Herding Cats (RGPC)

[sometimes99er]

You can save a TON of memory if you make those integers strings!

 

Yeah, I know, sounds crazy, but the TI stores all integers in memory as *8* (I know!) byte floating point numbers. Sad, but alas, true.

 

If you make them strings, you save memory.

 

So, in memory:

 

DATA 0,0

Would be about 18 bytes

But DATA "0","0" would be about 6 bytes - What's that? 66% saving?

That seems to be excellent advice.

 

I tried to save two different programs:

 

100 DATA 0,0

SAVE DSK1.T1

BYE

 

100 DATA "0","0"

SAVE DSK1.T2

BYE

 

The latter being one byte shorter IINM.

 

Edited February 16, 2010 by sometimes99er

[Willsy]

That seems to be excellent advice.

 

I tried to save two different programs:

 

100 DATA 0,0

SAVE DSK1.T1

BYE

 

100 DATA "0","0"

SAVE DSK1.T2

BYE

 

The latter being one byte shorter IINM.

 

 

Ah shit. Looks like you are right. I just tried this:

 

DATA 100,101,102,103,104,105,106,107,108,109,110,111,112,113,114,115,116,117,118,119,120

 

Start address:FF65

End Address: FFE7

 

DATA "100","101","102","103","104","105","106","107","108","109","110","111","112","113","114","115","116","117","118","119","120"

 

Start address: FF65

End Address: FFE7

 

 

Looks like some stuff published in Micropendium and TI*MES all those years ago was horse-shit

[sometimes99er]

Same start and end ? Sure you rebooted inbetween or is it a typo ?

[InfernalKeith]

Hopefully it'll be a moot point, as I'm gonna have to strip out all those DATA statements and have the levels load from disk. We designed 30 and could only fit 7, so even a chunk of memory savings won't be enough to cram in 23 more. And it only makes sense to allow the loading of levels (and a level editor) for future playability.

 

I never paid a lot of attention to memory-saving devices because a) I naively thought my little idea wouldn't top out at 48K (at one point I REALLY naively thought I could fit it in 16K and put it on tape), and b) I'm still really rusty... this is my first completed program of any sort since, oh, 1989 or so.

 

Hope to hear some feedback on the game itself today, if anyone gets a chance to try it out. There are already a few things driving me batty about it, like the cursor for the Wrecking Ball tool. If you're gonna demolish a whole wall or fill in a series of holes with said tool, it moves itself back to the top left corner of the screen after each use, so you have to keep dragging it back over to the area where you're working. A simple fix... but there are about 9,000 things like that I want to mess with. Gonna force myself to leave it alone for a few days, though, and then do some revamping this weekend as I plug away toward the final release.

[Opry99er]

Hey brother, gotta tell ya, this has been a blast writing games for this contest. Your game is the FIRST thing I will do as soon as I get on the computer today. Right now, I'm watching the kiddo and typing on the ol' iPhone. . This game looks very cool, and I am definitely into the idea of making the levels dsk loaded. You could have 3000 levels if you wanted to. . Great work man... And I think we've got some good stuff going right now. . By the way, cassette will work. Just have your main program first on the tape ad each level following it in order. . We need a good CS1 game.

Edited February 16, 2010 by Opry99er

[InfernalKeith]

Hey brother, gotta tell ya, this has been a blast writing games for this contest. Your game is the FIRST thing I will do as soon as I get on the computer today. Right now, I'm watching the kiddo and typing on the ol' iPhone. . This game looks very cool, and I am definitely into the idea of making the levels dsk loaded. You could have 3000 levels if you wanted to. . Great work man... And I think we've got some good stuff going right now. . By the way, cassette will work. Just have your main program first on the tape ad each level following it in order. . We need a good CS1 game.

 

I'd be okay with putting it on cassette, but I figure anyone with a disk drive is very likely to also have 32K. I'd like to make some games that could be run on an unexpanded TI, although I know XB eats up character sets AND memory, so it'd be a challenge to do something fun and interesting without it being so slow as to be unplayable.

[Willsy]

Same start and end ? Sure you rebooted inbetween or is it a typo ?

Yeah. It was exactly the same. I did a cold reset in-between....

 

Try it in classic99. Open the debugger and set it to look around FFF8

 

Type in the program. You'll see it in memory....

[sometimes99er]

Hehe, exactly the same. Also checked the saved versions. Same length with this example.

[Opry99er]

Just had a chance to play this game, Keith. How cool!!! What gave you the idea/inspiration to write this game? I love the original concept, although it frustrates the crap out of me!!! I'll be playing some more later... I might have a couple suggestions for ya, and I am interested in hearing about the 2 player mode!!! Great work, man.

