Remakes of old video games -- The TI-99/4A and PARSEC

[sometimes99er]

All this talk of scrolling and the photos has me DYING for the next playable update!!!!

Hehe. Will look into it.

 

In the meantime you might wanna play this version of Parsec.

 

With Classic99. Unzip files to maybe the DSK1 folder. Select Cartridge, User, Open, find DSK1 and select parsecc.bin and hit Enter (parsecg.bin will load too).

 

 

Edited December 15, 2014 by sometimes99er

[sometimes99er]

The above simply, and only, increases your number of lives from 5 to 256.

 

For any tests I'm doing for replicating level one, I simply didn't want to start all over. Bynites etc. keep killing me.

 

So was it easy to hack ? First I located the screen location from where the first life is taken, obviously putting a breakpoint there and trying to backstep. Had two shots at that approach. Then I thought it might be as simple as a byte holding the number of lives. I scanned the complete running of Classic99 for a byte containing 4, crashed to the ground, and then scanned Classic99 for a change from those that held 4 to a 3. And there was one. Basically I could then dump CPU and VDP memory and compare, or trace the scanning into a memory area resembling either CPU or VDP. What I did was to take a look at ScratchPad. There's only 256 bytes equaling one page in the Debugger. And behold, at >83B9 there was a 4 changing to 3 when you crashed. Setting a breakpoint there with M83B9=04. I would then know, hopefully, upon startup, what code initializes the number of lives. The value was passed from GROM, and yes, at >047A there's a 4. Changed it to 6, plugged in the user cartridge, expecting a lockup when I hit the ground, but luckily the routine that removes ships in the status area, is limited to only removing the 4 on screen, and not blindly go across and destroy other VDP memory. Changed the value to 255, and took a long test. Seems safe.

 

Edited August 13, 2013 by sometimes99er

[Retrospect]

I've been playing it ..... hey, did you know - the flying saucers that come after the Dramites, they have two different sequences .... if you have under 4 lives then they are completely random in the position they appear on the screen, but if you have over 3 lives then they have a straight non random pattern ..... unless i am wrong someone may be able to tell me better ....

 

By the way, good work Karsten .... I never thought I'd see a hacked version of Parsec let alone a remake in the making!

 

Edit: I've just read the Parsec manual and it states in there about the patterns of the saucers .... you know, I read stuff, and then forget where I got the info from!

Edited August 13, 2013 by Retrospect

[sometimes99er]

And a scroll added ...

 

[media=544,416]http://sometimes.planet-99.net/parsec/p7.swf[/media]

[Willsy]

Ha ha! Excellent! We should have finished that Parsec II project we talked about in (I think) 2007, eh? :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

[+mizapf]

The above simply, and only, increases your number of lives from 5 to 256.

 

Oh nooo ... could someone please make the game a little harder? :-)

 

I remember well, nearly 30 years ago, when me and three of my friends were playing Parsec in turns; we changed each time that we lost a ship. Except for one of us who was told to crash the fleet up to a single ship. This took some time in later levels; must have been more than 20 ships in reserve. This was the time when we reached the levels which did not change in color anymore. I think we stopped playing after two hours or so.

 

No, honestly, the problem was that the score for each enemy ship gets higher from level to level, up to some maximum, but after that point, if you are at least moderately skilled, you gain new ships faster than you lose them. I would say that once you get past the first 10 levels, you are very likely to get 10 levels farther.

[Retrospect]

You'd be best trying to keep the number of ships at 3 , so the saucers can't gain random patterns

[Omega-TI]

In the meantime you might wanna play this version of Parsec.

 

FANTASTIC HACK!

I simply cannot wait to play Parsec after work tonight! I may actually get past level IV for the first time in my life!

I wish I could 'like' this post at least 100 times more, but it only lets me click once....

 

Thanks man, I'll get my Parsec Fix this month!

Edited August 13, 2013 by Kevan

[Asmusr]

Was it Jim who then started a Vanguard game for the TI, with full screen scrolling. I have the prototype somewhere.

