jedimatt42
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Posts posted by jedimatt42
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So, I've just gathered a pile of hardware. Including a PEB with TI (32k, rs323, floppy disk controller) and drive.
I've picked up an NEC 3-1/2" floppy drive, and some blank disks.
But I don't have Disk Manager 2 to format them with... There are things like dm2k that are EA5 programs...
I have extended basic, and editor assembler cartridges...
Is there any creative way to load a disk manager? Can EA5 load from RS232 connected to a PC, or should I try the .wav to cassette route? Can EA load from cassette? Can an emulator copy a file from disk to cassette/wav?
I've actually ordered Disk Manager 2 and Terminal Emulator II cartridges off the great and wonderful e-bay, but that's no fun.
and requires waiting. -
The real smart money goes on purchasing a cheap Gotek drive from China and flashing it with the latest HxC firmware
Have you tried this? Does it work? The raw Gotek drives where denounced in another thread, but the hxc2001 guy did make a firmware for these drives. You don't get to use nice file names... DSKA0000.HFE, DSKA0001.HFE...
Supposed to work just like the SD based HxC drives, but uses USB-thumbdrive instead of SD.
Anyway, I grabbed one for kicks that has been flashed with this firmware, but am having difficulty getting an HFE file that is compatible with TIFDC, 40 track single-density. So right now it is still looking more like a waste of real money, instead of real smart money.
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If anyone is interested, here is my first creation from Fritz's editor... To the annoyance of my wife, I feel I have tuned this sufficiently
https://github.com/jedimatt42/ti-99-tod-games/tree/master/Tod-ForestOfRuins
Brief description: a forest floor adventure. You start out with nearly nothing, and there is little more to buy ( shield and leathers if you wish ). There are plenty of other weapons and equipment upgrades available to be found in the dungeon.
I have tweaked the player character graphics, and replaced the Hero class with a 'Dwarf'.. I like him.. the Rogue wears a cape...
I like that too... I did not modify the mosters....
There are 8 relics to be found. You have no time limit to find them. It's a good old
dungeonforest crawl.-
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These newsletters are inspiring. But I have to admit, I ran into them out of context. ( not linked from Atariage post, but just raw google search. )
One thing that would make an awesome addition to them, would be a date of publication or authorship in the web-views. Until I strolled through this topic on Atariage, I
assumed this information might be a dozen years old already.
It looks like the pdf views people are printing have a date! Wicket cool. So it's just the web-view format that doesn't...
Just a thought.
Great work btw...
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Check your PM's
This is corrected in v1.4.6
Confirmed, this recovered my bad file like a champ! Thanks Fritz!
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The Save-As has been corrected, it was a bug with saving TI-Header files only.
Cool! Glad to hear that.
Time, is the amount of time before the quest is Destroyed! (Its in the manual, for every 10 moves(in the halls), time drops by 1.)
I just got my ToD manual in the mail today!!! Looking forward to reading it front to back. For instance, I had no idea you could negotiate...
I haven't written a Help file yet, but need to.
Most of your editor is very intuitive.
Scrolls, there are 20 total, the normal scroll is the top half of the screen(8x16). You can now have a scroll that is double that(16x16)
You can also use both half's separately(top 8x16 for scrolls 1-5) and then (bottom half 8x16 for scrolls 6-10) for instance.
Then there now is a 2nd magenta scroll graphic. You can do the same for this graphic too, so you can have 4 different 8x16 scrolls to use,
or 2 half's and 1 large, if you want.
The scroll images is controlled on the 'Misc Setup' screen under 'Items Setup'.
The "1 normal U" means, 1st graphic Upper half.( L means lower half.)
The "2 Large" means, 2nd(magenta) graphic, full size 16x16
These are things like this scroll information, where you have to work in two places two figure out how the images relate to the item setup, that are real gems of knowledge! Thanks!
I'm real happy with what I've been able to do so far. Just need to play test it, and then I'll share.
Thanks,
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Thanks for the insight.
When loading a typical TOD game in Classic99, the debugger window indicates it is readng 0x3300 bytes..
