Buckaroo Banzai

[tautology]

Argh; the word wrap is really annoying - but I need to fix it for other games. Back to the drawing board on my algorithm for that...

The tape on is the source data file:

Code: Select all

 54)  38  57 [CONN HOSE]
     ? HAS (40 = Fuel hose)
     ? HAS (26 = Manual hand pump)
     ? HAS (22 = Roll of duct tape)
    -> 58 = SET_BIT (13)
    -> 117 = PRINT(tape holds it)
    -> 118 = PRINT(attached to pump.)
    -> 59 = REMOVE (40 = Fuel hose)

Another one to mark down as a basic grammar/spelling change along with punctuation in the car.

The last one looks to be a bug with action 1 which should set the day flag. I need to dig more.

[tautology]

So bugs:

• Punctuation about look dashboard
• "tape is attached"
• QUIT doesn't work
• SET_DAY isn't been performed (action 0 and 1)

[fuzzel]

tautology wrote:
Argh; the word wrap is really annoying

Tell me about it! I had sleepness nights before getting mine to work properly. I know someone who could possibly help if you're interested...
Excellent work on this game btw. Is lurkio's bug report re: going west in the dark anything to do with the "quit" routine being broken?

[lurkio]

tautology wrote: Argh; the word wrap is really annoying

I know someone who could possibly help

I wonder who you could possibly mean... Anyway, this is different because the Teletext colour codes are a complicating factor, and they scare me.

btw. Is lurkio's bug report re: going west in the dark anything to do with the "quit" routine being broken?

I think tautology might be saying that the bug is that "SET_DAY isn't been [sic] performed (action 0 and 1)"..?

[tautology]

Right; worked out the flashlight bug - it was related to the dig bug; so I rewrote how I compressed my actions, and that's fixed. I managed to play all the way through to the end, but found that the transmit command isn't working; literally the last two commands Though this may be because I forgot to press the switch in the mountain...

I also fixed the quit bug - this was how I managed the message and was a bug I'd introduced with an earlier change. I noticed a couple of other bugs whilst I was at, so bug list:

• Word wrapping (appears to be 4 characters too late on objects only)
• One or two extra lines are needed for the room description window
• A space is needed between "I hear the bomb will explode" and the count of turns
• Punctuation about look dashboard
• "tape is attached"

Latest version attached.

[lurkio]

I managed to play all the way through to the end, but found that the transmit command isn't working; literally the last two commands Though this may be because I forgot to press the switch in the mountain...

Yes, looks like you did!:

Fantastic work! I think the game logic is basically all working now..?



EDIT: A bit of a terse victory message there, Mr Adams!

[tautology]

Cool and I've found the paste function in BeebEm

Tuned a bit and added a space before the count, although the word wrap messes up. Fix the messages and increased the location window size.

So... I make it that I just have to fix the wordwrap; then I can post the code up to github and then try and get the MODE 4 graphics version working.

If you're curious, the top of used memory is &3cb2; so it should work as implemented on an Electron (in MODE 6); and should work easily in MODE 4/5. I'm not using any of DFS's working space, so I could easily reduce this to &34b2 by loading the engine at &1100 and &31b2 if E00 DFS is used. That's so near allowing MODE 1/0 it's painful!

[lurkio]

Tuned a bit and added a space before the count, although the word wrap messes up. Fix the messages and increased the location window size. So... I make it that I just have to fix the wordwrap; then I can post the code up to github and then try and get the MODE 4 graphics version working.

Some observations (see captions to images):

Why is "East" capitalised? There's no need for it to be.

"east" isn't capitalised in Howarth.

Lowercase input text completely foxes your parser.
But Howarth displays lowercase input as uppercase and accepts it.

Should the available exits be all uppercase as in Howarth? ("Exits are: SOUTH ...")

Howarth says "SAM's Service Station" but you say "Sam's ..."

Punctuation of the response to EXAM RADIO could be improved (with full stops).

Error message is white but should be yellow.
Also, just FYI, Howarth says, 'I don't know how to "DRO" something.'

"The cockpit" shouldn't be capitalised.

"Jug" shouldn't be capitalised.

