Nonogram - game released

[sometimes99er]

The real-life cartridge is moving into some of the final stages.

 

To spice up this next release, a whopping 9842 lines of assembler source has been added to the original 2275 lines.

 

Release date early next year.

 

Special thanks to ksarul and arcadeshopper.

 

Edited December 17, 2015 by sometimes99er

[Vorticon]

Looking forward to it Very absorbing game!

[Opry99er]

 

Happy dance...

[sometimes99er]

Looking forward to it Very absorbing game!

 

Happy dance...

Thanks.

 

Here's a happy dance for ya.

 

 

 

The Minesweeper cartridge on sale is basically an 8K ROM. The Nonogram cartridge will be a 64K ROM. 64K consisting of the game itself and a string of enhanced demos. I'll get into more details soon ...

 

Edited February 4, 2016 by sometimes99er

[sometimes99er]

The bonus material includes a more than 8 year old demo.

Graphics

Previously I had noticed picture conversion tools for the MSX and Coleco. This enables you to turn a picture with many colors into a 9918a bitmap using Floyd-Steinberg dithering algorithms. I set out to make a tool in C#. This produced an output of 12K data.

My preferred output is the 8K ROM cartridge format. Something had to give. I could go for smaller pictures or try to compress the data. Simple RLE compression only helps with chunks of repeating data, so the pictures had to have less detail. Make it so (Picard).

The picture was taken from the Internet and I can’t find it again. I think it was a “free stock” photo.

 

Sound

What I did was to extract or convert VGM files to ISR files. The files become both a bit smaller and somewhat easier to play. Still music files with effects are generally rather large or need relatively large players, at least with the 8K ROM size and 256 bytes of CPU memory (no Memory Expansion) in mind.

The music included here is short and repetitive, but I think it’s okay for a quick picture on screen. The music is taken from the Hyper Sports arcade.

Cartridge

Here’s the demo as a standalone cart. Fctn Quit to quit.

 

 

 

Edited December 25, 2015 by sometimes99er

[sometimes99er]

This bonus is also a more than 8 year old demo.

Graphics

Got the idea of maybe remaking the startup-screen of the Amiga 500. That's the insert-amiga-workbench-v1.3-disk-screen. Colors and detail would seem to fit. And so it did, quite well, and in ordinary graphic mode. Only needed one support-sprite in the upper right corner.

Next idea was to have the Amiga mouse-pointer move around with some prerecorded smooth movement. Just circling around a bit. I used some free tool to record mouse-movement and converted the PC screen-coordinates to fit the TI.

Sound

The music here is again short. And it's repeated with a pause in-between. It's taken from the 1985 Ping Pong arcade.

Cartridge

Here’s the demo as a standalone cart. Fctn Quit to quit. Again my favorite format of 8K ROM without need for Memory Expansion.

Edited December 25, 2015 by sometimes99er

[sometimes99er]

This next bonus is a mini game and as it happens it's also more than 8 years old.

 

Graphics

 

This is as simple and minimalistic as one can probably get. A single pixel border. A snake only consisting of the same 7 by 7 pixel square. A few letters and digits for score and high score.

 

 

Controls

 

You move around using the joystick. Try and avoid the walls and yourself.

 

Sound

 

Sound-effects are handmade. Music is out of Lemmings from the Sega Master System.

 

Cartridge

 

And here it is. Fctn Quit to quit.

 

 

 

 

Edited December 25, 2015 by sometimes99er

[Opry99er]

This cartridge sounds like it is going to be a treasure chest.

[mantadoc]

 

This next bonus is a mini game and as it happens it's also more than 8 years old.

 

Graphics

 

This is as simple and minimalistic as one can probably get. A single pixel border. A snake only consisting of the same 7 by 7 pixel square. A few letters and digits for score and high score.

Controls

You move around using the joystick. Try and avoid the walls and yourself.

Sound

Sound-effects are handmade. Music is out of Lemmings from the Sega Master System.

Cartridge

 

And here it is. Fctn Quit to quit.

