Mord

Now that I've been pressured into getting a new comp thanks to the other one tanking on me, been trying to get A7800 to work. Technically, it works. But I can't get it to work conveniently. I try to run it from the commandline in dos (on win10) with the command below, and I get the two lines of errors. a7800 a7800 -cart graze.bas.a78 7800.u7 NOT FOUND (tried in a7800 a7800) Fatal error: Required files are missing, the machine cannot be run. I can open a7800 directly by clicking on it in windows, although the only way I've found to run the specific rom I want for testing, I have to start running it without a cart, then tab, then file directory and tediously find the file. I'd really prefer to be able to just run it from the command line...

A source somewhat verifying the scrambling of the developers to play catchup, especially in Japan. So yeah, just wait a year and we'll see what's what.

You should make sure the filenames of any graphics your importing aren't identical to some other variable/command/etc in 7800basic as well. Since 7800basic will use the filename as a label it could end up causing conflicts.

Might be an idea to keep a bit of cash for around Christmas. I think they had them on for that price either around that time or during early January.

So long as Housemarque doesn't complain if they go bottoms up after ditching everything that made them who they are today in an effort to become another Me Too'er in the world of multiplayer games, then best of luck to them. While I doubt I'll be buying their next product if it does intend to be a mainly online multiplayer game (As I'm not all that into those) time will tell if they're going to be doing all the things that make so much money with the genre. You know, the preorder bonus packages, the DLC, the microtransactions (consumable DLC), loot box scams, monthly connection fees, repetitive season passes, and the list continues. At the very least I'll be closely watching what becomes of their next game to see where this vision change takes them as they chase the cash.

Awesome. I hope you manage to pull it off as I'd love to play some ultima styled rpg on the 7800. If I manage to stabilize the bottom row the next time I take a swing at it I'd probably be more leaning towards a dragon warrior styled game myself. Either way the more programmers working on the 7800 the better in my opinion.

To do that in 7800basic, you would set the zone size for everything to 8, and then import your sprites as banners. banners are basically sprites that are taller than 1 zone. This will make 7800basic cut up the sprite into 1-zone sections and store them in a particular way. (top half first followed directly by the second half).

When it comes to sprites, it's best to have them in individual files I find, then include them in the order you want in the source. That way you can have the plotsprite command reference the base sprite in an animation, and use the optional "frame" parameter to jump ahead to the sprite you want in the animation. (All sprites have to be the same size however for that to work as intended.) For tiles/fonts that you'll be using with plotmapfile or plotmap, having them in the same file is expected (Although not necessary) Well, with plotmapfile, you'll likely want to split the tiles up so that the tiles using the same palette will be together.

Most of the time I believe extra ram is usually mapped in the $4000-$7FFF range for 16k. Some formats will have 32k available as 2 16k banks in that range.

It's still the first year so I'd expect ports etc to be hitting first - likely much easier and faster to push out. Plus given how negative the big publishers and media were on the idea of the Switch prior to it releasing with great success, it's obvious the big publishers are currently caught with their pants down and scrambling to find something to put on the Switch. With the way the Switch is selling it'll soon have the install base required to justify new games aimed for the Switch. Plus Nintendo is getting all of their franchises out on the system so that should keep people occupied long enough for the 3rd parties to finish playing catchup. I wouldn't really hold Mario Kart 8 Deluxe as that big of a rehash though. For a lot of people it's brand new! (Then again so is everything else that might have originally been a Wii-U exclusive. )

In other words, for some modern triple-A games, you'd finish downloading it just in time for the servers to go offline?

I suppose I could ask my friend if he still refuses to upgrade to cable but I haven't seen him online in a couple years. (Unless the internet just lags him out too much to get an email out nowadays. )

I've seen people take about 8-10hrs to download about 150megs or so on dialup. So do the math from there as a guestimate.

Yeah, I saw'em. Luckily nothing I'm interested in thus far. I suspect if I do get hit with a massive download (ie the rest of the game) after buying a physical copy, I'll just add the dev to my little boycott list to reduce the chance of it happening again. I'll definitely notice it if the massive download is in fact the rest of the game since I typically have my switch out of the dock, and I use a wired connection for the internet with the switch. So if I buy a physical cart and pop it in to play and it refuses to do so until it downloads a "patch", it's a pretty big giveaway.

And with download requirements like that, I'm absolutely ecstatic that I'm not that into often buggy, increasingly nickle-and-diming, drm-laden triple-A games.

You would have to enable double buffering in 7800Basic, but otherwise it's something built in. There's a sample program included with the 7800Basic zip that shows how to use it.

Ys VIII's localization/translation is apparently abysmal in quality. It extended to a few other parts of the game as well I hear including some of the item recipes being inaccurate and confusing. It was to the point where they poorly translated some things like area names that were already written in english in the japanese version. ie: Crevice of the Archeozoic Era became Archeozoic Big Hole.

Probably wouldn't have been that big of a turn off for me but unfortunately they got themselves put back on my boycott list over how they handled Ys VIII. They can chalk this up to one lost sale.

Finally finished Utawarerumono: Mask of Truth. Damn the last 20 hours of gameplay was basically expecting the final boss to be the next boss, til of course something new happened, over and over and over. I'll probably keep poking at it a bit more given that there's supposedly some dream battle theatre thing that I never saw (based on hidden trophy info) and I didn't do many of the trials. But that'll be something I poke at here and there. Next game up will either be Ys VIII, to see the screwed up localization firsthand before they try to rush out a fix (to the rushed out localization - me thinks they never learned their lesson) or I'll start in on Touhou Kobuto V: Burst Battle, if I pick up a copy later today. Whichever I start it might not be started til this weekend's game night.

That won't work well I don't think. If you end up going to the subroutine during the visible screen, the enemy graphics will get switched out and you'll see garbage displayed. (It'll still try to display whatever sprite happens to be in the same address space as the proper enemy sprites, but it'll be something different there.) You'll probably have to make sure you have the enemy sprites in the same subroutine if they're in the bankswitching range. In Graze Suit Alpha I currently need to make use of 2-3 banks to handle all the stuff for the game. (AI, collision, movement, effects, etc all add up, especially with my less than super efficient coding habits). To make sure the enemy graphics are available at any given time all of the banks that are used have identical graphics banks.

This is just one of the reasons I still tend to prefer physical media.

If the game is already essentially pay to win then I guess Roberts has come to some kind of inner peace on the decision despite his apparently vocal dislike of it? Personally I don't expect it to change if they're already making a lot of cash on this. The only question is what excuse will they give to justify keeping the current model after the final release. My bets are on "we have to be fair to the paid beta testers who sunk thousands of dollars into their ships.".

Probably 2/3 of the way through Mask of Truth or more at this point. I'll be moving on to Ys VIII next, if just to see the shoddy localization firsthand before they patch it at the end of November. I suppose I should have known better than to let them off my personal boycott, especially since they haven't really gotten any better with the DLC abuse. They go back on the list for a few years after I pick up the touhou game that released tuesday... well, actually, maybe I'll take a looksee if they found a way to add 50 dollars of DLC to that first and decide if I really want to wait on the boycott or not.

If I were to guess, 7800basic is trying to put all your graphics banks into the same bank. (As in, all in either bank 0 or bank 32)