"I drive to Main St for attempt to mountain"?! Is that really the original message? It may well be! I'm just asking the question because I'm not sure the message really makes sense!

Colour error ("see"). And there's a missing full stop after "on".

Hmm. Not sure what happened this time round. I'd already pressed the switch once. Here you can see I tried again. But still no joy on TRANSMIT WARFIN. (Also, the first "n" in "nothing" should be capitalised.)

I think that's all for now.

[tautology]

Some of those I've fixed, although one I can't: "The cockpit" is one string that's used in multiple places an in a capital and non-capital context.

Interesting thing: the lower case input is because I assumed that the maximum ASCII accepted part of the call to OSWORD &00 would restrict entry. It doesn't, it just ignores characters over the value, but still outputs it to the screen. So I need to increase that parameter.

No release just yet, I want to fix the word wrap first.

[tautology]

Right I've fixed the word wrap - it was a logic fault where the print buffer overflowed before any spaces or CRs in it. I will have to redo the wordwrap routine as it only word wraps the first line in the buffer.

Anyway, to Lurkio's comments; in general I'm assuming that Howarth's version is a cut down version and will take the version on other platforms (Mak Jukic engine) over that of Howarth.

• East was capitialised in the original source. I've changed it.
• Lower case parsing is not allowed.
• The exits are engine dependent - I can alter them, but I prefer them in mixed case.
• Sam's is in the original source and is better English.
• EXAM RADIO was the original source. I've changed it.
• Error message fixed.
• The message is engine dependent, I followed the MA standard here, but it is a lot easier to have the verb first to make this stay consistent for other games using the same engine; so I'm going to leave it.
• "The cockpit" is used fragment is used in a number of places in both lower and upper case contexts; it would be hard to change this; so I'm going to keep loyal to the original file.
• Jug was the original source and changed.
• Yes, that weird sentence is the original message!
• Both the colour and the full stop should be fixed

[lurkio]

Thanks for the latest update!

Some more observations:

GET BATTERY should return an "O.K." message but doesn't return anything.

"Small Ham radio" should be "Small ham radio". (Decapitalise "Ham".)

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ham_radio

Word-wrap issue. See orphaned full stop after "Manual hand pump".

"Fluid" shouldn't be capitalised.
Word-wrap issue. See orphaned full stop after "Fluid".

Colour and word-wrap issue.

Weird messed-up message in response to EXAM BOMB. I think the words "I see" are missing from the beginning of the message..?

Missing full stop after "Bomb acknowledges code".

I think that's all for now.

[fuzzel]

lurkio wrote:
I think that's all for now.

That sounds suspiciously like you've got more up your sleeve for another day

Great work tautology, looking forward to playing the finished version. Lurkio, if you didn't exist we'd have to invent you (I bet I'm not the first person to say that).

[tautology]

GET BATTERY should return an "O.K." message but doesn't return anything.

It should; but this is a bug in the original database - as is the same as on the Spectrum, as this is more than a quick change to the strings, I'm not going to change it.

"Small Ham radio" should be "Small ham radio". (Decapitalise "Ham".)

Yeah I'd noticed this, but failed to change it - changed now.

Word-wrap issue. See orphaned full stop after "Manual hand pump".
Word-wrap issue. See orphaned full stop after "Fluid".
Colour and word-wrap issue.

Noticed and fixed in my version (I'd set wordwrap to 41, not 40)

"Fluid" shouldn't be capitalised.

Fixed

Weird messed-up message in response to EXAM BOMB. I think the words "I see" are missing from the beginning of the message..?

That's what's in the source database, so I'm not going to fix that.

Missing full stop after "Bomb acknowledges code".

Fixed.

I also fixed a "batterys" in the source database. Adventure International's playtest team should really have taken more care over their English!

[tautology]

Stopped the escape condition as this would make it go weird. There's still a bug on accepting lower case input; which I'm not certain why it happens. For now I'm just going to say "put caps lock on".

[tautology]

Wow; all the MODE 7 and word wrap stuff has added nearly a page to the assembled code size. I need to look back and see whether I can shrink some of the extra bits!

[fuzzel]

Hopefully you’ll still have enough room for the graphics version.

