Crap Game Contest: Hyper Racer

[Tursi]

Compared to the wonderous things I've seen so far, my entry is probably just not going to fit the bill, but allow me to present it first. I was expecting to slip it in under cover of silence, but we all seem to be posting them anyway so I'm just going to join in.

 

Honestly this one almost fits as a BASIC title, and with a little bit of work it might even be feasible there... but that's okay.

 

Let's start with the introduction:

 

 

You like that, don't you?

 

Why is it crap? To me the worst experience of all was getting a game that looks like it had potential, but that clearly more effort was put into marketing than production. So before you read any further, play the game for a few minutes.

 

HyperRacer Crap Entry.zip

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I SAID STOP READING, DAMN IT. PLAY THE GAME.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This game was actually a demo I wrote years ago to show that TI BASIC could do some animation. It can't go much farther than it does, but I added user control and different color schemes. To me it actually still looks kind of neat, but it's not a fun game by any means, and that's the real shame.

 

I didn't have time to do something that was seriously offensive, so hopefully the minimal amount of time I have put into this will offend you! If you aren't offended yet, press FCTN-4 in game.

[Opry99er]

This game LOOKS unbelievable for BASIC.... But you're right--- it isn't very fun. . Tursi--- have you ever considered switching this game to XB and really showcasing your premise? Obviously it would not be crap.... But that intro document is so nice.... I'd like to see where you could go with this game. .

 

Its Definitely a let down as far as hype vs. Gameplay... nicely done. I "get" it....

[jchase1970]

Looks so much like a 80's magazine add. You did Good!

[Tursi]

This game LOOKS unbelievable for BASIC.... But you're right--- it isn't very fun. . Tursi--- have you ever considered switching this game to XB and really showcasing your premise? Obviously it would not be crap.... But that intro document is so nice.... I'd like to see where you could go with this game. .

 

hee.. glad people got where I was going with it.

 

The game uses all 16 color sets for the animation -- which is why I couldn't easily make a real game out of it by adding two more enemy car lanes. (I did work it out, though, with 9 calls to HCHAR you could repaint the road between cars to make it work.. but that's still a fair lag). Anyway, because of that it actually won't work in XB.

 

Naturally it could easily be made to work in full in assembly. But I don't have time to take it further.

[+retroclouds]

Very cool seeing that you were able to store the TI-Basic program in a cartridge

No delay times in starting the game, nice.

 

Can you describe what steps you had to do to put it in the can ?

I guess you started the program in classic99 and then took a VDP dump ?

How did you find out where the TI basic program starts in VDP memory and how did you jump into the TI-Basic interpreter ?

 

I suppose that after doing the copy work, you had to set the GPL workspace and prepare scratchpad memory.

Did you took the scratchpad memory dump out of classic99 too?

 

hhmmm, perhaps this can be turned into a windows utility: Read a TI-Basic VDP dump and generate a cartridge ROM file.

 

Very nice!

 

The game is real cool actually. So I guess it won't qualify as a crap game winner

Edited November 22, 2010 by retroclouds

[Tursi]

Can you describe what steps you had to do to put it in the can ?

I guess you started the program in classic99 and then took a VDP dump ?

How did you find out where the TI basic program starts in VDP memory and how did you jump into the TI-Basic interpreter ?

 

I did this for Owen's project. I was going to keep it secret, but since he announced it, I figured I could go ahead. I wrote him a utility that converts a Classic99 memory dump (VDP and Scratchpad) into a 16k cartridge image. It saves all of VDP except the SIT (giving us 768 bytes for the scratchpad and the loader). Copies everything into place and jumps back to the interpreter. In order to make the interpreter work, you start the program with a CALL SCREEN, which you can breakpoint on in Classic99. The loader assumes that a CALL SCREEN was in progress. It also ignores the results of the CALL SCREEN, since it's assumed to be a dummy inserted statement just for the save.

 

In theory you could put it after all the program initialization, right before showing the title page (IE: after all your CALL CHARS and any variable/array initialization), but I didn't test that.

 

I'm sure Owen will let us release the tool after his contest.

 

The game is real cool actually. So I guess it won't qualify as a crap game winner

 

You didn't play it for very long IMO!

[+retroclouds]

...

It saves all of VDP except the SIT (giving us 768 bytes for the scratchpad and the loader). Copies everything into place and jumps back to the interpreter. In order to make the interpreter work, you start the program with a CALL SCREEN, which you can breakpoint on in Classic99. The loader assumes that a CALL SCREEN was in progress. It also ignores the results of the CALL SCREEN, since it's assumed to be a dummy inserted statement just for the save.

 

Nice one. I was already wondering where you stored your loader considering it's a 16K VDP dump