested in getting their butt kicked 
I'm hoping to be in town by 6pm at the latest. who is going to be the contact person? -
Okay... so, here's the history here. I started writing this converter for "Honeycomb Rapture"'s music... Mark Wills was intending on helping me automate the process and create a disk-based load and save feature. Unfortunately for me (but VERY fortunately for the TI community) Willsy got tied up with Turboforth and was unable to help me out. So, the development kind of died out for a while. I am actually very glad you brought this back up, because I should really finish it. =) There isn't much to update from the previous postings... just a bypass for instructions at the beginning and a LITTLE better UI... but nothing significant. Just be careful to only input valid values, otherwise the program will crash. I will add safeguards against that today. =) For now, here's the latest update. Thanks to Mark for support and Tursi for helping develop the convert formula--- The CLIP feature is awesome. =)
DSK access and writability to DV80 should happen today or tomorrow... then again, we've heard THAT before. =)
Nice work Owen
A long time ago, I had created an XB program called Soundgen that had a graphical interface (including mouse support for the Mechatroninc mouse!) which let you set up the parameters for the 3 sound channels and one noise channel and printed out the needed values for the CALL SOUND statement as well as played the sound. I always regretted however not including the ability of linking sounds into a playlist, something that would not have been too hard to do (I may do that at some point still ). Are you considering adding the playlist feature to your program? I think it will greatly enhance its value.
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I will be there, and I'm actually staying at the Best Western this year since the family is not coming along
Walid
Hey all....
interested in knowing who will be in Evanston on Friday. Might be an open bar at the Best Western
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I don't think Bill Gaskill posts here to ask him directly, but does he attend the Faire? Right now he's the guy I'd most love to shake hands with, and buy a beer for his contributions and inspiration.
You're kinda high on that list too, Walid, so hopefully I'll see you there.
K
Very kind of you:) Bill has attended all the Faires I have been to so far. He always makes fascinating presentations.
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I have been attending the Faire since 2006 and have always had a great time. I got to meet legendary people I only knew of over the internet, like for example when I finally shook hands with Charlie Good
And the pre and post Faire festivities are always a blast he he... Think what you want of Hal, but he is one hell of a colourful and entertaining guy, and a good friend to boot!I will definitely be there this year and hope to see many of you there too! Plan on spending the night though if at all possible: believe me it's usually a very "interesting" experience
Walid
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Hey buddy--- just checkin' in... How are things? Anything to update us on---graphically or "behind-the-curtain"?
Nothing I'm afraid. We had huge nursing labor issues in the Twin Cities over the past couple of months along with a 1 day strike, and dealing with this completely consumed my time. Then I went on a much needed vacation for 2 weeks and just got back yesterday. I'm going to try to get back into it soon I hope, but I am no longer promising a completed product by Faire time, because our hospital is having significant financial issues with the recent Medicaid cuts and the large Minnesota budget deficit, and so yet again I will likely be extremely busy dealing with this...
Such is life I suppose
Walid
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Please reserve a copy for me! You have a very easy style to read and I have thoroughly enjoyed your assembly tutorials so far. Kind of reminds me a bit of Bruce Harrison's (RIP) Art of Assembly series.
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That's all for now...
Adamantyr
Is this in addition to your CRPG project?
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Perhaps Kyle has gotten away with this kind of crap for so long he feels he has the right to take whatever he feels like for his own gain without even attempting to get permission. I really think that a lot of people let him slide on these issues just because he offers a lot of stuff for sale and they don't want to burn their bridge with him. So be it...I don't begrudge that, but please don't imply that I am out of line for standing my ground on this issue.
Marc
This was not implied Marc, because I tend to respect people who stand their ground rather than cower and hide. I have to agree with you that Kyle, out of courtesy if nothing else, should have asked your permission to reproduce your game. Nonetheless, I tend to be far more liberal than you with the programs I put out there, and really don't care what people do with them. As a matter of fact, I always encourage modifications and enhancements if one is so inclined. I guess it's a philosophical difference
I really still feel it's kind of flattering that he picked your game to make a cart, and I bet that deep down there is a little bit of that in you too despite all your ill-feelings toward him Peace my friend.
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I buy software from Kyle any time he has an interesting title becaude I like having a nice printed manual which is my main drive for this, not to mention that many of his titles are not available anywhere else. I am not sure however whether he is selling originals or not, but from the looks of what he has been offering lately I would guess not. I know for sure that the original authors are not getting any royalties from these sales. So what I do is simply post these games on the Gameshelf site for all to have. Kyle doesn't seem to mind, because his usual buyers are also looking for a "packaged" program rather than a simple download, so it's a win-win for all.
As to the issue of Never-Lander, allow me to play the devil's advocate here for a second:
This game was never intended for commercialization because it was made freely available from the beginning as a download. Kyle is essentially putting it on a physical disk and packaging it for sale, which I presume cover his time, effort and costs plus a margin. This is a service some TI users will actually appreciate, especially those not having the time, inclination, or technical savvy to transfer programs from the Internet to the TI. IMHO, the fact that Kyle is selling Never-Lander should be kind of flattering to Marc. Would I care if he started selling some of my free software (not likely to happen I'm saddened to say as I am not of the same caliber as Marc...)? Not in the least bit as I would view it as helping out a fellow TI user. Now if I was to start selling my own software, that is an entirely different matter, and I highly doubt Kyle will pirate current commercial software.