[tricky]

If they are spectrum resolution, 256x192 would only be 6KB, or 12KB for MODE 1.
Kieranhj found this compressor https://github.com/emmanuel-marty/lzsa/ ... _graph.png

P.S. I haven't ever tried that compressor, which I believe does a much better job than mine.
My simple one compresses the 196x112 test image (2800 bytes) to 1502 bytes (53% of original) and the decompression code is <80 bytes.

[tautology]

Back on page two I posted up a sample MODE 4 image, converted from the Atari graphics. I can reduce the size of the image to ~ 2 kB; but there's 27 unique images so I'll need to do some file munging so I don't hit DFS limits on size.

I'm concentrating on getting a MODE 7 release, then making sure that I haven't broken my engine for the other games (e.g. Lone Survivor, the Mysterious Adventure games, Ghost King, the other Scott Adams games); then I'll add graphics.

[lurkio]

Thanks for another update!

More observations:

Word-wrap problem.

Scrolling problem: part of the room-description seems to have scrolled off the top of the screen!

Scrolling problem: part of the room-description seems to have scrolled off the top of the screen!

Scrolling problem: part of the room-description seems to have scrolled off the top of the screen!

Real shame about that weird message.

Scrolling problem: part of the room-description seems to have scrolled off the top of the screen!

I don't suppose there's any way to convert a typed lowercase letter into uppercase before displaying it on screen?

That's all for now. Thanks again for continuing to plug away at this!

[richardtoohey]

I don't suppose there's any way to convert a typed lowercase letter into uppercase before displaying it on screen?

Well, cough, you used the magic "any" word so there's a possibly too exotic solution.

You could use the insert buffer vector INSV - on entry A is the value and X is the buffer.

If X is the 0 then the buffer is the keyboard buffer.

So if you had a routine that checks X is 0, A is between 'a' and 'z' convert it to upper-case. That's assuming what you set A to then goes into the buffer.

It's not quite what you asked for, but would achieve the effect of upper-case being typed in and displayed!

[tautology]

In theory you just need to AND the buffer with &DF to convert. But I have a weird bug where it's not working; I need to dig.

The bloody word wrap is sending me mad. I may have to steal ^W borrow a routine from someone else...

[richardtoohey]

That's not stealing, it's "code re-use"

[tautology]

Sorry it's taken this long to update - I've sat down and rewritten the print buffer routine from scratch. I'm still not happy with it, but it works better now and can word wrap more than one line.

I've played through manually to the end and noticed no obvious word wrap problems.

[lurkio]

I've sat down and rewritten the print buffer routine from scratch. I'm still not happy with it, but it works better now and can word wrap more than one line.

This is great! This is basically a good-to-go version of the game!

(Pity the content of the game itself is a bit meh, but oh well..!)

I've played through manually to the end and noticed no obvious word wrap problems.

Ahem. Since you mentioned it...

Full length of top line (39 chars, because 1 char is needed for colour-code) isn't being used: "equipment" should fit onto the end of the line.

Full length of line (39 chars) isn't being used: "it." should fit onto the end of the line.

Full length of line (39 chars) isn't being used: "earth" should fit onto the end of the line.

The player can type Ctrl-Z and muck up the windowing!

Btw, the game still refuses to recognise lowercase input text.

[tautology]

So bugs:

• Early wordwrap on the last word in a string
• Can't input lower case on defined words (you can on cardinal directions as they come from elsewhere)
• VDU controls mess stuff up.

I may fix those. But, as far as I'm concerned I can live with those; and this is now version 1 and can be released.

Where's best to release this? Anybody from bbcmicro.co.uk can upload this?

I've also updated the source code in https://github.com/tautology0/sagarework if anybody wants to use the engine for other games.

[lurkio]

Where's best to release this? Anybody from bbcmicro.co.uk can upload this?

I'll get onto it!

I've also updated the source code in https://github.com/tautology0/sagarework if anybody wants to use the engine for other games.

Any tips on getting your code to work with other games? What's the procedure?



