“Still TI” Reinvented: Some T80XB 80 Column and Text-to-Speech Disk Fun

[pixelpedant]

Here’s a bit of fun, as I’ve revisited and extensively redeveloped an originally relatively simple creation of mine, in which I’d done a parody of Portal’s Still Alive in TE2 allophone speech.  This speech synth tune now has what PSG accompaniment is possible under the circumstances, and accompanying 80 column graphics, as I’ve redeveloped it to use T80XB and the SETUP and SPEAK routines from the Text-to-Speech disk.  Loading SETUP from high memory via Harry Wilhelm’s HMLOADER allowed both T80XB and SPEAK to be loaded normally.  Program begins to run at 1:30 if you want to skip the description in the below video:

 

 

Should you wish to run it yourself, the disk containing all necessary supporting files is available here:

 

STILLTI.DSK

 

As I say, this requires T80XB-compatible 80 column support (which will usually mean F18A), disk, 32K, and (obviously) speech.  It runs correctly via JS99er.net with F18A support enabled, however, if anyone’s looking to run it emulated.  There’s a lot of data loaded from disk, which it will expect to be available from DSK1.  Load time is fairly long (unsurprisingly).  A little over a minute. If you do wish to run it, I suggest running with

 

RUN “DSK1.T80XB”

RUN “DSK1.STILL80”

 

But if you RUN (or OLD then RUN) “DSK1.STILL80” before starting T80XB, it will detect this, start T80XB and prompt to run the program.  

 

Thanks so much to @senior_falcon for T80XB and HMLOADER and T40XB and XB256 and....well, everything!

 

[senior_falcon]

Nice to see the definable characters from 0 to 31 being used for custom graphics.

[senior_falcon]

Fantastic demonstration! That video is awesome.

[pixelpedant]

Thanks!  And thanks so much for these fantastic tools.  As I say, that little project wouldn't have happened in the first place without HMLOADER making it possible to use the speech routines alongside T80XB.

 

And yeah, devoting 0-31 to custom non-invertible graphics felt like a well-considered amount to devote to that, even in a mode devoted to text-oriented graphics.  Probably they'll mostly just go into infrastructural stuff (decoration around a window, or whatnot) in the sort of project T80XB is suited to. But that definitely serves its purpose. 

 

And I don't feel like that many is overkill.  Since with the tile and pixel aspect ratio in 80 column mode, you go through those pretty darn quick.  Given any imitation of "normal" width tile graphics takes two tiles a piece. 

 

That being said, since you've got a completely separate 32 column screen waiting in the wings, there's not a whole tonne of motivation to make graphics happen on the T80 screen.  If, say, you were designing a Return to Pirate's Isle style adventure, you could always just pop out to G32 screen for any larger artistic elements (and it would seem kind of crazy not to). 

 

Other thoughts: Having gone through all the fonts, I think Font 2 is my favourite.  Definitely looks like an 80 column font, but highly readable.  I also liked Font 7 and Font 9 though. 

 

[pixelpedant]

You know, T80XB + Text-to-Speech seems like it would be a pretty cool combination for an adventure game.  All the appeal of 80 column text and window scrolling, instant access to regular 32 column full colour graphics if you want to spice things up a little by portraying a graphical scene here and there, and the ability to add atmosphere by voicing any key phrases or gameplay events with simple, convenient (but also sufficiently flexible) allophone speech.

[senior_falcon]

I love it when people take my programs way beyond anything I had envisioned for them!

[Omega-TI]

_{... now... can you encapsulate all of that in a cartridge .BIN}❓