New Adventures?

[Dethmunk]

Final bugs are hopefully fixed! Just some tidying up and a proper playthrough and fingers crossed this weekend (Dec 3rd/4th) I should have a finished adventure game!! yay. CROSSING EVERYTHING!

[SimonSideburns]

Just in time for a Christmas release.

Consider it the best gift a BBC Micro fan could want. Bit like back in the day I suppose, waiting for a game and hoping Santa knew exactly which one and on which format.

Great stuff.

[jms2]

Hey John, really looking forward to seeing the game! I would like the kids to have a go at it... Can I safely assume there's nothing non child friendly in the content? I'm thinking swearing etc.

[Dethmunk]

No, there's no swearing at all. There are slightly bloody 'death' screens... such as...



But nothing that a most kids would consider frightening I would think.

[jms2]

No, that's fine!

A big part of the charm of 8 bit graphics is the way that nothing can ever be genuinely "graphic" in a frightening sense. If that picture was photo-realistic my daughter might get a bit scared by it, but as it is there's no problem.

[Dethmunk]

LOL, yeah very true. Its static too, so not really scary. All other 'death' screens are of a similar cartoon style.

[SteveF]

A big part of the charm of 8 bit graphics is the way that nothing can ever be genuinely "graphic" in a frightening sense. If that picture was photo-realistic my daughter might get a bit scared by it, but as it is there's no problem.

I must have been a big wuss, because I remember an educational title (possibly Flowers of Crystal, if not something similar-ish) which suddenly popped up a big mode 7 wolf/fox (which meant you were dead) which used to scare the **** out of me. I think it was the suddenness of it rather than the image in itself.

[trixster]

Looks absolutely brilliant, well done!

I love your hobbit cover too.

[Dethmunk]

Thanks Trickster. The Hobbit is defo the next adventure. Already got the first half of it planned out. Over Christmas I'll plan the rest of it hopefully.

[fuzzel]

I'm really looking forward to playing this game so I've freed my diary up for this weekend (hint, hint).

I'm curious to know how quickly the graphics appear when you enter a new location. On some old beeb games when they're drawn it took a few seconds and it spoiled the game a bit.

[Dethmunk]

I did a playtest and could finish it, unfortunately found some more bugs, which I thought had been fixed.
As for the graphics, they take a second or two, especially when played through emulator, as it seems to be emulating the disk access. Ironically on a BBC Micro fitted with Datacentre as I have so its a virtual drive, its almost instant, certainly much faster than on a PC running BeebEm. Unless you up the speed of the emulation but I think that affects typing speed etc.

[Dethmunk]

Also there is a slight delay as it has to search the data file for the text description too. Its comes to something like 2-3 secs in total for the new location to appear on Emulator.

[Dethmunk]

I've learnt a fair bit though. Like for the next game, getting rid of the variables for IN and OUT and UP and DOWN as these are used very rarely in my games I can do them as bespoke code, saving a fair bit of memory. Also not loading every location graphic if its shared with the previous location, eg. Forests or roads etc. to speed up movement around the game.

[Lardo Boffin]

I've learnt a fair bit though. Like for the next game, getting rid of the variables for IN and OUT and UP and DOWN as these are used very rarely in my games I can do them as bespoke code, saving a fair bit of memory. Also not loading every location graphic if its shared with the previous location, eg. Forests or roads etc. to speed up movement around the game.

Have you got a copy of Acornsoft Basic Editor? I got one from Mark at Retroclinic (I think for less than a tenner delivered) - it includes the ROM and a reprinted manual.

It has a number of facilities for renaming and replacing text etc. which allows you to write code with long friendly variable names and then rename them to something smaller when you run low on RAM as the program grows.
You can also scroll (up and down) through the program without having to use LIST anymore.

It's fair to say it rekindled my enjoyment of writing BASIC programs as I found it to be hard work once they got to a reasonable size - you either type LIST and press escape as it whizzes past or set the scroll to page mode and endlessly press Shift to go to the next page.

You can also download and use the ROM image for use in BeebEm etc.

Lardo

[Dethmunk]

Hey Lardo. Yeah its installed on my BBC Micro which I got from Retroclinic. I didn't think to get it installed into BeebEm! I'll have to look into that. Thanks.

