[Orion] > Many thanks to you, Brendan, for having revived this game.
No probs! As I said to Orion in e-mail, I had been considering taking the vic site down,
because I didn't think anyone was using it. Obviously, Will keep it up now.
[Anders] > What happens if you run the Basic portion through Austrocomp; will it become smaller
[Anders] > or does certain features not work in that Basic compiler?
I wasn't aware of Austrocomp. Did a Google, and only found three entries, all German,
but Ich nicht sprichen de Deutsh! If you can point me, interested to try...
I'm guessing it uses the BASIC ROM for its runtime?
[Anders] > Since a portion of the game (sorclib.bin - the UPL compiler and graphics?)
That's the graphics (bitmaps and code that draws the dungeon and mobs) and text intercept
routines that manage the windows. Didn't use UPL for this; UPL wasn't an optimised compiler.
[Anders] > already is written in machine code, maybe you'll consider rewriting it all
[Anders] > in C or assembly code?
Suspect that wouldn't achieve much. I loathe BASIC, but it's actually reasonably efficient
memorywise (cos it's can draw from its own runtime in ROM). Because of all the string
manipulation, guess an assembler version would be more or less the same size (though
you could do the maze array at half the size). But apart from a faster maze generation,
you probably wouldn't even tell the difference
[Orion] > Sorcery V2 would be PERFECT! Very Happy
For the VIC or something else? Would be fun, but spent waaaaaay to much time on 6502 retroprojects.
If someone else wants to do it, I'll cheer you on! Queztalcoatl does have a decent
6502 assembler and it can load your programmable character set directly from a PCX file.
What might be fun is to take the BASIC source, convert it to C, hook it up with DirectX 3D
and do a Windoze version of Sorcery 1. Could probably do that much quicker!!!!
I do have running notes on Sorcery 2 I dabble in every now and again.
That'd be for Windoze though, and not for another 10 years.
So enjoy the VIC version. Guess when it's 32 years old,
that'd be a good geek time to do a new version.
"What!? 2^5!! Well then... let's get started!"
[Orion] > I will extensively play-test this alpha version, and try to map all the dungeon.
[Orion] > BTW: you wrote that the position of monsters varies (as it always should be in a RPG)
[Orion] > - is it the same for chests, or they are placed randomly? You know, it's just to avoid
[Orion] > losing time mapping their positions. Cool
Chests should be at random locations as should be the monsters.
[Orion] > IMHO, you shouldn't mind keeping everything under 16KB, as the majority of us can
[Orion] > afford >=24KB RAM and 16KB was somehow limiting the game [] characters number or name).
Sorcery is very tight within 19.5Kb (ie. 3.5Kb+16Kb expansion). The alpha might have pushed
it just over, but when finalise it I'll bring it under. e.g. Note the copyright sign is now
a programable character; saved 3 bytes with that... which I then used for the version number.
When I fixed line 380 I s/n8/3/, saving another byte! ...
... Which goes to show you just how tight memory is!
[Mayhem] > But not everyone has a cart slot splitter of course...
> I can only use max 16k extra here myself.
Yeah. Me too. 3 VICs and one 16Kb expansion.
[Orion] > May I ask you one more programming effort? Embarassed My disk changes allow to save only
[Orion] > one character per disk. Could it be possible for you to add a file name requester in order
[Orion] > to save all characters on the same disk? It would be just great,
I was wondering about that. Saving by name is easy, but loading by name would mean a bit
of extra code which would blow the 16Kb limit. Will try, and proly do a separate disk and
tape version (cos not enough memory to ask for and do both.) Could shorten some of the
spell descritions though; guess we can find enough bytes...
[Orion] > OK, sorry - 16KB at maximum then. It was only to let Brendan work free from memory limits -
[Orion] > never know if he's going to add animation, sound or what else (I'm joking of course Wink).
Keeping 16Kb is probably best, otherwise we'll have 4 different configurations,
for umpteen different emulators. Argh!!!!!
[Orion] > Alpha-testing report#1:
[Orion] > - Playing with dungeon "b", starting position n.1.
[Orion] > - Played it three times, and the entrance is always in the same room (IT WORKS! Laughing ).
Years ago Nigel told me he just kept regenerating the dunegon until he got
an entrance in the outer chamber. So lets all blame Nigel for this
for not being pushy enough!
[Orion] > - The dungeon is a 22x22 grid (484 rooms).
I do remember I originally planned to keep track or which rooms you'd been in and with
a button draw a map on the screen. Ran out of memory, but not sure if that would have
been good for gameplay anyway.
[Orion] > - If we number x and y rooms 1-22 left to right and top to bottom
[Orion] > - respectively, entrance n.1 is at location (1,15).
Cool. deliberately made the changes very minor. Btw 'q' has an entrance on the outer chamber too.
'a' doesn't (which I guess is why you were in 'b'
BTW thinking about it after you "reincarnate" N monsters, they regenerate.
That's the pause every so often. If something goes wrong, that could be it...