[InfernalKeith]

Just had a chance to play this game, Keith. How cool!!! What gave you the idea/inspiration to write this game? I love the original concept, although it frustrates the crap out of me!!! I'll be playing some more later... I might have a couple suggestions for ya, and I am interested in hearing about the 2 player mode!!! Great work, man.

 

 

How far have you gotten into it? One of the drawbacks of a deadline is that we didn't get to do a TON of play-testing. I know levels five and six may be TOO hard. The trick to level one is to do nothing... and to decide if that one cat outside the restraining wall is REALLY worth saving... remember, the "cat-pocalypse" doesn't cost you any points.

 

Honestly, the idea just hit me in November. I was working on my trading/RPG hybrid game Downward, and I thought of asterisks just going around the screen, totally at random. That's all I thought of... and within five minutes I had the whole concept for the game. I think it owes a debt to the game Lemmings, but it's kinda the "anti-Lemmings," because in that game, you use the characters to manipulate their environment. In HC, you can't make the little buggers do anything.

 

Two-player mode will have two exits. Some tools will be eliminated and a couple new ones, exclusive to that version, will be introduced. Right now, my plan is to either give the opposing sides the right to "buzz in" whenever they want and make changes, but charge them points to do so, or to allow them each one move every X cycles. I will probably try both approaches and see which one works best. And I won't release it unless I can come up with at least serviceable AI -- two-player-only games with no AI drive me batty.

 

I'm down for any suggestions - like I said earlier, there are a million minor tweaks I wanna make already. I have an idea for one or two more tools in this version, too, depending on how the memory looks after I strip out the DATA statements and go to disk-file loading.

[Opry99er]

Well, I think one thing that might add another element of "cool" is like a super-expensive tool that can only be used once---like a "brain electrode," that makes all the cats "smart" for one level... It took me about 20 minutes or so to figure everything out enough to get to level 5, but

once I got there, I was stumped... I thought, kind of like in "Who wants to be a millionaire" you could have a one time option to basically "cheat" out of a level by using a brain electrode... The cats would all line up and march towards the exit.... Make it the most expensive tool there is, and can only be used once.

 

Just a thought.... Great game, man. I want to play it on my real gear, or sure. Exploding cats.... Freaking hilarious, man. ::

[InfernalKeith]

Well, I think one thing that might add another element of "cool" is like a super-expensive tool that can only be used once---like a "brain electrode," that makes all the cats "smart" for one level... It took me about 20 minutes or so to figure everything out enough to get to level 5, but

once I got there, I was stumped... I thought, kind of like in "Who wants to be a millionaire" you could have a one time option to basically "cheat" out of a level by using a brain electrode... The cats would all line up and march towards the exit.... Make it the most expensive tool there is, and can only be used once.

 

Just a thought.... Great game, man. I want to play it on my real gear, or sure. Exploding cats.... Freaking hilarious, man. ::

 

If points are no object, like in cheat mode, I can generally end up saving a decent amount of cats - lots of bulldozing is involved. Once all thirty levels are implemented, that level will be WAY higher up than five, if we don't simplify it a little bit. That's the one my son drew up... the little sadist.

 

On the other hand, level four is a little too easy. I think it works great visually, but you can generally beat it with one tool. I wanna make that one a little harder.

[The Codex]

Good game! Got it to run and had a nice playthrough. I sent some comments in email, but overall it's very promising and it'll be great to see it in it's full-version incarnation.

 

Top notch work there!

[InfernalKeith]

OK guys, I need some confirmations here. The picture that retroclouds posted in the contest thread shows level 1 of Herding Cats ALL jacked up. It's supposed to look like this:

 

 

And it does for me, both on my 99/4A and in Classic99.

 

Those of you who've tried the game out, did Level One look like this to you, or like the pic in the other thread? If the game is that jacked up, I have a major bug I didn't know about... but I don't know how that would have happened.

 

Thanks,

Keith

[Opry99er]

Nice and slick on my end

 

 

 

 

[sometimes99er]

Fine here too.

[InfernalKeith]

Thanks, you guys. I've been fretting about this all afternoon.

 

Filip, what did you do to make that happen?!

 

Think I'm gonna start working on the level editor tonight, if I can get this pile of work done. I don't have time, really, but I'm all geeked up about getting the final version of the game done now.

[Opry99er]

Plug away man.... Do you realize how much game work we would accomplish between the two of us if we didn't have kids and real work???