Denial

orion70 wrote:

TNT wrote:It's time to write the script which converts raw story files into D64 files

How exactly will the whole thing work? Will the Z machine be loaded before the story, then the disk will be swapped, and the story loaded in chunks of information from a "story disk"?

There is enough free sectors on tracks 17 and 16 for the interpreter, so you don't need to swap disks except when saving and restoring. Beta versions use separate prg for interpreter and D64 for data because only the first changes.

TNT wrote:

TNT wrote:Small setback. I tried Seastalker yesterday and couldn't get past "Is this correct" after entering my name as it wouldn't accept neither "y", "yes", "n" nor "no" as valid answer.

I just found the reason - dictionary starts at $72xx in memory and spans over $80xx. Dictionary scan should skip $8000-$9fff and continue at $a000 and then wrap back to $0400, but it doesn't.

Moving the interpreter into BLK5 was surprisingly easy. Now virtual memory uses $1300 - $7fff and $0400 - $0dff. You may remember that cursor trashes a byte at $1300... well, that doesn't matter as it only trashes the high bit and clears the it on exit, and the first byte of story file is version number which never has bit 7 set



With minor changes (getting rid of self-modifying code) it would be possible to possible to make cartridge ROM version, but I see no real advantages in that as the interpreter would still require 24+3K memory expansion.

edit: Seastalker still needs some fixing, sonar doesn't like narrow screen. This one might be easier to fix with story file patch.

TNT wrote:edit: Seastalker still needs some fixing, sonar doesn't like narrow screen. This one might be easier to fix with story file patch.

The sonar status (sonar & depth warnings below the real status line) need to be patched too, it assumes at least 32 chars wide screen. I can easily shorten the normal status but how the heck am I going to fit "@@=SEACAT Oooo=MONSTER #=DANGER" into 22 chars?

Would either of these four strings make sense?

@@=SEA Oooo=MON #=DANG
@=SEACA O=MONST #=DANG
@=SEACAT O=MONST #=DGR
@=SC Oooo=MSTR #=DANGR

How about:
@SEACAT OoMONSTR #DNGR
Presumably it's not possible to put a line feed in the middle?

It's a shame to have to put so much work into Seastalker, since it's not a very good Infocom game. (With apologies to the authors!)

Thanks for the suggestions. One thing that occured to me that I could use the monster's name at that point, saving two bytes without having to shorten it. Likewise, I could use another name for SeaCat. And no, it's not possible to put in linefeed without patching yet another location.

Seastalker is the only V3 game using split screen, so getting it to work correctly means I can debug that part of code before V4/V5 commands. I've found one bug already, bottom window is one row too tall so it overwrites the last line of sonar in Seastalker.

PS: I sent 24 D64 images to beta testers yesterday, so that's the reason if some members disappear from Denial for a while

Oh, it sounds naughty. Something like the Bermuda Triangle of Commodore computing.

Bermuda Triangle? More likely is that they get eaten by a grue... or something even worse...

Is it hard to work with a screen size bigger than 22x23? I was playing around with the VIC registers a few weeks ago, but doing that required to manually POKE (or STA) values manually into screen color memory (37888 & up).

Ghislain wrote:Is it hard to work with a screen size bigger than 22x23?

I've posted some code here.

Any news on the development of this, TNT? Just wondering (and so is Orion!! ).

I'm in the middle of PC upgrade, struggling to find time for setting the new one the way I like (damn manufacturers don't provide device drivers if you downgrade from Vista ) and trying to paint the house between rainy days. The good thing is that I moved the Z-machine stuff over to the new PC today, so it's theoretically possible to continue work if time permits.

Good to see you're still interested even if RL gets in the way. Good luck with the new PC (and the painting!)

Thank you very much TNT - as you read here, there's a bunch of us waiting for news from our (unofficial) Infocom guru...

Some links to keep focused on this wonderful world of text adventures:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infocom
http://mit.edu/6.933/www/Fall2000/infocom/
http://infodoc.plover.net/
http://infocom.elsewhere.org/gallery/

I'm sorry too. I was beta testing this for TNT back in May and then Real Life got in the way for me too. Went away for a five week work term with no internet and still haven't turned on the VIC since!