[fuzzel]

Good morning dethmunk, just wondered how you were getting on rooting out those last little bugs in the game ?
If you need anyone to do some final beta testing I'd be happy to oblige.....

[Dethmunk]

Hey Fuzzel. Yeah soon (tm) I've been ill unfortunately. So not really felt like getting involved. But I am feeling better. Aiming for this weekend to have it done and up on the net assuming I can find a site to host the files. Funny how Website hosts used to give you storage, not anymore unless its just a document... grrr. I think I've found one that works. Got tomorrow off (Going to Star Wars at midnight LOL) so I'm gonna be straight on those final bugs and they are minor really. Then just do some small adjustments and test on Electron and separating files onto 2 disc images for GoMMC users and it should all be done, if the Electron and MMC give me problems (hopefully not) at least the DSD version for the BBC Micro B 32k WILL definitely be working and I'll put that up regardless.
I definitely want to get it out before Christmas cos I really want to get into The Hobbit next, I'll get some work done on that over the holiday.

I was putting some finishing touches to the Website last night, so I'm feeling better for sure.

[fuzzel]

Hi Dethmunk, I'm glad you're feeling better and up to finishing the game. Whenever I'm laid low for a few days my own personal tonic is to work my way through Hugh Cook's Chronicles of an Age of Darkness, so I've reread the first four books quite a few times over the years. Never get bored of them though.
Your enthusiasm for getting stuck into the Hobbit must be infectious, I'm keen to do some groundwork over the Christmas holidays on a sequel to Lords of Time (in tribute band style maybe it'll be by Level Nein). I'm no graphic artist so it'll be text only as per the original. My humble programming skills are limited to basic but because of the nine levels nature of the game it's perfect, each level of the game can be loaded into memory as you enter each time zone. Don't expect a fully working version any time soon though, to be a fitting tribute it'll have to be damn near perfect which will take some considerable time to do (for me anyway).

[Dethmunk]

Great to hear that Fuzzel. When I'm not too ill that I can still read, I usually go for a very easy read, my fave is the Ruin series of books. Not very large but very easy to blast through and a great Conan/Gladiator/Dungeon and Dragons type affair, with some great twists and ideas.
Level Nien I like it LOL Yeah I go for a multi-load approach too, to get around the small memory/BASIC programming restrictions. Seems to work very well.

[Dethmunk]

Welcome to BagEnd

[Dethmunk]

Well I think I've cracked it.... I've uploaded the first version of the game The Darkness of Raven Wood. DSD format for the BBC Micro B 32k.

I need to give it a final play-through before signing it off properly. If you want you can download an early bird version of it here...

RUCKSACK GAMES

Let me know if you can't get access to it. Its the first time using the file sharing site.
If it passes play testing again then nothing will change, otherwise I'll be uploading a fixed version.
Have a look around the website then either hit the big Download button or click on the Download link at the top of the page. Only the DSD icon will work for now, until I get the rest done.

Also for people running GoMMC how would you run a two disk game? Obviously the files are SSD's do you load them into Drives 0 and 1 or is it 0 and 2 or is it 1 and 2 not sure how you deal with them. Once I know that I can tweak the code to look for the disks in the right drives.

The Acorn Electron Version may have to wait a little longer as I have to set up my Electron and tweak the code and then play test it. If for some reason the game just doesn't work, through lack of memory, well that version may have to be canned. It was working through an Electron Emulator last time I tested it, but on a physical machine, that could change.

I've simply run out of time at the moment. Heading up north to my Mum's for Christmas. At least the BBC version is done, give it go, see what you think. Assuming you can download it. LOL. Make sure you read the instructions too.

[lurkio]

Just trying this now. Very nice!

Initial feedback in rot13: Creuncf pbafvqre nyybjvat HAYBPX QBBE nf jryy nf HFR XRL.

Typos:
*recieved should be received (in instructions).
*fathers' should be father's (instructions).
*silohette should be silhouette.

Do you want this sort of feedback? I'm happy to shut up if not!

[jms2]

Wonderful! I will download and have a go tomorrow.

[Dethmunk]

Just trying this now. Very nice!

