Intelligentleman

Huh. I'll have to listen again. This is fascinating. My first video game experiences were on the MS DOS os. On an IBM compatible .286 But I could have sworn what I'm hearing in Chess when someone captures a piece is polyphonic. EDIT: and later XTREE Gold EDIT 2: Or maybe I just like the sound of that chip.

Oh wow. Someone described that to me recently as only being 1-channel. But I'm hearing chords at minimum

!!Startling development!! Holy crap that scared the hell out of me. Moves are so infrequent I startle at the sound. Is Chess using the AY chip in the expander? The sound effects when something happens are vibrant.

Ha ha, fun. I'll at least see what's up tomorrow morning and if it's still nowhere close I'll shut her down.

Is it reasonable to turn off the TV and leave the computer on until tomorrow?

I don't know why, but I like the thought of Aquarius playing chess with itself while I sleep. And I'd like to check in tomorrow morning with some coffee and see what's going on. Problem is, I set the difficulty on 4 and the moves have slowed to a crawl.

So to get the M-Network screen, you simply insert an M-Network cartridge? Isn't that just a title screen?

can someone post a pic of this screen? are we saying that if we connect a system changer and then do NOT put any games in it and turn it all on, we'll see the M-Network screen?

I love my Aquarius setup. I really want to do something different on it. And I think the weird character set for graphics is interesting in a good way. With a complete Aquarius setup, I have this pie in the sky idea to incorporate the printer into an interactive experience.

Oh thank you for the heads up on the sound chip in the main unit. I think I was confusing it with the Intellivision + ECS. Thanks for the patience with these "what if" posts, but I'm only asking you guys because I want to have a basic (no pun intended) understanding of what kinds of experiences might even be possible. I feel like there are lots of people out there making cool games on the Aquarius, so I have in my head a different kind of experience. I hesitate to call it a game, even. But it would be interactive in some way. But I digress... I'm just looking for the boundary boxes.

Thanks MattPilz. I remember discovering Aquarius Draw several months ago. I knew I would be coming back to it, so It' been saved in my bookmarks ever since. With the bloxels, essentially it's like "drawing." Or maybe like painting with different brushes? Not sure if that's the right way to look at it, but that's what it seems like in my mind, at least.

Would it be theoretically possible to write a program in which the player could send inputs via the hand controller that directly speak to the dual sound chips? If each sound chip has three channels, then maybe a one player game lets you use buttons 1-6 to "program" a sound and then use the 16 direction disc to finesse the melody. In a two player game, each person gets three sound channels so it's almost like a duet.

I thought I recalled reading once that there was possibly a trick to identifying Tutorvisions by peering through the grill in the middle where the controllers tuck into. If you can see through the grill to the insides of the console, that was supposed to have been a good sign for Tutorvisions.

This is cool! So I could use my computer instead of the Aquarius for the development of a program and then just save it to cassette maybe?

That's fantastic. I can relate entirely to this. Several years before my QBASIC class, in 6th grade or so, I had a computer class. It was once a week for maybe an hour. On Apple IIs. i would bring in my 321 Contact magazines, which usually had a program to try. I’d spend the whole time entering in the code, but I can’t recall ever getting anything to work. Probably due to typos, ? If you dl the video of the bouncing balls you'll hear my 6 year old cackling with glee when they start moving. But he quickly notices the balls move in the same direction every time. I told him we could change that, but by then he really wanted to do some Legos.

And here's what my wife thinks of all this:

Ok, back to BASIC land...

My first computer programming introduction was Microsoft QBASIC back in 1997 or 1998. It was a high school class. I just learned how to do simple things in Logo this weekend.

Ha! Just like in the battle against the MCP in Tron Amazatron!

Ha, this program ate all the memory! The ball had slowed to a crawl leading up to this message

Mattel Aquarius and Jaybird3rd, Thank you! and that’s ok about the extended BASIC editor. I think I can work with that. So, it’s like, you tell it what line you want to edit (designated by the line numbers) and then it somehow lets you fix it?

I really appreciate how, in Logo, you can type EDIT Procedure_name to jump to a full screen of the code with insert and delete commands. Does BASIC have a thing like that? Is there a way to go back and fix mistakes?

Here's another one - still in Logo, but I like the progression. I just want to add hand controller support instead of random ball movement. IMG_2660.MOV

Alright. I'll switch back to BASIC for the time being. ... And I was just getting used to Logo. ?

Filling the screen with a different color is INSTANT in Aquarius Logo, fwiw. ? Paper 7 For example.