TheMole

I was just wondering, are all components to build new Geneve's easily available today? I've quickly looked at the schematics, and there's one custom ASIC on there but it seems to be relatively simple in terms of what it does. I'm guessing mizapf understands it well enough for someone to be able to create a replacement. I've always dreamed of having one, but never could afford one on my measly allowance back in the day. It would be cool if we could build new Geneve's for those that are still looking to fulfill that same dream. I'm not a hardware guy myself, but I have a friend that loves this kind of thing who would be able to help me out (to a certain extent)... it'd be interesting to see how hard it would be.

Only the legacy and 80-column modes are V9938 compatible on the F18A, Matthew came up with his own programming model and feature set for the other advanced modes.

Well, there are some examples of 32+ sprites for the Colecovision and MSX (Uridium by Atrax, for example), would be great to have the same on the TI. Check this out: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/216268-my-first-test-on-the-tms9918/

The problem with trying to map C64 techniques on the TI is that the VDP does not use the same memory as the CPU. So we're not so much limited by RAM as we are by CPU-VDP transfer bandwidth. I don't think we have enough bandwidth to "race the beam" like on some other systems.

The only thing that I routinely do is change the background color mid-frame as a sort of poor man's profiling tool to (visually) see how many scanlines a given routine takes (which today only works in the real deal and in MESS). But of course, that's not a game or demo effect...

Huh, I find that to be an extremely crappy game: typical early DOS game graphics with weir shades and gradients, incredibly wonky physics, horrible sound, non-scrolling playing fields... Should be perfectly doable on the TI.

Tried to run this in js99er, but it won't load for me. It shows the opening screen, but when it tries to load the second file, it just returns to XB. When you then try to list the program in memory the system crashes.

For me, this kinda sums it up... *edit* nevermind, hadn't seen Gazoo's reply yet... excellent choice.

For our English speaking friends, glühwein is probably better known as 'mulled wine'.

I know I promised you this a while back, but in the mean time I've gone completely Windows-less (work allowed me to upgrade to a Mac) so it's becoming less likely that I'll be able to help you with this. I know Tursi is a Windows/GCC user, so he might be able to help out. Just curious though, does the new install script that Insomnia provides not work for you? At least on Mac it seems to work pretty much flawlessly.

I actually think the state of our development tools is pretty good, better than ever. Just looking at what has become available since I rediscovered my love for the system some two years ago: Progressively more impressive BASIC compilers, with the latest doing basically everything an XB developer might need. New/updated and powerful programming environments (gcc, the Forth's) PC-based graphics design tools such as Magellan, convert9918, ... Programming libraries providing out-of-the-box optimized functionality for games (e.g. Tursi's VFM/SPF player library, XB256, ...) I mean, the amount of tools that have become available in this small community in such a short amount of time is absolutely staggering, we should do everything we can to embrace them and make beautiful games with them. The only thing I can think of that might be holding back development today could paradoxically be the stunning quality of some of these new releases. It's pretty impressive that we're even starting to see interested from the typically much more advanced MSX community in what we're doing. But I can imagine that some people think that games (or games to be) like Road Hunter, Ultimate Planet or Adamantyr's Zelda-like game make their efforts look meak in comparison. But honestly, that's just bullcrap. My two favorite games on the TI back in the day were Parsec and some Dutch frogger clone written in XB call "Kermit". There is absolutely no reason why anyone would not be able to build an truly fun to play XB game today. All I can advocate is that people just go for it, knowing that everyone's contributions are appreciated even if they're not fast-paced assembler master pieces, a fun game is a fun game. Period. Stop procrastinating, just go for it! And for what it's worth, I've played Road Hunter and Scramble to pass away 15 minutes here or there more than once, so I at least sometimes actually play these new games. I would probably sink hours in a Zelda clone and I have a couple of friends that would absolutely love to play Ultimate Planet.

Excellent news, and good thing you mentioned your blog! I hadn't thought of visiting it again, and it's an interesting read.