When I try to load one that hangs, it has a smaller byte size... in the case of this badfile - 0x3251
link to badfile - https://www.dropbox.com/s/2izthl4tus51dyu/badfile?dl=0
To create badfile, all I did was open the original quest file in TodEditor, tweak the game description, and save as 'badfile'. quest is in a tifiles pc file named quest.tfi, with a nice zero-rich tifiles header:
07 54 49 46 49 4C 45 53 00 33 01 00 00 00 00 00 51 55 45 53 54 20 20 20 20 20 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
badfile now has a header of:
42 41 44 46 49 4C 45 20 20 20 00 00 01 00 00 33 51 55 45 53 54 20 20 20 20 20 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
So, this looks like: "BADFILE " some size data, and then "QUEST " where you would expect it to be in a TIFILES header, but the new file name seems to have written as a v9t9 header over top, and the rest of the TIFILES header not removed.
So, it looks like TodEditor writes v9t9 files out. Possibly expects them to already be v9t9 files, and doesn't change the file size....
Now, somewhere along the way, I manually placed the tifiles header on my work, and recovered it. And now when saved in TodEditor, it is putting a v9t9 header on, but since my manual tifiles header was minimal, with a large amouct of zeros, Classic99 & ToD seem to be content with the file.
I think I got in a bit of a pickle, renaming files willi-nilli... not knowing how much this matters.
Surely, I've got some more learning to do. 55
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Ok, So, it seems the TIFILES header gets all 'creative' on me when I use TodEditor's 'save as' feature to a new name. And then those files don't load. I edited the TIFILES header to match a working header with the file name I want, and then the 'digging' of my dungeon works. I'm new, not sure if I am violating some laws of filename conventions for TIFILES, or if there is a bug in the editor...
Anyway, another question? Why do scrolls have two images? and only the top half of the 1st image in the editor seems to show up in game. ? I'm guessing for expediency, the odd sized items are just still edited in the 16x16 pixel editor, and we just need to consult 'quest' for a reference as to what parts are useful, is that correct?
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Anyone have trouble digging the dungeons created by the editor?
I have quest in tifiles format, loading in classic99 (using the DSK0. feature) and digging works just fine.
I load quest into Fritz' TodEditor, and just save it with a simple description change, it becomes a v9t9 file.
Then going into TOD, digging a dungeon appears to hang. just plays the music forever.
I have to say, it was working just fine at the beginning of the day. I feel like I must have changed something in Classic99. Any ideas?
I have a 'Forest of Ruins' crawl, tod-edited up and almost ready to share. I just need to be able to test it
Anyway, I guess I'll try Mess, and also resetting? Classic99.
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Regarding the editor. !!! It's really nice!!! great job. I've made some player graphics I really like.
Fritz, if you like adding features, here are some suggestions:
- for 'firing' and 'spinner' graphics, show the set of images on the screen at the same time. Would reduce the 'draw, draw, draw, save, previous, next, draw, previous, next, draw, previous, previous, next, next, next, next.
- for working on the dungeon level environment colors, it would be cool to be able to copy the scheme from lower or higher levels. What I was going for was a progressive motif, so I wanted a lot in common with the previous layer...
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I also had some questions about the meaning of a few things... or the gameplay that results... For quest setup, if a player creates a 3 level dungeon, but the quests are all setup to trigger on level 10, does that mean they all trigger on the lowest dungeon? 3, in this case?
If the level is spread out, such as quests on floor 7, 8, 9, & 10, and a player runs a 6 level dungeon, do they just shift up? Does it squash nicely too then?
And what is the meaning of the time field? what are the units of that time field?
And if this was all written down in some file I failed to read, that is a great answer too
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And what is super awesome, is that ( once I figure out my technical difficulty ), I've done this morning, what I failed to complete in an entire summer 30 years ago
- for 'firing' and 'spinner' graphics, show the set of images on the screen at the same time. Would reduce the 'draw, draw, draw, save, previous, next, draw, previous, next, draw, previous, previous, next, next, next, next.
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I just tried a quick 1 level game of Automotion. That was fun! Something felt good about giving those particular bad guys a beating.
I'll have to check out the editor. I know when I was a kid I played around with the Asgard editor, and I vaguely remember I got particularly involved/stuck/obsessed with it trying to perfect the player character graphics. Does your editor allow that? I didn't see that sort of change in Automotion.
Regardless, I wanted to say thanks!
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in TI-99/4A Computers
Posted
The gotek device still lacks, in that the hfe files must be named sequentially DSKA0000.hfe, etc... it cannot be EA.hfe. Which means I have to document what disks are on which images. But it did cost considerably less.