itch.io

Hey there! You mentioned a tool in the TRSE Fb group for creating the sounds of Fizz, would you mind posting a link to it? Thanks a lot! :)

Thank you, thank you, thank you! This feat of mine has received so little love, so your words are like balm to my wounded soul! 😄

Yeah, there's no limit to lazyness, that's why I really appreciate you managed to take some time and effort to try this! 🙏

Well, thank you so much for all the time you've dedicated to my little game and for your comment! 

Yeah, not reading the "room" descriptions anymore and focussing on the "roguelike" map is something I do myself when I play this.
One has to admit, though: the original Colossal Cave hasn't got much of a story either, so I think you could end up doing basically the same there as well.

I'm sorry you missed the last 5 points, there's a little colourful & "soundful" effect if you go full score. I'm curious now about what you could have missed... A puzzle? A treasure?

Yes, it's an extremely simple game, hence the name "Advent 101", it's really the "basic basics" of a text adventure game :D

If you're interested in the 3D remake, go for it! You'll find a few puzzles you've seen here, while you definitely won't see others (certainly no Harry Potter references :D ).

Yeah, Roberta Williams kept as much as she could of the original text adventure, and if you ask me, that's a downer. The game definitely needed some adaptation, it's just so silly in so many places...

Beh, sia santificato XC=BASIC allora! Credo che avresti avuto molti se non tutti i problemi che hai descritto qua anche sul C64 :)

I'm sorry you see it that way, I'm sure doing as I suggested would have made the whole thing more flexible to use.

My screen is full-HD as well, it's not a resolution issue but a DPI one, and you can easily test it by setting an higher DPI value to something like 125% or 150% and then you should see the problem.

Ciao from a fellow Italian :)

This is quite an interesting utility, which at first I was going to use in my game, but then decided otherwise.

The main reason lies in the Export feature: while it makes sense to export a binary PRG file for BASIC users, it's quite limiting for Assembly coders.

In addition to providing the ability to export a binary file for BASIC programs, your utility should also be able to export an Assembly source file, with all memory addresses involved expressed with labels, not hardwired values.
This way, an Assembly programmer can easily incorporate your sound routine (and its data) into their source code, leaving their Assembler to correctly relocate the routine and its data.
This would also apply to the addresses in the zero page: they should be easily modified by directly editing the source file.

Not being able to do that made me abandon the idea of using your utility, such a pity.

Speaking of the Export feature: the part of the text concerning the Assembly folks shows some example code for the IRQ setup, the IRQ routine and how to play a sound. The first two pieces of code are actually redundant, as they are both included in the exported binary.
On the other hand, the callable routine to stop a sound, or the addresses to check if a sound has stopped playing, are not mentioned (one has to look in the BASIC section of the text to learn that).

Finally, a couple of minor bug reports:

• The UI has a problem when opened in high DPI screens: some of the values are truncated (a workaround to this is to force the DPI compatibility to be handled by the System instead of the Application, which makes the whole text less readable but fully displayed):
  
  
• Contrary to what is stated on the button, pressing ESC does not stop the sound, it just shifts the window focus to the Stop button (and then, even pressing the space bar doesn't stop the sound), so you are forced to use the mouse to do that.

I hope you'll take all that as constructive criticism, as I really like this tool, otherwise I wouldn't have spent more than an hour typing all this :)

Evviva!

Hey there again!! :)

Yeah, too large steps, I'm afraid! But when I began this one I couldn't see in what kind of maze I had thrown myself into. Then I had to finish this for my own mental sanity...

The main thing is the compiled BASIC dialect I'm using: strings aren't its forte (they're limited to 96 characters), so I had to write a "data compiler" to allocate strings in memory (while slightly compressing them in the process) in FreeBASIC.

Yeah I knew about the 3D/VR remake, in fact I had just began the project when it came out and I got a little "depressed" while wondering if anybody would be now interested in a simplified demake of Colossal Cave Adventure, I got stalled for a couple of months because of that.

You didn't even play the Atari 2600 Adventure? Then you must be pretty young, I envy you! 😁

Produttivo anche nei chitemmuorti. Avessi capito subito in cosa mi sono andato a cacciare starei anch'io in stand-by :) Mo' lo devo finire soltanto per questioni di sanità mentale...

