∞ Vince ∞

I think the import of decent development systems, put out to plenty of the right devs, along with quality documentation can not be under-estimated. What is it with Atari not wanting people to know how the machines worked? They were doing that kind of thing back in the 8bit era. --- I know Playstation was a bugger to get anything going on, but Sony, they provided some wonderful documentation. You could choke a donkey on it, but it was there. It is MHO that if you want to be successful in launching a new console the first thing you do, is, everything you can to make it as smooth a ride for the developers as possible.

Is this a serious comment? What kind of engine can't do sound. F**k me!

Fair comment. True. It was a tongue-in-cheek comment fella! Don't get riled. People get offended by everything now. I fully understand how that plays out, and you seem to have not bothered to read my second part of the same comment and chose to be all spiky instead! I can't have been more fair. 😾

I wonder if he designed all the bugs... I really like Martin Brennan, not only is he an Englishman, he also designed a lovely Jukebox which I own the Brennan 2. To be fair to both of them, I would love to see what a bug-free, not chopped down by the money people, as originally designed Jag would be like. I'd love to see the Konix MS as well for that matter.

Ah well... They also said it was true 64 bit! 😀

Also your question doesn't really make sense. The geometry, shapes you make (usually triangles) and the hardware used to make them are separate things, but no, Jag was low powered to this degree. The Jag's main problem was, it had no stellar games to sell the machine, and most of us have paid good money for a console or computer on the basis of one stellar game.

Nope!

Yeah, so lets say 50, maybe 100 Atari hardcore fans in the UK, that isn't many. AA has what more than 20,000 users and most of them have at least some love for the Atari. Kizza just says whatever pops into his head to impress the person he is talking to at any given moment and no care if it is complete Bollocks or not. I think it is fair to say that Craig/Mr. T has clarified the totality of Kizza's input into Revival. He brought along a couple of consoles one time. The way he was going (in that interview) 'we're going to get a bigger venue' like he was running it, he's a complete fucking fantasist!

Such a good 'writer' that he just created the word 'travellable'. The Atari scene in the UK is really big? Also @ around 1 hour 23, decides to take credit for Revival! What a @~!*house!

No problem. I hope you find the other one you are looking for!

Nice one, Miker!, thank you 👍

Just a shame. Don't worry about it. I was just trying to find out if he was ok. I'm not on Facebook anymore and when I got no reply to an email for a while and I went on to get sick, I assumed the worst. Unfortunately I was right. If you could add that message that would be great, Andy, thanks

I'd have said 'Keep Fighting Jason! And don't forget your special moves!' I messaged you about Jason weeks ago on E64. At that point I was just querying if you had heard from him, I suspected he had it, I got it too. I seem to have been incredibly lucky though.

They've just had a major breakthrough!!! https://www.itv.com/news/2020-06-16/coronavirus-deaths-reduced-by-up-to-a-third-using-breakthrough-dexamethasone-drug-trial-finds/ They're giving ICU patients this from Tomorrow and to top it off there in an abundance of supply across the country! I don't know if this drug would/will help Jason, but I really hope so!

I think it might be important to assess your current skill level in regards to coding? I'm assuming you've good familiarity with z80 assembly?

Ok. Cool. Thanks for this Anders. I knew of Infocom's VM, but not heard about 'Inform'. --- Sounds quite ambitious to me, but fair play, we don't know how good a coder Halycon275 is, and he might well be capable of the task, with the caveat that it would need to be an expanded machine. --- For someone who has written and re-written text adventures for three different systems (C16 +4, C64 and Spectrum 48k), the whole concept of a Z-machine / VM is genius. Write a text adventure. Create a Front End to edit and customise it. Then compile the game to a nice tight compact file which then gets pulled into their custom interpreter. You create a different/slightly modified version of the interpreter for each machine and every game will work 'out of the box' on each machine. Wonderful! I assume this is pretty much the same way SCUMM-VM works as well. Though in that case you can afford to be greedy with resources and the whole point of being small and compact has gone out of the window.

Stupid Q, but what is 'Inform'?

It wouldn't be cheating if you used Basic. Write the game you want in the language you want, the only thing someone who plays it wants is a good game everything else languages just a personal preference.

Is this what you are looking for ? 09521_ArcadeClassics_Pacman_Instructions_Print.pdf

https://bobs-stuff.itch.io/ Bob Smith's stuff is an inspiration. For coding the xz81, he's the man. But again all his stuff is 16k. Wonderful wonderful games. Plus his Spectrum stuff which is also very good.

zx81 is going to be a tough road for a text adventure. 'Half Decent' said by someone British means 'good'. You need a good amount of ram. I'd say for a fully functioning text adventure you need a minimum of 16k. Minimum.

You think you can fit a whole text adventure in 1K. Not a chance.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but you can't ask for feedback then say 'no mean comments' please, or things of a similar nature. Honest feedback can be quite brutal, but you can't learn or make good games when the feedback is 'oh well done.' and no-one is honest with you. Everyone will feel differently about your game. That's life. I'd say, forget coding a text adventure for the zx81, Switch up to a Spectrum and use the extra Ks at your disposal to write a good text adventure. You need a half decent amount of ram for the location descriptions let alone the text parser. I really hate the idea of playing a rapist, so I'd pass on the game from the get-go. You have to remember that for a player to want to dedicate hours of his or her life to a game, you have to make the lead character at least in part likeable. And one final tip, you can get quite a lot of atmosphere out of the default set of character graphics if you use them in the right way.

Thanks everyone! Like I say I posted about this. A while ago, but it got trolled so I withdrew it. Glad to see there is a lot of love for TMR/Jason a lovely bloke who has 'put a lot in' and never taken anything out. Always has time for anyone and although I don't know him that well, I have bothered him with coding questions for years and he is always kind enough to never point out how stupid I am, he is a good conversationalist and always talks a great deal of sense. Keep on fighting Jason, and don't forget your 'special moves!'.

Cheers Spookt. 👍