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digdugnate

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Posts posted by digdugnate

  6. Posted

    I just picked up Shamus (yay!) and it's a pretty cool port compared to the C64 version that I've played.

     

    My thing, though, is I'm just not very good at the game. ;-) Does anyone have any tips/tricks they've picked up for the game along the way? I suspect one of mine will be 'don't use the standard TI joy sticks'.

     

    Thanks!

     

     

  9. Posted

    Finally gave it a few spins. It’s actually quite a decent action game. My best score was only 28,700. I wasn't trying hard, only to have a bit of fun.

     

    “Play the Original Arcade Classic in Your Own Home.”

     

    - Yep, that’s what you get. I gotta love Atarisoft.

     

    Considering that Defender is 8K ROM only, it's very well done and executes fast and on the spot. Graphics are functional, absolutely. Rather good use of sprites, and mostly avoiding the maximum of 4 sprites horizontally. Plenty of game elements; landers, shooting, explosions, humanoids, kidnapping/abduction, transformation/mutants, rescuing/catching, baiters, pod and swarmers, bombers and mines, flickering stars, scrolling surface, scanner/radar, hyperspace, smart bombs, mutant takeover, scoring system and difficulty settings. Did I leave out anything?

     

    Back in the day, I already had Donkey Kong and Pac-Man (both 16K). Donkey Kong was impressive with arcade like feel and several screens. Pac-Man was arcade feel too, however a bit on the slow side. I guess I let Defender down a bit for perhaps the somewhat unimpressive starship explosion.

     

    :)

     

     

    The best I could muster was about 22500 with just dinking around. :) I'm good for this month, I think lol

     

    Donkey Kong and Centipede are pretty darn good ports, I think.

    • Like 1

  11. Posted

    I'm a lurker on a lot of these boards (and actively participate on one)- but woooooow. It's like an industrial accident or something, and I just can't look away. My two cents since this thread has derailed into utter insanity-

     

    the threads I do read that are 'productive' i see folks that are obviously knowledgeable and obviously love their platforms of choice that they develop or in some way keep working with.

     

    i love reading all the crazy STUFF that the communities are still doing for the consoles/computers, a lot of it i think is better than the originally developed software/hardware/etc or greatly improves the QoL of the platforms.

     

    @2600problems, if you are just 23, my god, man! Settle down before you stroke out- the first rule of being a grownup is listening to other folks that are legitimately trying to help you.

    • Like 2

  14. Posted

    I've been refining my programming knowledge with Basic and Extended Basic before tackling Assembly (plus it's a little easier while I'm studying for a certification, too)- i love music so I've been looking at program code and ways I can make my own music programs better.

     

    The Extended Basic manual gives some really great info on the frequencies for notes/etc, but I was wanting an easy way to compute additional frequencies based on a half-step between notes.

     

    Here's what I came up with:

     

    10 LET F=110

    20 FOR I=1 TO 91

    30 PRINT F

    40 LET F=F*92^(1/12))

    50 NEXT I

    60 END

     

    I had also started lists for different scales (chromatic, pentatonic) to make things a little easier as I code through written music. :)

     

    Pretty neat stuff!

  17. Posted

    You'd cry if you saw what I have to pay for shipping with EVERY purchase from the US! (the breakpoint of size and weight means that 1-3 cartridges (without box or manual) are the same price, and that price ranges between $11-$35 depending on the sending state) If the seller has signed up for the global shipping program anything under $20 US is free, anything over $20 US and it usually about another 2/3 to the price of the item.

     

    So three $40 cartridge is going to cost me $120 for the items, a minimum of $11 for shipping (if I'm lucky enough to find it from a border state - usually closer to about $25) then another $80 for the Global shipping program.

     

    The GSP is designed to cover duties and taxes, but they ignore the fact that under NAFTA, there is no duty* on used software between the US and Canada.

     

    Living north of 49° makes TI collecting 20% cost and 80% shipping!

     

     

    *there is duty for software entering Canada on the medium itself, based on current value (so based on the price of a BLANK disk or cassette) and there is also duty on the transfer fee of any existing and valid user licences. As far as I know, there are no licences for using 4A software that remain (technically) active.

    Well, if I ever come across something in the States that you are needing I'm sure we can work it out to where you don't pay crazy 'international' shipping. :)

  21. Posted

    this is all really neat stuff!

     

    I've spent today looking at my dad's Extended Basic code, and it amazes me how compact the coding is for what it does. I learned some new commands too:

     

    Pre-scan control

    Pre-scan is used to allocate memory before the BASIC program starts. It causes a notable pause before the first statement executes, because the pre-scan process scans the whole program for variables and subprograms. Extended Basic allows for a quicker start-up by turning pre-scan off and on; these lines are specific comment lines.

    100 GOTO 150
    110 A=0 :: B$=""
    120 DATA 1
    150 [email protected]

     

    this is some cool stuff!

     

    plus looking at the way he coded subroutines and assigned variables for music notes, which i found was really similar to how i did it by pure dumb luck and reading the Extended Basic manual. :)

    • Like 2

  22. Posted

    i am younger than most, but i learned Pascal in high school and took it as part of my Computer Science associate degree- this has been a neat read. :)

     

    How does this flavor of Pascal compare with the Borland Pascal from the mid 90s?

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