Beh già che parli di stand-by e non di "quiete in sempiterno" mi rincuora, fatti venire l'ispirazione per la prossima creatura con la più assoluta e dovuta calma e, quando sarà venuta al mondo, io ci sarò!

Come già detto, ho esclamato un "uà, grande!" a voce alta quando ho visto Pacuvia recensito su Zzap! È un onore come pochi, veramente complimenti e applausi! :)

(E una levata di cappello con inchino al tuo rimando al mio gioco, grazie. Per i primi di giugno spero di partorire un altro topolino...)

Vabbè, che signore di gran classe a comprare QuickBASIC su eBay anziché rimediare setup e manuale dal web. Non scherzo, chapeau!

Cheryl Regena Whitelaw (that should be her full name, check this out!) did do some interesting things with mazes, yeah! In other games she wrote or converted, she used some peculiar pre-made strings that were randomly selected, one for each line of the screen. What came up could be hardly called a maze, but still, they were interesting maps for chasing games!

It's been many months since I last saw the TI-99 listing, but yeah, I still remember that darned FL variable! Yeah, she never allowed FL to have any other value beyond 1, so there was some piece of code that never executed! I made sure of it after I did the "almost 1:1" conversion to XC=BASIC, so that I could add some debug code just to see and understand!
And yes, the whole thing is really messed up; once the Monster starts marking its steps and goes into a dead end, it can't escape... And yeah, the LV variable never increased... MEESSS! :D

Like you said, I tried to catch the original intent, and it seemed to me that she tried to have some "multi-layer" invisible marking of the maze (using the FL variable for that), so that the Monster would try to choose some lesser-walked path first. I tried to do that my way and... it all got messed up as well :)
What I ended up doing (after A LOT of trial and error) was something simple so that the Monster would just mark the whole dead end (while going back on its steps), while all the other passages can be walked on again and again.

Oh, regarding the 180° turns: yep, I remembered this video on Pacman and in particular, the fact that the ghosts never turn around (well, mostly never)! So I really focussed on that, and it paid off!

The Atari version used different graphics for the Player steps according to the direction they went, and I was initially using them. So I could have made the Monster smarter by also reading the direction the Player went, not just the trail per se, but I don't know how much more difficult the game would become.

So, to sum it up: I did what you suggested, I tried to see the original intent and then implementing it my way. It was hard for me, but in the end... it works well enough :)

Hey!! Thank you A TON for your comments, I can see your BIG enthusiasm for this game and its origins, I'm happy I'm not the only one! :)

You know, I was SO SURE it was "TI99-4/A" that I was ready to say "oh no, you got it wrong", BUT... I looked it up, and I stand very humbly corrected, so thank you so so much for that! Now I'll always think of this next time I'm going to mention the TI-99! :D

Of course now I want to see your Extended BASIC version (I used that too, a lot, back in the day!), as well as your future "modern-retro" remake!

Some guy on Facebook who saw my version also suggested to put more than a Monster in the game, but I was really exhausted and wanted to move to something else: I had been working on this, in my spare time, for about 4 months! :) Still, I'm really curious to see the kind of impact that has on the game!

Yeah, XC=BASIC is surprisingly fast, to me at least!

Did you see my source code of this? XC=BASIC is pretty similar to Microsoft QuickBASIC regarding the syntax, so you shouldn't have too much trouble understanding what I did :)

(If my English is weird to you, I'm sorry, I'm from Italy...)

Thank you so much for taking the time to write this article twice (English and Italian), and then making the effort to get it out of moderation-lock :)
It was an interesting read, it shows how really deep you went in the machine internals to reach your goal (including learning a bit of Assembly!).
That's very honourable of you, especially considering that the C64 wasn't the only machine you were developing for!

The solution you ended up using could be overkill, and also limiting since you're sacrificing quite a bit of RAM just for the purpose. There's another trick (that I haven't tested yet, alas) in one of the old C64 books, "Mastering Machine Code on your Commodore 64", that involves modifying a 1D table kept in lower RAM and used by the KERNAL; it's still about modifying one byte in there, but without having to copy anything from ROM.
In that case, it explains how to scroll one line down but, as far as I understand it, it should be even easier to scroll up.
Since the book has been recently republished, it's a bit hard to find: here's the italian translation of it, the trick is described on the right page towards the bottom.
The original English book can still be found on commodore.bombjack.org, under C64/Books.

