New Adventures?

[richardtoohey]

Love the pics.

I wanna play. Is it finished yet?

[Dethmunk]

No its not yet.. LOL. Although its coming along nicely. Although with all the data going in I think I'm at around 13.2k (data+program) at the moment. Most of the major data is in there though. Parser working and starting to flesh out. Text display routines working so that text isn't split across lines etc. So it's getting there.

[richardtoohey]

I was joking! It's looking good.

[davidb]

The half-width text is looking very readable. Good work!

[Dethmunk]

Thanks, guys. I know you were Richard... David thanks has to go to Robin Nixon, I found his code in Electron User magazine as a type-in. Works well for the most part.

[Dethmunk]

Finally gave it a test 'on platform'

[Dethmunk]

I'm devastated. Just tried to load the main file for my adventure.... Bad Program. That's all I get. Can't list it or run it. I'm gonna look see if my backup file works, but god knows how many hours of work and fixed bugs I'm now missing.

Just checked, I do have a back up with lots of my work, but there's still a ton of stuff I'm missing. Gutted. How can a digital file be compromised? I was saving from Emulator. Thought that would be bomb proof.

[hoglet]

I'm devastated. Just tried to load the main file for my adventure.... Bad Program. That's all I get. Can't list it or run it. I'm gonna look see if my backup file works, but god knows how many hours of work and fixed bugs I'm now missing.

Really sorry to hear this.

It's possible that it's partially recoverable, if you want to upload the file I'd be happy to take a look.

I'll PM you my email address if you're not yet ready to post anything publicly yet,

Dave

[daveejhitchins]

Looking forward to the elk version

Dave H

[richardtoohey]

Don't give up hope.

If you've got an SSD image, make sure you copy that image before you try and fix things - and try all your fixes on the copies. Otherwise you end up mangling the broken one more.

There are Bad Program "fixers" (code as well as nice people like hoglet).

So fingers crossed there might be something that can be done.

[Dethmunk]

Well before the 'Bad Program' incident I did try it out on the Electron emulator and it worked fine Dave.

Someone has had a look at the file for me. Appears for whatever reason the Emulator decided to save the program from about 2/3 the way through!!!! Great. So there's only a third of it there roughly. So I'm going to have to go with the backup, which is a few days old. I can still use the file. He kindly listed it out and a lot of it is the new stuff. So I can copy that over. No doubt there's loads of other stuff I've lost. Going to have to load up and play it and see whats missing and then start rework. But at least its not all lost.

[daveejhitchins]

Well before the 'Bad Program' incident I did try it out on the Electron emulator and it worked fine Dave.

Re loosing data . . . It's a hard life lesson that really we should all learn - but never seem to Of course it's never happened to me

Good luck with the reconstruction . . .

Dave H

[1024MAK]

These days, if it is important, I normally either work on a copy, or where available, use "save as" to save with a different number at the end. So have incremental copies.

Of course I have lost data. The last time was when the computer froze before I had saved it. The application although set to auto save a back-up every 10 minutes had not done so, as I had not named the file yet, because it was a new file that I had not yet saved

So, yes, we often (but not always) learn the hard way...

My worst was when a laptop I was using died. It corrupted part of the hard drive. I did have a back-up, but it was a month old

Mark

[Dethmunk]

Yep, I usually have backups, just not been thorough enough and doing it often. Won't be making that mistake again.

[tricky]

I used to use visual studio 6 for my editor with it set to checkout on open and submit on close, so perforce (free for small teams) had a backup of every session.
This didn't save me when my HD crashed as I had them both on the same drive!

[Dethmunk]

Ouch! Perforce is very good though. We use it at work. A little extreme for a one man bedroom coder LOL Although just being focused and diligent should be enough. Multiple backups on HDD and USB Stick should be ok.

[tricky]

It was the quickest to install and easiest to use that i had tried and as it integrated so that I didn't have to do anything other than type a note about what I had done when I finished, it was an acceptable amount of work.
I was just saving different versions for a while, but after "restoring"the wrong version, I installed a new version of perforce and am using that again now.

[fuzzel]

Can't wait to try out this new adventure game. I hope it'll be ready by Christmas.
In the meantime I might dust off Twin Kingdom Valley to get me in the mood...

[Dethmunk]

Well I'm hoping so Fuzzel. Had a few 'out of room' errors. Had to adjust the way it all works to free more memory. Still going though. Fingers crossed I haven't been too ambitious.

Here's a cheeky and grisly end to one adventurer. No more spoilers though...

[dp11]

Just wondering if you should change to mode 7 half way down the screen. Then you would have extra memory and won't need the new font code.

[jms2]

Is that possible? I don't think I have ever seen it done.

[Dethmunk]

Yeah I'm not sure that's doable either dp11. Even if it where, I dunno where to start to get that working.

[dp11]

I think there is a reasonable chance it is possible.

Things to be done

1) the start address in the 6845 is programmed such bit 13 goes high when we what to go into mode 7.
2) timer irq fires at the mode 7 point and reprograms the relevant 6845 regs . The video ula is reprogrammed to enabled mode7
3) on vsync restore the 6845 settings

Memory layout might be strange not sure where mode 5 will start in memory you might need 1K of blank pallet blanking at the end of the mode 5 screen before mode 7 starts . The other option is on the IRQ event to go into mode 7 you copy say 0.5K of mode 7 text to 7c00. Then on vsync restore mode 5 data.

NB you cant reprogram the 6845 start address during a screen scan

[sydney]

I doubt it'd be possible in BBC BASIC though.

[dp11]

yes it would almost certainly need a little assembler, but not too much.

[Dethmunk]

I'm happy at the way its going at the moment. I do think I've been ambitious with this project though. Maybe the next one can be in Mode 7 with Mode 7 graphics. Is there a decent Mode 7 graphics package?

[Dethmunk]

Just to let people know that The Darkness of Raven Wood has fitted into memory.... well the first part, part 2 loads in separately. But it fits and its the bigger of the two parts! Just a few polish tasks and some debugging and the first part is done, now to finish the second half which should go quicker and then she'll be ready to release! So pleased the last optimization passes actually worked. Otherwise I'd be scratching my head at what to do next. So now I have streamed Location Text descriptions from Disk, Images are streamed too obviously, optimized the Item and Creature data into two parts for each chapter/program load, halved the variable list as I don't need all of them for each part of the adventure. Removed code aimed at Part 2 of the game (now its two different programs its not needed). All that and now it fits into 32k (Mode 5) (just) The disk image is an 80trk Double sided disk so memory isn't a problem on disk anyway, so far.

[vanpeebles]

It looks excellent! Just a note on the back ups. I'm writing a QL adventure, and at the end of every session I email the files to myself on my yahoo account. You end up with a fully searchable and dated backup archive. Unless someone forgets to back yahoo up

[davidb]

It looks excellent! Just a note on the back ups. I'm writing a QL adventure, and at the end of every session I email the files to myself on my yahoo account. You end up with a fully searchable and dated backup archive. Unless someone forgets to back yahoo up

Just in case you missed it, I'm sure someone is already backing it up.

[vanpeebles]

Hehehe, there might be a Chinese or Russian language version of my game to come out then!