 

Edit:

Yes, it was Jim Dramis with Paul Urbanus and Garth Dollahite. Jim and Paul also did Jungle Hunt with some clever scrolling. Paul and Garth did Pole Position. Vanguard, Jungle Hunt and Pole Position all for Atarisoft (target TI-99/4A of course).

 

Very nice. I'm also thinking about making a Scramble clone.

[OX.]

[/size]

 

Very nice. I'm also thinking about making a Scramble clone.

 

Fancy having a crack at a version of Super Cobra (Scramble clone) this was originally promised by Parker Brothers back in the day for TI99 but never finished or released.

[sometimes99er]

I remember well, nearly 30 years ago, when me and three of my friends were playing Parsec in turns; we changed each time that we lost a ship. Except for one of us who was told to crash the fleet up to a single ship. This took some time in later levels; must have been more than 20 ships in reserve. This was the time when we reached the levels which did not change in color anymore. I think we stopped playing after two hours or so.

 

Ah, that explains why the hack works. Didn't know you could accumulate ships.

[sometimes99er]

The following has been implemented:

• No laser close to surface.
• Collision detection.
• Laser sound.
• Explosion sound.

The collision detection should be pixel perfect. Excellent for the refueling tunnels, but maybe this will actually be too accurate for blasting aliens. Sounds are made with Bfxr, loosely trying to get close to the original sounds using square wave for the laser and white noise for the explosion. I’ve located the sound lists in the GROM, so I should be able to create perfect sound effects one way or another.



[media=544,416]http://sometimes.planet-99.net/parsec/p8.swf[/media]

Edited August 31, 2013 by sometimes99er

[Willsy]

Wow! This is kick ass! Is this all done in Flash?

[sometimes99er]

Wow! This is kick ass! Is this all done in Flash?

 

Yes.

 

TI-99/4, June 1979, was rather friendly with TI Basic commands for graphics, colors and sounds. As I understand you had to get Basic on a cartridge for the Atari’s, 400 and 800, November 1979, both supplied with 8K RAM in the beginning. The later Commodore 64, August 1982, had no Basic commands in support of graphics, colors or sound.

 

I’d compare this situation a bit with Flash, Java and C#. All kind of scripty languages, compile once and run in a virtual machine on different platforms. All capable, but maybe Flash has multimedia more right at hand, like the TI did back then.

 

I guess it’s still easier to have people run Flash than HTML5 or Silverlight, but these things are changing.

 

In all of the above I’m talking about “defaults”, though you can argue about, - say extensions like XNA, open source, performance, hard- and software costs.

 

I’ve been working on a lower level Flash 9918A and 9919 library support. Ordinary graphics and half bitmap mode working just fine. A bit of next level TI Basic support too. No text mode, bitmap or sprites, - yet. Quite a few out there have already done both chips in Flash, Java and JavaScript.

 

For this Parsec thing I’m just pulling in things and superficially emulating them. Cheating ? Yes, but so is emulation incl. FGPA, RPi etc. - just perhaps on different levels.

 

Edited November 27, 2014 by sometimes99er

[sometimes99er]

I've been visiting other TI-99/4A projects (or whatever you wanna call my burps). It's only half an hour here and there anyway. - Well, the scroll of the planet's surface is being reconsidered, alongside a few other things to better fit future levels/enhancements. Or in other words, I think I'm learning stuff as I go along.

 

Haven't had much luck with the apparent choppiness of sprites. Nobody seems to bother at Adobe or elsewhere. This bit might help though.

 

stage.scaleMode=StageScaleMode.NO_SCALE;

Mostly it should just prevent things from rescaling if you resize the HTML window, but also seems to have some impact on performance (at least on later versions).

 

[The Caffeine Kid]

There's a Hunt the Wumpus remake here:

http://www.dreamcodex.com/

 

Codie's remake is really good. Shame he seems to be off the grid at the moment I asked him if he had any useful hints and suggestions when I set out to remake this for Android.

 

I've gone the more faithful route although I've upped the resolution of the graphics somewhat and filtered the sound effects.

 

My Android remake is just out a week or two ago, and you can find it here if you are interested in taking a look.

 

I did a WIP youtube video of it too, if you want to see how it more or less looks before going to Google Play.

 

 

Cheers.

 

PS Are there any other games that people think would work well on an Android phone/tablet as I love doing remakes.

[TheMole]

 

Codie's remake is really good. Shame he seems to be off the grid at the moment I asked him if he had any useful hints and suggestions when I set out to remake this for Android.

 

I've gone the more faithful route although I've upped the resolution of the graphics somewhat and filtered the sound effects.

 

My Android remake is just out a week or two ago, and you can find it here if you are interested in taking a look.

 

I did a WIP youtube video of it too, if you want to see how it more or less looks before going to Google Play.

 

 

Cheers.

 

PS Are there any other games that people think would work well on an Android phone/tablet as I love doing remakes.

 

That's pretty cool, good job.

I never much like HTW on the real deal, probably because it didn't contain enough action for me as a kid, but looking back at it it kinda plays like a cooler version of minesweeper. It's a fun little time waster.

[+Ksarul]

I've been rooting around in my book boxes and I've finally found something that was on my missing list for about 6 years--my printout of the Parsec source code. At least now I know it isn't lost forever. . .

[+InsaneMultitasker]

I've been rooting around in my book boxes and I've finally found something that was on my missing list for about 6 years--my printout of the Parsec source code. At least now I know it isn't lost forever. . .

 

Is it fair and wise to tease forum members like that?

[+Ksarul]

I asked Paul if I could scan it in to put it online, but the answer is that it is his call, which is why I just put the teaser here, Tim

[Omega-TI]

I asked Paul if I could scan it in to put it online, but the answer is that it is his call, which is why I just put the teaser here, Tim

 

Okay, it's been nearly a month, what's the verdict?

Are we mere mortals going to be able lay eyes on the TI equivalent of the Gutenberg Bible?

[+Ksarul]

I'm about 75% finished converting my scans into an editable text file. It is slow going because the OCR software truly mangles about one page in five, so it requires a lot of careful hand corrections. The most important thing is that now I have electronic copies in two locations, so I can't misplace it again.

[sometimes99er]

I'm about 75% finished converting my scans into an editable text file. It is slow going because the OCR software truly mangles about one page in five, so it requires a lot of careful hand corrections. The most important thing is that now I have electronic copies in two locations, so I can't misplace it again.

So you might even be working on a version that compiles with Win/Asm994a ? That'd be forever cool !

[Omega-TI]

The following has been implemented:

• No laser close to surface.
• Collision detection.
• Laser sound.
• Explosion sound.

[media=544,416]http://sometimes.planet-99.net/parsec/p8.swf[/media]

 

Is there a status update, or has life gotten in the way like it always seems to do to people?

[sometimes99er]

Is there a status update, or has life gotten in the way like it always seems to do to people?

Thanks for asking.

 

My time is limited, and I do about 3 late night hours a week - tops (apart from reading this forum).

 

Been doing things with this Parsec thing (among other stuff) in about 4 or 5 different directions. All good, and I won’t spill the beans just yet. Some of it is like taking 2 steps back to take 1 step forward. I can’t promise a damn thing.

 

Been re-engineering a few things to accept future ideas. Been taking quite some notes on “past level 1 stuff” ideas. Level 2 will travel through the early eighties. Level 3 would be the late eighties. Also did some crazy old TV effects (multiple stuff crept in) but nothing recompiles as is, so I’ve no fancy pants to show for now.

 

On another end, I’ve spend more time on an old demo of mine. It was a playable game, or almost. Now quite a few ideas and graphics have been worked out. It’s going to be both 9900 cartridge and Flash/Web release. The cartridge (8K) in support of the MultiCart, reproduced etc.

 

Also, working with Flash to put TI stuff on iPhone, iPad and Android, - even looking into the stores. Pushing the old and glorious TI-99/4A look and feel.

 

Edited December 4, 2013 by sometimes99er