So I say, if Kyle is not selling any active commercial software, why not let him eek out a likely meager living from his endeavours? He certainly is not hurting anyone, except maybe some egoes...
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Sounds extremely familiar (even the ass scratching part), but my favorite hair puller remains number 2. I would also add storing nested subroutines return addresses to... the same location
WTF is right he he. -
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).
I've been playing with it last night and it really does everything I need it to do. Thank you!!! One question though: Could you clarify for me the format of the assembly export file? I see 192 rows of 16 byte groups, when there should be 8x32 byte groups for each row...
Walid
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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).
Wonderful! Now where is the download link?
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Hey Walid--- just wanted to check in with ya. You're a busy guy I know.
But I was just curious about the game. . Forgive me if i bother ya---I'm just really looking forward to this one. Any chances to see a demo video or something? I offer my services to make up a nice video. you demo'd my "Lemonade Stand" game at the Faire last year... Id be happy to demo yours on YouTube. Thanks for the offer Owen and I will definitely take you up on it as soon as I have a little more to show. This program is getting quite complex and as you said my time is rather limited. A lot of the work is behind the scenes currently with little more to show on screen other than what I have already posted earlier. BUT, I still plan on completing it by the time of the Chicago Faire
Now time to fire up the grill and burn some hot dogs!!! -
Where do you guys get the TIME to do all this amazing stuff???? I am lucky if I can touch my TI more than once a week
In any case, this is really great news, even though I personally still program on the real thing.
As Owen said, this is really a renaissance for our little machine
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This is really turning into something very useful.
I'd love to see all those articles combined in a text-only or PDF for offline viewing.
Thinking about it; you could also add a "cookbook" to go with it.
With recipes/small examples for dealing with the common TI game development tasks: setting up a game loop, check for sprite collision, ...
You could then refer to the corresponding articles for getting all required background information.
Either way, very nice Matthew!
I'm actually copying and pasting them into a Word document because they are so good
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Very nice, I think I like your image conversion the best so far Tursi. It's a good compromise between contiguous colors and smart dithering. It would be a great preprocessor for anyone looking to load images into Ortelius.
It definitely is. I used it for the splash screen of Ultimate Planet.
For these various output formats, I think I have the simple binary down, and the assembler source, since both are ultimately just long lists of color bytes followed by long lists of data bytes. I would be more than happy to support existing standards as well, such as TI Artist. If there are documentation or example files of this output, please post them here and will do my best to implement that as well. Sorry I'm not as up on these as the rest of you, I fear I've always been an XB programmer where the TI was concerned.
This is very fascinating, learning about all these formats, and I love the challenge of writing a new data converter, so do bring them on!TI Artist outputs a color table file and a pattern table file. Using them is simply a matter of loading the file contents into the appropriate VDP color and pattern table areas based on the initial bitmap setup. This is the same as Tursi's converter.
The value of Ortelius, at least as far as I am concerned, is the ability to look up absolute pixel coordinates, pattern table byte and bit offsets, and color table offset along with color information for any selected pixel. This is essential for coding bitmap screen objects. That information does not necessarily need to be exported to the assembler, and it is probably sufficient to have it displayed on the screen.
One interesting feature however would be the ability to select a rectangular section of the image and be able to export the pattern and screen tables data. We could make it simple and allow selection only along the 8x8 character boundaries or really be masochistic and allow free selection. In the former case, one would need the pattern table byte offset for each 8x8 character with corresponding character definition, color table offset for each 8 bit character row and color information. For the latter case, this will need to be done bit-wise, i.e. one would need the pattern table byte and bit offset for each pixel and corresponding color table byte offset and color information. That's a lot of data, but one could apply a simple offset to it and thus place that sub-image section anywhere on the screen within a program.
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Well... I don't think the last chunk makes sense, at least if it should be processed by a program afterwards and written to the VDP. In the VDP, the pattern table and the color table are separated, so I think it would make more sense to separate them in the assembler output too instead of pairing them together. I think the ideal format would be in the order they need to appear in VDP RAM, at least if you adher to TI's recommendation. The whole bitmap consists of 768 character positions, and each of those positions has 8 bytes for pattern and 8 bytes for color which are listed top-down. I would put each character cell, consisting of 8 consecutive bytes, into an assembler line, which I think is the most logical grouping since after those 8 bytes the definition "jumps" to the next character cell which starts from the top again.
Yes, that is likely the most logical output format.
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in TI-99/4A Development
Posted
Owen, if you look online, there is free software out there for modem emulators. The emulator runs on a PC and accepts direct connections from the internet, then in turn converts these connections to a serial connection and sends it via the serial port to your favorite computer running a standard BBS. As far as the BBS is concerned, connections are happening through a modem as it cannot tell the difference and the experience for the callers is similar to the one from 1983
I strongly suggest you go that route in order to maximize the number of potential "callers".