 

snakec.bin

snake.rpk

 

Nice little game, Karsten

[sometimes99er]

Next bonus is an almost 8 year old demo inspired by a 1MB Game Boy Color (GBC) demo named Bitte 8 Bit.

 

Graphics

 

1. Early DOS-like startup (40 column).

2. Then comes a Win98 splash (half-bitmap) - inspired by the GBC.

3. This is then shot down - inspired by the GBC.

4. The splash clears with a marmalade effect (hence the title of the demo). Maybe an effect originating from the Amiga which could run this stuff solely through the Copper.

5. Then comes the blue screen of death (40 column).

 

 

Controls

 

Use keys 1, 2 and C. Fctn Quit to quit.

 

Sound

 

Sound-effect of gunshot is handmade.

 

Cartridge

 

 

 

 

Edited December 25, 2015 by sometimes99er

[sometimes99er]

Next bonus is an over 7 year old demo.

Graphics

 

This time I wanted to paint in full bitmap. Mouse movement recorded from a PC paint program and then converted coordinates to fit the TI screen.

 

First run through draw lines, one per frame, between mouse positions and does so with a fat pen (4 pixels adjacent). Next run through is simply plotting all the positions. And finally it's all done drawing with a thin pen.

Controls

Fctn Quit to quit.

Sound

Music is from Jail Break arcade.

Cartridge

 

Edited December 25, 2015 by sometimes99er

[sometimes99er]

This bonus is again an over 7 year old demo.

Graphics

I wanted to imitate the Etch A Sketch drawing toy. Using full bitmap. And you can draw.



Controls

Use joystick. Press the N key to get a new fresh etch screen. Fctn Quit to quit.

Sound

Music is Dance Of The Four Little Swans from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake taken from Lemmings on the Sega Master System.

Cartridge

 

 

 

Edited December 26, 2015 by sometimes99er

[+Ksarul]

My grandmother used to build the Marx Toys version of the Etch-A-Sketch. . .along with a lot of the other toys they manufactured.

[sometimes99er]

My grandmother used to build the Marx Toys version of the Etch-A-Sketch. . .along with a lot of the other toys they manufactured.

 

Nice anecdote.

[sometimes99er]

And this is then the last bonus being added to the Nonogram cartridge. A 7 year old demo.

Graphics

All kind of colors jumping up and down in half bitmap, with a slowly revealing splash in the middle.



Controls

Fctn Quit to quit.

Sound

Music is from Jail Break arcade.

Cartridge

 

Edited December 31, 2015 by sometimes99er

[+arcadeshopper]

The carts are up on arcadeshopper pre-sale expect them to ship out to me this/next week..

[sometimes99er]

The carts are up on arcadeshopper pre-sale expect them to ship out to me this/next week..

 

Yes.

 

Everyone. Please go to arcadeshopper.com and order now !

 

[+arcadeshopper]

The carts are up on arcadeshopper pre-sale expect them to ship out to me this/next week..

 

First cart orders shipped today!

[am1933]

Just ordered my copy, looking forward to trying it on the real deal.

[sometimes99er]

Nice review at TI-99/4A Game Shelf. Thanks.

This is a picture logic puzzle where cells in a grid must be colored or left blank according to numeric clues on the sides of the grid to reveal a hidden picture. Simple and clear presentation, but absorbing gameplay. It's gets pretty tough beyond level 5, but you are always tempted to try one more level. Very well done.

 

 

[sometimes99er]

The 64K binary image used for the cartridge including bonus material. Inverted layout and boots from any bank.

Edited March 19, 2016 by sometimes99er

[sometimes99er]

Thanks for the article.

 

http://mag.mo5.com/actu/81763/nonogram-le-picross-du-ti-994a

 

 

 

[sometimes99er]

If you ever made it through the 39 puzzles, you've seen this one with a whole lot of cakes moving around ...

 

 

 

[+OLD CS1]

The cake is a lie!!!!

[+Ksarul]

What, you want it to spit a real cake out at you? LOLOL I like the slices of cake just as they are--no issues with high-calorie, sugary foods that way.

 

I never get enough time to sit through all 39 puzzles, unfortunately--but the fact that there are always new ones to play with gives this one lots of play value for me.