+Vorticon Posted January 25, 2022 Share Posted January 25, 2022 I thought it was an interesting piece of TI lore https://youtu.be/7dZj6n2yP78 8 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted January 25, 2022 Share Posted January 25, 2022 Save states and cheat engine. Aw, too bad he did not have access to *#*. Do we not have the TI Invaders aliens listed around here? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sometimes99er Posted January 25, 2022 Share Posted January 25, 2022 ti-inva.unlimited.8.bin 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+mizapf Posted January 25, 2022 Share Posted January 25, 2022 I seem to remember I actually got as far as the blue Blinkers back in those days when I played it on my real TI. "State successfully loaded"?? Oh man... 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Vorticon Posted January 26, 2022 Author Share Posted January 26, 2022 It looks like no one has ever gotten that far on a real TI and may it not even be possible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Count9929A Posted January 26, 2022 Share Posted January 26, 2022 12 hours ago, mizapf said: I seem to remember I actually got as far as the blue Blinkers back in those days when I played it on my real TI. "State successfully loaded"?? Oh man... me too. My dream would be to beat that level, without cheat mode. Maybe possible on a slower PAL TI. The 25501 score on this page seems genuine, without cheat mode. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+mizapf Posted January 26, 2022 Share Posted January 26, 2022 I mean, I really had to put some efforts into that state save feature in MAME, but NOT to cheat in games. May his USB sticks fail in an inappropriate situation! I remember that one of my stress tests was to save the state in a running Geneve, while TI BASIC (in GPL mode) loaded a file from disk. This actually worked. ? By the way, if you are tired of booting the Geneve, you could indeed save a state after booting, and maybe another one after loading the GPL interpreter. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Vorticon Posted January 26, 2022 Author Share Posted January 26, 2022 2 hours ago, Count9929A said: me too. My dream would be to beat that level, without cheat mode. Maybe possible on a slower PAL TI. The 25501 score on this page seems genuine, without cheat mode. I still think record scores should only be obtained on real hardware as no emulation is perfect. That said, reaching 26000+ points in TI invaders is definitely noteworthy! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted January 26, 2022 Share Posted January 26, 2022 2 hours ago, Vorticon said: I still think record scores should only be obtained on real hardware as no emulation is perfect. Or at least scores should be segregated into emulated and real. We do that here, already, in the high score thread, though we give no penalties for emulation as the stakes are not high enough to account for emulation shenanigans. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted January 27, 2022 Share Posted January 27, 2022 14 hours ago, mizapf said: I mean, I really had to put some efforts into that state save feature in MAME, but NOT to cheat in games. That's what most people use save states for. When I first watched the video I thought about a version where the invaders never descended, but just stayed in place. I started with the invincible version Sometimes99er posted above (it's neat to watch attract mode clear a level, or more commonly the invaders make it to the ground). I was able to prevent the invaders from moving at all, but that's no good because they start off-center (some can't be shot) and they don't animate (so you don't get the full effect of the new aliens). I wasn't quite able to work out how they actually move. It almost seemed like it was reading the display characters into CPU RAM and moving them that way, but I wasn't quite sure. To do what I wanted to do, they'd need to start centered and not change position, but can still animate and shoot. Not much in here, but here's my progress dump. I did figure out that the sad faces we see in the ROM graphics dump might just be debug aids, as they show up when you break the animation code. tiInvaders.zip 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted January 27, 2022 Share Posted January 27, 2022 What hits me the hardest about this is being reminded that the TI does not output orange. On 1/25/2022 at 1:48 PM, sometimes99er said: ti-inva.unlimited.8.binFetching info... The screen turns red on me after the first wave and never changes back to black. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Count9929A Posted January 27, 2022 Share Posted January 27, 2022 Digging in my old HDD, I found a photo of my best score in "modern times" ? It's from August 2014, 25344 on my real PAL TI99 (so the game is easier than on the NTSC TI). I played up to the first row of blue Flasher, should be level 13. Another interesting score is how the number of hits of the red ship. Inspecting the source code, with my limited ASM knowledge, I think that the maximum number of hits is 16, which is worth 500 points. Once, (in July 2014, I have a notice about it) I reached 15 hits, so I saw the number 500 as the bonus for the next hit... but unfortunately I missed it! ? 