Hah! I have never heard of anyone wanting to connect TI controllers to another system, why would you subject yourself to the pain of using those torture tools ? But I guess since you can make an adaptor from Atari-to-TI it should be possible to make one that does TI-to-Atari, no? I actually think it's quite neat to be able to use real vintage controllers with emulators.

It has been verified to occur on real hardware, see this post by Tursi (who wrote a test program to reproduce the effect): http://atariage.com/forums/topic/168968-f18a/page-11?gopid=2219848&do=findComment&comment=2219848

I must be missing something, it does not appear under apps for me?

Very nice improvements on the trees specifically (the rest as well, but the really jump out to me). Please make this!

The problem with a front view is that it would make it triangular, and thus difficult to give it an outline without having to resort to huge borders (the outline can be done because it is right on the 8x8 cell boundaries, with a diagonal edge that would be impossible). I'd rather mix up the perspectives a bit than have the low-fi non outlined look .

I still regret not having been able to get a Geneve back in the day. I actively used the TI as my main computing platform until sometime around 1996 (although we did get a 486dx around 1992, but that was the family computer, the TI was mine). It would have been a very natural feeling upgrade for the TI back then, so I'm sure I would have felt just as nostalgic about it as I do about the TI now. Hell, I'd pay a pretty penny to get my hands on one today...

Just wanted to add, I agree with most of sometimes99er's comments. Some bits are definitely better, some I find slightly less succesfull. I think the "dithered" look on the volcano with the white pixels isn't really working with this style of graphics, but the sides of the scroll indeed look surprisingly good with the extra color. I am undecided on the white tip of the tower on the gray castle, I might change that for a brownish color instead. Either way, I'll make a version incorporating the changes you like and add it to the program. Thanks for the input everyone!

I use The Gimp. Excellent Photoshop alternative, and does all I need it to do. Has a bit of a learning curve though, so be aware of that. http://www.gimp.org/ By default the grid is 10x10 pixels, but you can change this in the preferences. Also, I imported MESS' tms9918 palette, so it allows me to edit with the correct colors from the start.

Indeed, I've been wondering how hard it would be to write an Extended Basic interpreter in assembler (or C, in my case) that adds goodies such as type support and the ability to run programs without using VDP RAM.

Yeah, don't get me wrong. I have tremendous respect for people that still use the TI for practical real-life purposes even today, all the more power to them. I just wanted to share my personal reasoning as a way to maybe get some discussion going and getting other people's insights. After all, we're a diverse group with opinions ranging from "everything needs to run on unexpanded real iron" to "let's put a Raspberry Pi in a TI shell and run an emulator on it" and everything in between. And that's great, 'cause it makes sure we get to see our little ecosystem expand in all sorts of interesting directions! But it could be good to get a feel as to where the majority sits on that scale.

I voted no, because the reason I come here and code for the TI is not because it's such a wonderful productivity platform (let's be honest, it isn't by any stretch of the imagination). For all of the RTC-related use cases that I can come up with there is a better implementation on my PC, my laptop my smartphone and my tablet readily available today. My time with the TI is really about nostalgically filling in the ambitions I had as a kid where I was hell bent on demonstrating that my computer could run games just as impressive as those C64's and Ataris that all the other kids were playing on. I was going to show them, with spiffy graphics and arcades-speed gameplay. Unfortunately, I never learned assembly and that severely limited those ambitions . Now, many years later I do have the skills to show off what the system can do and that's what I enjoy the most. From creating the graphics in Gimp, to writing the code and designing the levels. I only used the TI for two things back in the day: programming and gaming, and those are the only things I use it for today as well. I really don't see a lot of reasons to use TI Writer, Multiplan or dbase when MS Word, Excel and MySQL (or any other RDBMS) are available. Now, a high resolution timer to do benchmarking would be neat though! But a battery-backed clock? Nah... Just my personal humble opinion and use cases of course .

Regardless of the display mode, the sprite generator tables are always defined by the contents of register 6. The exact location is the value defined by the lower 3 bits times 0x800 *edit* Rasmus beat me to it...

I use The Gimp for all my Alex Kidd graphics. Superb program.