If you're curious, I can update you once I manage to test & understand that trick myself (as I'm going to need it for my next project, wink wink, nudge nudge :)

Ehilà! Perdona l'off-topic: si può fare qualcosa per la entry riguardante la status bar? Sono stracurioso di leggerla e però, vai a sapere perché, è in ostaggio di un moderatore, dopo due giorni ancora niente!

I see you changed the title screen! That makes the preview version a collectible item now 😄

Many congrats for finishing the game! 🥳

Benvenuto nel club! Io ho avuto lo stesso trattamento ed è successa la stessa cosa coi download, almeno le prime settimane! Solo ultimamente i download "ufficiali" hanno superato di qualche unità quelli pirata :-D

Benché la cosa sia in un'area grigia (in verità questi craccano la qualunque perché gli fa punteggio, in senso più o meno letterale), è comunque un'attenzione che, almeno in parte, fa piacere, non si può negare  :)

Stessa cosa è successa all'autore finlandese di Ad Astra, un gioco C64 (neanche completato al 100%!) anch'esso fatto in XCBASIC, per dirti...

Thank you for taking the time to check this out!
Yeah, I wasted some time on it myself while I was trying to finish the game program! :-D

I thought that in 2022 things like lives were just old, not vintage :) There is a penalty when you die, though: your score goes back to what it was when you started the level :-D
As for the high score, I would have liked some online table to be kept, but since there is no network standard for C64s, alas, there is none... 

The sound effects are all programmed in XCB, no .sid or things like SEUCK sounds involved... that's the main reason the sounds are simple :-D

Thank you also for testing the game on the THEC64! 

E allora, ho spostato tutto sul mio C64C, c'è voluto un po' di tempo (un primo giro completo), alla seconda giocata il cursore è scomparso anche lì :)

A me pare molto strano che un certo gruppo di chip provochi o meno un problema del genere. Sarebbe più probabile con una differenza di KERNAL, ma credo stiamo sempre nella revisione 3 (l'ultima).
In teoria dovrei mettermi a guardare l'assembly della routine di Input, ma già fatico a farlo per la versione corrente di XCB... Dev'essere qualche sorta di "race condition".

Approfitto per aggiungere che "Premi un tasto per salutarci" l'ho trovato molto carino e stiloso :) La prima volta che l'ho letto ho sorriso.

• Io ne ho giocate di avventure testuali, con Pirate Adventure ho cominciato a imparare l'inglese, poi ho proseguito con The Hobbit, a cui sono molto affezionato. Tutte quelle che ho giocato non usavano la barra in cima, e un riscontro a un comando dato c'era sempre. Ciò detto, io alla fine ne sono venuto a capo, non è un qualcosa di bloccante.
• Diciamo che ho entrambi, però a fare i precisini sono due C64 Reloaded, una monta i chip del biscottone, l'altra quelli del C (tutti originali comunque), ho giocato sul biscottone. Comunque non ci sbatterei la capoccia più di tanto, è chiaro che è un problema di XCB2.3. Poco fa ho verificato nuovamente che, quando l'Invio non funziona, puoi continuare a scrivere senza che ci sia il cursore lampeggiante. E' evidente che sia un problema di runtime, su cui il "programmatore finale" non ha potere. Per fortuna non inficia al completamento del gioco, per cui...  :)

• La lavoratissima status bar fa il suo mestiere, il punto però è che è in cima allo schermo, mentre normalmente il giocatore guarda in fondo, perché la riga di input finisce lì per buona parte del tempo. Se non sei abituato a quel meccanismo - appunto perché non giocavi alle avventure Infocom in gioventù - vedi che il computer risponde con un perfetto niente e rimani perplesso. Volendo rimanere nel tema del passato remoto (che, a proposito, ho finito per apprezzare molto), anziché un "Ok" come risposta poteva andare bene, per esempio, un "Mi diressi a <direzione>" o semplicemente "Mi spostai". Sembra niente, ma ogni rassicurazione che può dare il computer, per quanto piccola, fa comunque una differenza :)
• Io ho giocato sul mio C64 vero! :D Come drive uso la 1541 Ultimate II (non la II Plus). Il THEC64 è un emulatore alla fin fine, quindi strano che lì il bug salti fuori mentre su altri emulatori, come il Vice, non lo faccia. E' comunque un problema su cui non puoi intervenire, quindi pace...
  Eh, l'unica cosa che ho saltato del Manuale erano giusto le istruzioni di caricamento! :D