Btw, it may not be of much help/interest, but here's a BASIC input routine I wrote for Maze Of Madness: it turns lowercase into uppercase, limits the size of the input string, and disallows punctuation and Ctrl codes:

Code: Select all

   10 DIM t% 30
   20 PRINT">>";CHR$131;:$t%=""
   30 REPEAT
   40 N%=GET:IF N%>96 AND N%<123 N%=N%-32
   50 IF ((N%>64 AND N%<91) OR N%=32) AND LEN$t%<30 $t%=$t%+CHR$N%:VDU N%
   60 IF N%=127 $t%=LEFT$($t%,LEN$t%-1):IF(POS>3)VDU127
   70 IF N%=13 AND LEN$t%>0 turns%=turns%+1:UNTILTRUE ELSE UNTILFALSE
   80 PRINT'$t%

And here's a word-wrap routine in BASIC:

viewtopic.php?f=54&t=17078&p=282213#p282213

[lurkio]

Where's best to release this? Anybody from bbcmicro.co.uk can upload this?

Buckaroo has been uploaded to bbcmicro.co.uk:

http://bbcmicro.co.uk/game.php?id=3484

I've also updated the source code in https://github.com/tautology0/sagarework if anybody wants to use the engine for other games.

Could you please walk me through a worked example of how to create a playable .SSD with, say, this commonly available "Adams format" datafile for The Count?:

• adv05.dat.zip

  (5.77 KiB) Downloaded 113 times

[tautology]

Thanks for getting it on bbcmicro! I'm still tempted to add graphics to it (either MODE 4 or MODE5/4 split screen).

In terms of building a new game it's a bit of a pain, but easier than it once was.

Step 1, prepare the data file.
As the original datafile is 18 KB; there's no way we could run this as is on a Beeb, so you need to compress it. The program tools/compress is a c program that will do this. Once compiled it takes a standard Scott Adams database file and outputs a compressed version (where adv05.dat in the source file and count is the outfile):

Code: Select all

compress adv05.dat count

Step 2, prepare a directory for putting the disc files in
Due to having too many files in my beebasm directory, I make a directory for each game to contain the !boot, the data file and the loader file, there're some in the samples directory in the repo. In this case I just copied the buckaroo directory (in windows explorer) and renamed it count.

To make the disk I use a simple asm file in my beebadm directory which references all the files, this is the one I made for the count (I called it count.asm):

Code: Select all

GRAPHICS=0
ADAMS=1
EXITCOL=134
OBJCOL=131
MESSCOL=131
SYSCOL=135
TEXTCOL=40
INPUTCOL=134

include "engine.asm"
include "samessages.asm"
.objsep
equb ".",0
.end

save "ENGINE",start,end

; add game files - disk1
putfile "count\count","G.count",datastart
putfile "count\title","SCR",&5800
putbasic "count\LOAD.txt","LOAD"
puttext "count\boot","!BOOT",0

These define the files to put on the disk image and some configuration values, such as line size and the mode 7 colours. It imports engine.asm and samessages.asm - which are the engine and the system messages (e.g. stuff like "What shall I do now?").

Step 3, customise the supporting files
I took an image of the Atari version's loading screen and put it in BBC Micro Image Converter and manually messed with colours and dithering until it looked okay, then exported the file into the count directory. Then I added a simple BASIC loader program to the count directory:

Code: Select all

MODE 5
VDU 23,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0
VDU 19,1,4;0;
VDU 19,2,7;0;
VDU 19,3,2;0;
*LOAD SCR 5800
*LOAD G.COUNT 2700
*ENGINE

Step 4, assemble it
From the beebasm directory I just run beebasm:

Code: Select all

beebasm -i count.asm -do count.ssd -opt 3

Step 5, play and tweak
If needed (and yes I found a bug in the word wrap on playing it though. Bah).

Directory structure
To try and explain it - I've zipped up the directory structure. The top of the zip file is where you would run beebasm.

[Dave_E]

Just as an aside to this, is it possible to get an Electron version (i.e. Mode 6), as the Elk version had the same bug?

[tautology]

Just as an aside to this, is it possible to get an Electron version (i.e. Mode 6), as the Elk version had the same bug?

A very quick version - there is still a bit of a bug where it introduces a character code before some room descriptions: