SpiceWare

Nathan Strum · July 28, 2007

Didn't happen. There just wasn't enough response to make it worth doing. I'd like to include homebrewers somehow in the DVD, but exactly how that's going to happen is the question.

iChat video conferencing :ponder:

Nathan Strum · July 28, 2007

Nathan Strum · July 25, 2007

SpiceWare · July 19, 2007

Frumpy? Never thought of her that way. Tomboy for sure, but not frumpy.

Marcie is hauling around a laptop - though I guess that's not as nerdy as it used to be.

While I think the scruffy look works, the artist does comment 'Trying to hit a "grunge" look for Pig Pen but I think I need to do more research.'

Yeah - been a bit burned out on coding of late. Can't avoid it at the office, so it get's cut out at home.

SpiceWare · July 19, 2007

Mostly agree with observation 2, though I think Peppermint Patty, Marcy and Pig Pen match their characters.

Interesting :ponder:

SpiceWare · July 19, 2007

I wasn't too sure at first, but they grew on me as I looked thru them. I thought Schroeder's soul patch was rather appropriate.

Nathan Strum · July 18, 2007

I read on his dev page for the game that most people he talked to only played the gauntlet level. I don't know how many people he had play-testing his version, so I don't know if their feedback (or lack thereof) was a contributing factor, or if he just decided only those two levels merited inclusion.

oooh - I like the trailer. May have to figure out iMovie HD on my MacBook and come up with one for Medieval Mayhem.

Thanks! Quite a bit more in depth than the "eye candy" review that's currently the only one in the store.

You're welcome. The game deserves a thorough review. Considering it's already cracked the top 8, you'd think more people would have written about it.

I thought so too, but figured I couldn't complain as I haven't written any reviews myself :ponder:

Wickeycolumbus · July 14, 2007

Congrats! I want one, but I'm holding off for now as I'm in "debt payoff" mode.

Nathan Strum · July 14, 2007

Thanks! Quite a bit more in depth than the "eye candy" review that's currently the only one in the store.

Nathan Strum · July 12, 2007

Neato!

Nathan Strum · July 9, 2007

Looking forward to the next 100 entries!

I always thought I lost the "most views" throne long ago to SpiceWare

- nope, I don't think I've ever been first in any sort order of the blogs

Mezrabad · July 7, 2007

You wouldn't want a plasma display for video games due to burn in. Newer plasma's are less susceptible, but it's still a problem - especially with older video games with lots of static images.

SpiceWare · July 6, 2007

Cool - another good song!

Cybergoth · July 6, 2007

This is one game I'd love to see updated for current hardware. Being able to see a larger map on my 1680x1050 display would be sweet.

SpiceWare · July 6, 2007

Not yet. I first heard of them when I saw the video last week. I plan to get more based on what I've heard so far.

Nathan Strum · July 3, 2007

Dang, that's hot. I thought I saw on the weather map that the LA area was in the upper 80s?

We've been getting a lot of rain here in Houston, making it cooler than normal. I had my S2000's top down during lunch, normally it only gets dropped in the mornings from late June thru early September.

Thankfully we're not getting as much rain as the hill country(around Austin).

Thanks for the review too. I'd planned to watch it when the DVD was released - might check it out at the theater instead.

Nathan Strum · July 2, 2007

Susan Sarandon as Mom (who doesn't look half-bad for a woman of 87)

Does that mean she looks really crappy as a woman of 60? :ponder:

One thing some friends keyed me into was all the innuendo in the show if you listen to it without watching it.

Mezrabad · July 2, 2007

Same here - always an interesting read :ponder:

atari2600land · June 23, 2007

Check out the Book of Love cover of Tubular Bells on their album Lullaby

Wickeycolumbus · June 20, 2007

It has it's pluses, expecially when you're a 15 year old kid w/no income to buy an assembler. I'm not even sure one was available back then(81).

It also has it's minuses - namely it's very difficult to rearrange code. And figuring out backward branching took a while(hint - Two's complement). Before I figured that out my loops were coded like this:

   LDX #$0a
Loop:  
  do something here
  DEX
  BEQ SkipLoop
  JMP Loop
SkipLoop:
  continue program here

Using this method I wrote:
a game that was a hybrid BASIC and ML(the ML was used to scroll the screen sideways).
40 column terminal program for the VIC (using 3 pixel wide letters)
BBS software for the VIC 20 and the 64. Both were fairly simple routines that intersepted the normal CHROUT and CHRIN routines and would clone screen output to the modem and take modem into and shove it into the keyboard input buffer(both with ASCII translation, if required).

When I got a C= 128 I picked up 128 Machine Language for Beginners by Richard Mansfeild because it had the LADS assembler for the 128 in it. By that time my programs were getting too complicated to do using the BASIC program method. I used LADS to write Alien Invaders and some rather fancy BBS and term software known as MusicTerm, 64-Net, 128-Net that did music, sprites, character animation, joysticks and more over the phone.

TROGDOR · June 18, 2007

Looks pretty cool, will check it out tonight.

In Medieval Mayhem the scanline would show 262.

TROGDOR · June 18, 2007

POKE 36866,24

Say what? Are you saying that POKE 36866,24 will get rid of the left and right borders and give you 2 more characters on each line of the VIC-20's display? I don't remember that-- but it's been so long. I had (still have) "Mapping the VIC," so if it was in there, then I probably knew about it but forgot.

Michael

The VIC let you control the # of characters across and the # of rows of characters. The built in display routines would scroll weird if the screen wasn't 22x23, but your program could work around it by going directly to memory instead of PRINT/CHROUT.

You could also set the characters to be 8x16 instead of 8x8. There was no hi-res graphics mode on the VIC - instead you used the 8x16 character size and filled the screen up with a unique character in each location(at the 8x8 size there were not enough characters to fill the screen to do this). I used this with a 3 pixel wide font to write a 40 column terminal program for the VIC.

More info here:

http://home.freeuk.com/fpgaarcade/resources/6561.txt

Wickeycolumbus · June 17, 2007

Sweet! I got started on a VIC. I didn't have an assembler so I'd code it in with BASIC program and a bunch of data statements.

10 m=7*1024 : rem were in memory to put the ML program
20 read a: rem get next data statement value
30 if a = -1 then 70: rem -1 means we're done, so skip ahead to line 70
40 poke m,a: rem put the data statement value into memory
50 m=m+1: rem point to the next memory location
60 goto 20: rem loop back to process the next value
70 sys 7*1024: rem run the ML program
80 end : rem quit the basic program
90 data 169,72 : rem lda #'H'
100 data 32, 210, 255: rem jsr $FFD2 (kernel CHROUT function)
110 data 169,73: rem lda #'I'
120 data 32,210,255: rem jsr $FFD2
130 data 96: rem rts - quit the ML program
999 data -1: rem we're all done