Initial feedback in rot13: Creuncf pbafvqre nyybjvat HAYBPX QBBE nf jryy nf HFR XRL.

Typos:
*recieved should be received (in instructions).
*fathers' should be father's (instructions).
*silohette should be silhouette.

Do you want this sort of feedback? I'm happy to shut up if not!

LOL go for it. Although I suspect there might be quite a few bits like that. My grammar can a be a little off sometimes. Dam Silhouette!!?! I don't usually get that wrong. Must've been tired when I wrote that.
I'm more concerned about any crashes or bugs tbh.

[PitfallJones]

Terrific stuff!

Thanks for the early Xmas present.

The nearest thing to Monkey Island I've ever played on the BBC
- just started to map it out - I love the graphics.

PJ

[FourthStone]

This is really cool! Thank you for something new and interesting on the beeb, really liking it so far

One little thing that may be a bug, on the first screen I tried typing random commands like LOOK, LOOK DOWN, LOOK TAVERN, etc. The screen goes black and then reloads from disk, and sometimes goes black altogether to which I pressed ESC which caused the graphic to load but no text or input and seemed to be hung. It just seems to be the word LOOK that it doesn't like... but i'm trying more

Would be happy to assist with some of the game logic if you wanted, or also happy to wait for another version to test out as well. I do a lot of testing at work so I am always trying lots of things to break applications so I know how to fix them

Let me know if you can reproduce this issue above or if you need more info.

[jms2]

Time for some quick feedback...

My children have been playing this for a couple of hours yesterday - good timing actually, my wife's been poorly and it gave them something quiet to do while she was recovering! They're really into it, and I'm very impressed with the beautiful illustrations and the nice gameplay. We're stuck at... well, a certain point, but have not given up hope yet. The hints sheet doesn't seem to be helping us at the moment.

No real bugs found, although on BeebEm we forgot to turn off disc protection and were mystified for a while as to why it wasn't saving. Ideally it would give an error message rather than restart the game, but I appreciate this might be difficult to arrange.

I did try really hard to get it loaded on some real hardware (for testing purposes), but I ran into two major issues relating to the game being on DSD disk:

1) Omniflop seems to struggle to write the image to a 3.5" disk - I abandoned the operation part way through because the drive was making odd noises and there wasn't a progress bar shown on the screen. However I later discovered that it had written the catalogue to side 0 of the disk, so maybe it was working after all.

2) MMBImager only deals with SSD images, so I was unable to load it onto SD card.

I then resorted to UPURS (on the Electron), but I've modified my EUP card to get the sideways RAM working AND then stupidly not put the UPURS rom image onto a floppy! Given that I now have sideways RAM elsewhere I think I'll de-modify the EUP board and stick a proper ROM on there to save this kind of faffing around. Ultimately UPURS will be the solution, and then I can test on my Elks & BBC Master for you.

[danielj]

Just a bug-spot:
The narrow font doesn't work on the Master (MOS 3.2 or 3.5) - this will be some OS shenanigans to do with character sets... It works fine on my master booted into OS1.2

It won't boot at all on Beebem in M128 mode.

d.

[tricky]

For moving things between single disk and double disk images, I use beebem.
For this, load the .dsd, it will be in drives 0 and 2 (the two sides of the first drive).
Use the menu to make a new .ssd in disk 1, *OPT 4 3, *COPY 0 1 *.*, eject the disc and repeat copying 2 1 for the second side.
No need to *OPT the second disc, beebem creates a formatted image, so no need to format either.
I've also done the same in reverse to create double sided images.

[Lardo Boffin]

Time for some quick feedback...

No real bugs found, although on BeebEm we forgot to turn off disc protection and were mystified for a while as to why it wasn't saving. Ideally it would give an error message rather than restart the game, but I appreciate this might be difficult to arrange.

I don't know if this is down to untrapped error handling? If so and procedure are being used (which I hope is the case!) the post below may be of interest? I was having traumas with an MMC explorer giving an error when attempting to load an unformatted disc. I couldn't trap the error inside a procedure - it was resetting Basic and killing it.

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=11973

JGH came up with some magic machine code which allowed errors to be trapped in functions which I have successfully implemented here by way of example:- viewtopic.php?f=2&t=12077

Lardo