Retrospect

Eric the Elf has made his appearance at last, this time he's white. So far we can move forward, jump straight up, and duck. I have programmed 11 screens so far, this is screen 1. I reworked all the code so as to be more memory friendly. Next thing to do is get collision detection working and a lives indicator atop the red border. I'm not doing a score, because you literally just go from left to right with no other objective than to rescue the maiden. Again.

Running in standard XB environment, 2 spiders move, one goes up and down on a web at the same time as his friend moves left and right, whilst looking left to right. All done in one CALL SPRITE command, all calculations are worked out first and then the sprites are displayed all at the same time. This will include the player sprite (Eric) as his moves are calculated beforehand also. (He's not here yet!)

I've seen code pasted into Classic99 at differing speeds - Is it not down to actual speed of PC in the end? Anyhow - here is an online app that lets you code Extended Basic into it, and literally, produces a file. You might want to knock off the .BIN extension before you load it up into Classic99. Owing to the nature of how it works, some interesting results can be reaped - one can for instance write things that would not pass the parser in real-time extended basic environment, and in that case, often it will crash the computer. http://nivelleringslikaren.eu/ti994a_basic/

Yeah you're near the end, good luck!

The pits & arrow screen is one of the hardest. It requires more or less pixel perfect jumping and timing Wait till you get to the dragon and chasm screen!

I now have screen 6 and 7 setup and running, they just need enemies putting in. Actually screen 7 was recording my 1st attempt at running it from programming, and shows a blooper - instead of the ghost I wrote in, it's a floating white ledge. The water scrolls by 2 pixels for row 20 (top of the water) and by 4 pixels from columns 21 to 24, to create a half-decent sea motion. Next thing to do is make the player and ledge "bob" up and down in the water, I may change the ledge to a raft of some kind. It's running at standard xb speed right now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S441kUDTIaI&t=2s

The ledge moves left and right in the water, independant of your moves. Jump onto it to travel over the water and into screen 7.

Got some more done earlier, I have here, the 5th screen ...there's spiders that move up & down, and left & right. Not compiled as yet so just running in XB at the moment Player can move back, forwards, jump back, jump forward, and now, duck with the X key (needed for those pesky spiders and other monsters) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nogY-2L52ws

Thanks Yes, I viewed Venture on youtube to get some ideas for sounds.

The game is coming on well. I have created the four screens you've seen in post #21 so far, and I've managed to get a ghostly guard with a shield to do his thing all over the screen whilst Eric can move around at the same time. Only left & right movement so far, but it's working. Here is a short video of it in execution , not compiled yet, running in Basic environment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mNOekZvT_k

New game being programmed, to further the adventures of my character "Eric the Elf" ... Working title; "Eric and the Monsters" Excuse my not trimming the screenshots, I'm on a Chromebook.

This is really good! I love the inertia effect of the pointer, creates some nice siney-lines.

yep! there's no way to jump all three before they raise the spike either. The only improvement I could make on this would be to have the guards raise spikes individually at random. I wouldn't have a clue how to do that though

CASTLE CONQUER 32K.zip Castle Conquer for 32K with Extended Basic or Editor Assembler (opt.5) More screens, more sounds, animated sprites, Guards can now raise spikes half-way through a jump.

When I saved a program in JS99er with the 32K switched on, it saved it as INT/VAR ... when I switched it off and saved a program, it saved it as "PROGRAM" ... so there's a difference in the way it saves if you have the 32K switched on at the point of saving - which will then render the cassette unusable if attempting to OLD CS1 with the 16k stock scenario. WAVs for instance in MESS/MAME that people have trouble with, may be because of memory settings.

thanks for the comments guys, appreciate it ... cheers for playing ... my lord the ping-outs are terrible on this site lately ! the 32K version is currently being tested - i'm up to the dragon and chasm screen so far. By the way Luca that game looks brilliant, i look forward to playing it when you've made it if I can't get on here properly again, I'll have to upload the 32K version to the atariage facebook site.

Thanks for the comments and the likes ... I'm glad you've enjoyed this game, I do too although I think insane level is actually impossible. So with that I've decided, since we have a stock 16k XB game let's go for something we can perhaps put on the Flashroms ... a 32K version, compiled, to run smoother and have more screens ... animated fire in the dragon & chasm screen for instance. Here's a screenshot of one of the ideas I had, although at this stage I'm unsure what's going to be in the game

Here is some footage of me playing the game , badly, to show what it looks like. (Ok I got that quote from Steve Benway) Anyhow ... yes ... This video includes the dragon & chasm screen. The idea is to catch the dragon .... you can only do this by jumping forwards at just the right time! You need to be jumping when the dragon has just disappeared from the right side of the screen to come on to the left side.

Thanks Vorticon. I've a handy tip for screen two .... when it comes on, press S and go back as far as you can ... wait for the 1st arrow to pass the fireball, then as the 2nd arrow passes the fireball, move forward and jump forward ... then keep moving forward and the timing will be just right for you to jump and walk the rest of the way! .... oh and also, if you do get to the maiden, make sure you are walking towards her as you get to her - if you jump into her you'll die. (handling the sprites any other way would have caused a slow-down)

..... Castle Conquer .... Controls: S - Walk back D - Walk Forward W - Jump back (this is needed for one room in particular!) R - Jump forward There are 3 difficulty levels, Normal, Daring and Insane. Playing Insane level adds extra arrows on certain screens. TIP: Dragons aren't always nasty, they can come in handy, especially when you're needing a lift. castle conquer.zip <<<< 16K version CASTLE CONQUER 32K.zip <<<< 32K version --Coming soon-- Eric In Monsterland

I'd have a look on the Cadd Electronics site if you're not sure - for a kick off it states you need a computer with Pentium 5 3.0Ghz and 4gb of Ram. Jesus that's high requirements.

Yeh most of it didn't sound too similar but that little melody right at the end I got that bit.

Speaking of the music, is it based on a real song?

It sounds to me, "Undefined Symbol" is when we have suddenly mentioned a variable - without former introduction. Example; 100 CALL CLEAR 110 A=1 120 A=A+1 130 PRINT B <---- the compiler hates this - 140 GOTO 120 OR it could be a line that has been asked for, with a GOSUB or GOTO or ON X GOTO , that is no longer there ... when we use notepad we sometimes do editing and forget to alter the latter when it comes to deleting parts of our code. Hope this helps.

How much more would it have cost TI, and in the end the consumer, if the machine had been equipped with 32K in the first place, and the ability to poke and peek? .... I remember my cousin telling me at the time the reason people were buying Spectrums and even Vic-20's was down to the fact that you had to buy a RAM upgrade to do anything like that.