Ehilà! Scelgo di commentare in italiano perché ho giocato alla versione C64 italiana :)

Come ti ho detto sul gruppo Fb di XC=BASIC, ti faccio vivissimi complimenti per essere arrivato a dama con questa tua opera prima, superando (almeno con XCB) tutte le difficoltà da solo! Non è assolutamente cosa da poco.

Parlando del gioco in sé, mi è piaciuto! Ora mi accingo a rigiocarlo perché non ho fatto punteggio pieno, e in più l'omaggio a Indy Jones 4 (il gioco) ovviamente mi solletica la curiosità.

Due appunti che ti lascio (versione C64) pur tenendo bene in mente che questa è la tua opera primissima:

• Negli spostamenti non c'è alcun feedback, e inizialmente pensavo ci fosse un problema col programma. Ho poi realizzato che hai voluto evitare che si ripetesse la lunga descrizione dei luoghi ogni volta. D'altra parte, un minimo segnale di Ok credo sia cosa gradita per il giocatore che magari (come purtroppo è il mio caso!) non è granché esperto di avventure Infocom :)
• Saltuariamente, dopo aver dato l'Invio, il programma pare mettersi in pausa e bisogna premere più volte l'Invio prima che reagisca (mi è capitato anche di poter continuare a scrivere senza cursore lampeggiante). Forse c'è un problema con la routine di INPUT di XCB2.3. Non so se è capitato anche a te, comunque è piccola cosa...

Ho letto con molto interesse il tuo "post-mortem" nel PDF, mi ci sono ritrovato molto. Il "mio" Superchase è la mia opera primissima e, come hai fatto tu, volevo anch'io riscattare il me quindicenne!

Hey there, thank you for checking this out!

I don't think you're missing anything. It's basically a weird remake of an early '80s BASIC game, but still I thought it wouldn't be interesting to have lives and volatile highscores in 2022 (it would have been nice to have an online highscore list but, as this is a Commodore 64 game, there are no standard network capabilities). Yeah, the score does get reset when you get eaten, as I thought at least one penalty had to be in place :)

Exactly, it's a little free game and I'm already happy that people are checking it out, I had zero expectations. I will think about your feedback for my next thingy, so thank you again!

Happy to hear that! 😊

You know, while working on this, I occasionally felt like the Tetris author, I read that sometimes he had trouble making progress on the game because he wasted time playing it, and I did the same! 😄 Thank you for checking this out!

Hello! I'm so glad you took the time to read this! 😊
As for your suggestion: yep, that's what I thought as well, but _at least_ with the current VICE, as you put an higher value in the SUSTAIN part of the SR register, the sound goes off! It only works if you go quieter... So I would probably have needed to turn off and on the voice gate continuously, and I don't know... it seemed too messy for me 😁

I'll go back to experiment with that with my next thingy, though (I was silly enough to join a jam here! 😄 ).

Thank you again, also for your suggestion!

Thank you, deeply 🙏😊

¡Gracias, me alegro de que te haya gustado el juego! 😊

Grazie! <inchino>

Oh wow, thank you so much, I feel honoured, really! 😊

Just a tiny note: the platform is the Commodore 64, not the Spectrum 😄 I understand perfectly why you got confused, it's the font. I drew it myself, I wasn't thinking about the Spectrum at all, but I realized, once I finished, that it reminded the Spectrum a bit 😁

EDIT: oh I see now that the video description mentions the C64, sorry!

Thank you so much for playing the game and making this video! Viva Saberman & Ultimate Play the Game! I used to play Sabre Wulf and Knight Lore back in the day! 😃

It's quite an art to do them right, today. Back in 1982 you had to be minimalist 😄 

Jokes apart, they can be great and evoke such a great atmosphere with so little...

Well, thank you! 😊

Grazie! <takes a bow>