Asmusr

Thanks Tursi, I have tried your tool and it worked fine after disabling the boot tracking in my program, but it still needs a companion disk with the map, music and sprite files. My plan for the cartridge was to run the main program from ROM but put the data files into GROMs (of which I understand you can have 40K). When I need a map file I will then copy the relevant part of the GROM into CPU RAM. Will I still need GPL for that? Will that be compatible with the new 512K card?

I have 4 x 4K map level files in Titanium. If I concatenate them into a 16K file, call the file titaniumg.bin, and place a line in classic99.ini: rom1=G|6000|4000|mods\titaniumg.bin Is that sufficient to 'mount' the file as GROMs? Will they be mounted as 2 x 8K or 3 x 6K GROMs? As you can probably tell I have no experience with GROMs whatsoever.

Sounds like a fun project, but you would need to maintain some degree of backwards compatibility with existing software, or the new computer would be very lonely.

I'm would like to make a (virtual, for now) cartridge version of Titanium, so I need to change the data files into GROMs. Are GROM files used by emulators just raw binary files or is there a specific file format? Thanks, Rasmus.

Sure.

Whoa, look at the list of games developed for the Colecovision in 2012: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/215798-and-the-colecovision-best-game-of-2012-was/ If this is a challenge, perhaps it's time for a call for expression of interest? Would you be allowed to participate with more than one entry?

United Federation of Planets? Wouldn't they be using a slightly more powerful CPU?

Sorry, nothing exciting. Just fixed a few bugs that I discovered while working on a new project. magellan-1.7.6.zip

The file name was changed to DSK1.TITA

You can delete TIC and TIO from the disk. Those are the object files left by the assembler, but they are not needed if you run TITA (E/A 5) or use the Extended Basic loader. I have done that for the attached a 90K disk image. Titanium90.zip

Thank you for your suggestions. - The problem with the in-game music is that it has to be very simple in order not to clash with the sound effects. I made a compromise and decided to play a short burst of music once in a while. - Regarding the shadow, I like any idea that generate a spectacular effect with few resources. However, since the shadows from the spheres would not move as well I'm not sure how effectful it would be in this case. And actually, since this takes place in space where light is supposed to come from a star, the direction to the light source would not change when the ship moves. Realism is a key factor here! - Regarding the way the ships moves, I first kept it centered vertically, but I thought that gave you too little time to avoid approaching enemies, so I decided to move the ship slowly to the top/bottom when you change vertical direction. A problem you may have noticed is that in some cases this actually makes the ship move backwards relative to the surface. - Everything new I add has to be weighted carefully on a clock-cycle weight. I have used all scrath-pad RAM and most of the 8-bit RAM, so there are very few resources left to play with.

I just experienced this a few times with the up arrow (joystick up). Nothing helped except a reset. I was playing in CPU Overdrive mode.

I have also seen that a few times in Classic99. Sometimes the ship gets stuck moving to the left all the time.

It's only mapped that way by the KSCAN routine, which I'm obviously not using, right? Anyway, I don't mind changing it in the next version if everybody expects Q to be the fire key, but having user defined keys would be too slow, I think.

Tab is the joystick button. I guess there is a convention to use Q as there fire key, but I don't like to have all the keys so close together. Actually Q,A,O,P,Space would be my preferred keyboard controls (in lack of cursor keys), but I thought that would be too far from the standard.

Yes, space or the joystick 1 fire button.

I attached a new version to the first post of this thread with a few changes: The mines (spheres, bulbs) now have shadows, as suggested by Retroclouds. This makes them look like they are floating, and it's more apparent that they are dangerous. On level 4 where there are several hundred mines it looks a bit strange, but in general I think it's a good improvement. The collision detection with the mines is now more symmetric, but still far from pixel accurate. I have added the version number to the start screen. I have not been able to replicate the problems reported by OLD CS1. The only problem I have noticed on my US console with the F18A is that the enemy ships sometimes start moving really fast in the vertical direction, but I cannot reproduce this consistently. If anyone have experienced these issues, please let me know. I'm not planning anymore updates in the short term. I'm looking forward to working on other projects for a change.

Very nice. I'm also thinking about making a Scramble clone.

I would be interesting to know how many unique 8x8 characters and how many unique character transitions there are. Could the graphics be loaded into Magellan?

I think there is plenty of talent but not enough time.

Thank you for reporting this. I haven't seem these problems myself, but I will try to do some more testing on real hardware. It might have something to do with the XB loader which I have to admit I haven't tried on hardware. Yes, the current algorithm for collision detection with the mines is very simple - I think this can be improved in the final version.

I will definitely try to make a version for the 512 K card when it's released. I'm not planning on selling it, though. I have tried to make the bulbs (I think of them as mines) stand you by making them blink, but I realize it's not that noticeable when the screen scrolls. A shadow is a great idea if it doesn't create too many new tile transitions. It's using all the sound generators, so it wouldn't allow any sound effects. Thank you!

Thank you, that's very kind of you and I would like to know for future projects. For the Titanium disk, however, I think I will just use the loader that InsaneMultitasker provided.

Thank you, that works - try attached disk. I have also renamed TITANIUM to TITA and added an XB loader. Titanium.zip

It's the boot tracker code. If I don't call it, it works. It's not because the code doesn't work - it finds the right device name - but for some reason the HFDC doesn't like that this code has been called. Probably to do with enabling the ROM? [/font] [font=courier new,courier,monospace]BOOTTR MOV @>83D0,R12 * GET THE CRU BASE IN R12 MOV @>83D2,R9 * GET THE ROM ADDRESS FOR DEVICE LDCR @ONES,0 * ENABLE THE ROM AI R9,4 * ADDING FOUR PUTS US AT THE LENGTH BYTE MOVB *R9+,R4 * PLACE THAT IN R4 AND INCREMENT R9 SRL R4,8 * RIGHT JUSTIFY LENGTH IN R4 LI R10,FILEDV * POINT TO TEXT BUFFER MOVIT MOVB *R9+,*R10+ * MOV ONE BYTE FROM ROM TO TEXT BUFFER DEC R4 * FINISHED? JNE MOVIT * NO, DO ANOTHER BYTE LDCR R4,0 * DISABLE THE ROM (R4 IS ZERO AT THIS POINT) B *R11 * BRANCH TO NEXT SECTION OF CODE ONES DATA >0101 * WORD TO TURN ON ROM IN CRU[/font] [font=courier new,courier,monospace] As I wrote earlier I copied it from "The Art Of Assembly — Part 7. Why A Duck? By Bruce Harrison 1991", and I don't fully understand how it's working. I would like to keep it, because I like to be able to run the game from any floppy drive.