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+mizapf Posted January 27, 2022 Share Posted January 27, 2022 I once made it to "SAUCER VALUE: XXX" if I remember correctly. The saucer then disappeared. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+mizapf Posted January 27, 2022 Share Posted January 27, 2022 12 hours ago, Tursi said: That's what most people use save states for. Actually, the MAME core allows for state saving and loading*, and the authors of systems and components have to register variables and memory regions that must be saved and restored to correctly resume the execution later. So, to be honest, I just defined that state to be saved and did not bother what kind of use people may draw from it. I just did not want to have the TI being listed as "does not support state saving". ? * For those who don't know (and I think we rarely talked about that), Shift-F7 saves the state, F7 loads it; you get a selection if there are several state saves. You need to be in partial mode (hit Scrl-Lock). You can load a state in the command line by adding "-state n" where n is the number that you used when saving. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted January 28, 2022 Share Posted January 28, 2022 On 1/27/2022 at 6:31 AM, mizapf said: Actually, the MAME core allows for state saving and loading* Been using MAME since the 90s, I'm well aware. I used save states in many games back in the day. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+mizapf Posted January 29, 2022 Share Posted January 29, 2022 Yes, but I just mentioned it because after my extensive re-implementations a decade ago, I virtually had to check *everything* from the start. This is where I got in painful contact with. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted January 29, 2022 Share Posted January 29, 2022 1 hour ago, mizapf said: Yes, but I just mentioned it because after my extensive re-implementations a decade ago, I virtually had to check *everything* from the start. This is where I got in painful contact with. I understand that. I was asked many times for save states in Classic99, but it's a really hard thing to retrofit. V4 has been designed with save states from the start, at least at the component level. Less sure how it's going to sit at the master level at the moment 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
globeron Posted January 29, 2022 Share Posted January 29, 2022 On 1/27/2022 at 6:50 PM, Count9929A said: Digging in my old HDD, I found a photo of my best score in "modern times" ? It's from August 2014, 25344 on my real PAL TI99 (so the game is easier than on the NTSC TI). I played up to the first row of blue Flasher, should be level 13. Another interesting score is how the number of hits of the red ship. Inspecting the source code, with my limited ASM knowledge, I think that the maximum number of hits is 16, which is worth 500 points. Once, (in July 2014, I have a notice about it) I reached 15 hits, so I saw the number 500 as the bonus for the next hit... but unfortunately I missed it! ? Wow that is a good score.....with the unlimited lives version i only reached 23268, but did not see tourist aliens, i thought i hit the yellow saucer in the middle. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sometimes99er Posted January 29, 2022 Share Posted January 29, 2022 (edited) On 1/27/2022 at 9:28 AM, OLD CS1 said: What hits me the hardest about this is being reminded that the TI does not output orange. From what Kurt told me, the colors they were told to match was the tv test signal, but also doing it at minimal cost (design etc.). I guess dark yellow was what came closest to that brownish orange. Interesting that they ignored all the gray shades. Many of the TI colors are rather bright, so it works well (best) on a black background, - and that's exactly the old arcade style. ? On 1/27/2022 at 9:28 AM, OLD CS1 said: The screen turns red on me after the first wave and never changes back to black. It's more than 5 years old, and I guess I only tested in Classic99. It includes the SHIFT838 cheat. What setup do you use ? ? Edit. Works fine in JS99'er. Edited January 29, 2022 by sometimes99er 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted January 29, 2022 Share Posted January 29, 2022 8 hours ago, sometimes99er said: It's more than 5 years old, and I guess I only tested in Classic99. It includes the SHIFT838 cheat. What setup do you use ? ? Classic99 v399.052. First time I ever played this modification. I was going to joke about having done something wrong, but not only did I try it a second time with the same results, I just re-downloaded it and it worked fine. *sigh* 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sometimes99er Posted January 30, 2022 Share Posted January 30, 2022 I'm sure I've posted this elsewhere here on AtariAge, but here it is again. The invaders and animated. ? 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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