ATASCII-based ROGUE on A8?

[carlsson]

Good idea, but how many A8 users have network capacities, either directly or indirectly?

[TheRaven81]

On 4/23/2020 at 10:39 PM, Sugarland said:

A great roguelike is TomeNET which is multiplayer and free and open source.  The Windows client is about 1MB but that can probably be lessened. Maybe it's easier to get TomeNET working since it's only a client..?

TomeNET looks too overly complicated.

[TheRaven81]

I had a thought - Talisman is on Atarimania: http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-talisman_21095.html

 

It's listed with a "PD/Freeware/Shareware" license.  Could we not rip it apart and use it for our own purposes? Of course, we'd have to give credit to the programmer of Talisman, but still...

[Shawn Jefferson]

I ported Moria v5.5 to the Atari (using the VBXE2 for the 80 column mode), which is likely a similar problem to Rogue.

 

One of the big things you will have to deal with is the 40-column screen. Most of these rogue-likes were written for an 80-column screen and you will face a lot of issues porting to a 40-column screen.  Another thing is the memory use.  In Moria I am doing A LOT of cartridge banking, as well as VBXE banking.  The map itself is around 24k in Moria, and is dynamically created each time you enter a level.  There's one function in Moria that had to be split across two cartridge banks even.  The game was just not designed for small memory footprint computers.

 

I've started working on a 40-column port of Moria, but the game is going to have to be changed quite a bit, even to the extent that the names of the items will have to change as some of them are much longer than 40 characters and just won't fit on the screen even.  I got a bit disillusioned with that though and basically stopped, but I may pick it up again someday.

 

Edited April 30, 2020 by Shawn Jefferson

[Lord Thag]

21 minutes ago, Shawn Jefferson said:

I ported Moria v5.5 to the Atari (using the VBXE2 for the 80 column mode), which is likely a similar problem to Rogue.

 

One of the big things you will have to deal with is the 40-column screen. Most of these rogue-likes were written for an 80-column screen and you will face a lot of issues porting to a 40-column screen.  Another thing is the memory use.  In Moria I am doing A LOT of cartridge banking, as well as VBXE banking.  The map itself is around 24k in Moria, and is dynamically created each time you enter a level.  There's one function in Moria that had to be split across two cartridge banks even.  The game was just not designed for small memory footprint computers.

 

I've started working on a 40-column port of Moria, but the game is going to have to be changed quite a bit, even to the extent that the names of the items will have to change as some of them are much longer than 40 characters and just won't fit on the screen even.  I got a bit disillusioned with that though and basically stopped, but I may pick it up again someday.

 

I for one would love to see version that would run on a non-VBXE atari. If you ever dive in again and want some help with it, I'd be happy to help, so feel free to PM me if that ever happens.

[Goochman]

Just curious if a XEP80 Rogue would be possible and worthwhile to maintain the 80 col mode?  XEP80 is emulated in Altirra and a few of us still have them   Also maybe use one of ht various software 80 col mode solutions?

[TheRaven81]

1 hour ago, Goochman said:

Also maybe use one of ht various software 80 col mode solutions?

I didn't know there was such a thing. seems like that might work though, for people without other 80 col solutions.

[+Philsan]

Regarding 80 columns, what about using ACE80-XL cartridge?

It's very rare but everyone can put the attached rom on a multicart, no additional hardware is needed.

 

Otherwise there are software solutions, I think slower, like Easy 80 by Antic or Editor 80 by Atari Magazin (attached with instructions).

 

EDIT Updated ACE-80XL rom. Previous version didn't work on real hardware. The updated version works (tested with AVG Cart).

EDIT 2 Added ACE-80 manual and techical notes by @ClausB and @puppetmark.

 

Editor 80 (1987)(Atari Magazin Issue 5)(manual).pdf Editor 80 (1987)(Atari Magazin Issue 5).atr Easy 80 (1987)(Antic June 1987)(manual).pdf Easy 80 (1987)(Antic June 1987).atr

ACE-80XL (1985)(Amiable Computer Enhancements).carACE-80XL (1985)(Amiable Computer Enhancements)(manual).pdf

ACE-80XL (1985)(Amiable Computer Enhancements)(technical notes).pdf

ACE-80XL (1985)(Amiable Computer Enhancements)(manual).txtACE-80XL (1985)(Amiable Computer Enhancements)(technical notes).txt

[+Stephen]

Keep in mind - any software based 80 column solution costs 8kB of RAM.

[ClausB]

ACE80 uses 12.4K, because it's a resident E: device.

 

7.7K display,

1.9K character buffer,

1.0K character set,

1.8K code.

Edited May 1, 2020 by ClausB

[TheRaven81]

I was reading the topic to check on it, and read this:

On 4/23/2020 at 12:00 PM, carlsson said:

 I mean if there are 100 gold coins on one level, we don't want the player to milk it by picking up the gold, go down one level, back up and pick up the gold again etc. 

You can't do this in Rogue. If you remember(I'm sure most do), the goal is to go down, grab the jewel, and get back up and out again. But before you have the jewel, once you go down, you can't go back up until you find the jewel. So going back and forth between levels constantly to milk the generation of a pile of gold would not be possible. 

[carlsson]

Aha, that is one way Rogue is different from Hack/Nethack because in the later you surely can move back and forth between levels. But it was more a matter of how much data you need to store and where to store it. If you want Rogue specifically and it is one way only, you can for most purposes throw away all level data of the dungeon you just traversed because once you have reached the jewel you supposedly would want to escape back up again as fast as possible. At least that is how Sword of Fargoal works, you grind your way down the dungeons until you find the sword and then have a timer to quickly get back to the surface.

[invisible kid]

Would it be cool to rip assets from Mastertronic's Rogue? I'm thinking of using whatever I can from there but have a gr.0 + keyboard interface similar to the pic in OP.

Edited July 24, 2021 by invisible kid