I had very productive early years with my Vic 20, but I never stopped loving to program it. I used the real thing until in 2002, when I found Xvic and spordically worked on a game that was the most complex ML project I had ever undertaken. Starting again from scratch in 2010 I started to gain more and more interest in this project until it's completion in 2013. Since then there has been a water shed of new projects that I am interested in. In late 2015 I started using an assembler to program in Machine Language and have no intentions of using BASIC for anything after. This is a document of my bi-polar mostly unintelligable process...

2012 and earlier
2013
2014
2015 & 2016
2017 & 2018
2019

2020
So...this is what happened. I was literally having such a difficult time I just shut down. Even the one thing that required very little of me was too much. Things aren't going a whole lot better, but I FEEL a bit better. So I have opened files, assessed, and I think I am ready to continue on. So hopefully I can continue to update old games and at some point start working on new stuff.
 
  <BY THE WAY THERE ARE SPOILERS IF YOU PLAN ON PLAYING ANY OF THE GAMES!>
 
 

10 March 2020

It's kinda funny this is about the time of year that I generally start winding down, so I can start thinking about summer things. But this year will be very different. For the first time in 10 years I did not go on a holiday! Anyway I guess I will have to look at and pick up Peg Leg John where I left off. I think I was almost ready to set up the main routine for the regular levels. If I remember correctly I was thinking about finishing Peg Leg John, doing a quick game or 2 for Distractions. I think the plan after that was to work on something big (I even had something in mind) but I don't think I am ready for a long commitment. So I may look at updating more smaller games, there are a lot of them.

11 March 2020

I just wandered around looking at things for most of the evening. I finally looked at Peg Leg John. I know I was working on the truck routine. It looks like it is working, but the things I haven't done are the truck speed and colour. The colour will be easy, just a random number. The speed itself will be the same, but it will be how I implement it. If I just jump to the routine several times the animation will be jerky and may also introduce other problems. So I will have to think about this a bit before I start to work on it. But now I can't keep my eyes open.

18 March 2020

Strange days!! So the world is literally on lockdown (except China, they are just about finished with this). The Covid 19 virus pandemic has even shuttered remote and unremarkable Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Canada. Athough I rarely leave the house these days for much anyway it is different knowing that you really shouldn't, and even if you do there is very little open. It is still cold out, and still lots of snow, but it is supposed to warm up in the coming week. And that is the backdrop for my notes today. It is an odd sensation even for a recluse like myself. So to the task, I am apprehesive opening any of the files. I almost feel like it will be opening a can of worms, in fact I know it will be. I'm just not sure I am ready for it. I do have an answer for my timing issue. Unlike most of my games where the player will be allowed to move once every cycle through the main loop, for this game I will shorten the timer and only allow the player to move every other loop. This will allow some trucks to move faster than the player. It will take a bit of programming to set up, but nothing too crazy. I may be getting ahead of myself anyway. I haven't programmed the random colours for the trucks yet either. I guess I should do both, the random colour and random speed at the same time. Let's see how much gets accomplished today.

19 March 2020

So I am starting out slowly. I only wrote about 6 lines of code yesterday. Basically I set up the new ideas for the main loop. Today I started the new ideas for the trucks. I set up a timer for truck 1 and an exit for the reset so I can randomize the colours and speed. Baby steps I guess. OK I made the random truck part as well. I tested it and it was an almost. It was kinda working but there was a problem as the truck was stopped in a funny place. Then after a few times the truck just stopped. I see one problem already but there is definately at least one more. I have to take a break. So at least part of the problem is getting random numbers outside of what I'm expecting. I will have to fix my new randomiser subroutine. OK I think I have the speed working. Maybe. I am getting numbers 2-5 and I should only be getting 2-4. The other thing I have to fix is limiting the colours. I was thinking it wasn't doing anything for some passes. I then realized it was using white as a colour and I couldn't see it. OK I think I figured it out. I have one truck working now, I just have to set up the other trucks. Well there still is an issue because there are partial trucks being printed to the screen in odd places. But I am getting close. OK I realized something wasn't being reset when the trucks were re-assigned, it only took a moment to find it now this is all working. I will leave it here for now.

20 March 2020

I actually wasn't sure what needed to be finished. So I played a couple times. There does seem to be an issue with reading the joysticks, I will have to test this further. Also truck three is always the fastest speed, not sure why. But aside from these issues this level only needs some sounds and for me to finish the two outcomes of leaving the main loop, completing the level and dying. I found the problem for the speed for truck 3. A bad branch made it loop till it printed. Yeah there is definately an issue with the player. My guess is for some reason the timer or something is preventing the joystick from being read for more than 1 loop. Not sure how to proceed. Prolly need a few minutes away. I never did get back to this. I wanted to draw something, but first I had to install Photoshop. Then most of my fonts aren't on here. I wasn't terribly inspired anyway, so nothing more got done. I finally did find something. I always hated the cover I had for Sol:Survivor (which will be the next new game I work on) So I made a quick drawing for the cover. I think it is alot better. Just like the new covers for Korque, Kerratias, and Minimos it is in the same style. Now I think I am done for the evening.

21 March 2020

Today I started working on the dead routine. I will have to add the sound effect later. I think I will have to open the original game to hear some of the sounds. So I just created the game over routine and a few things to subtract men when you die, and a check for the joystick button. I figured I would add a check to see what was going on with the player joystick stuff, when I think I found the problem. It's so embarressing, I had increase the timer but I didn't load it then there was a check. So I'm not sure what was being checked to allow the joystick to move, but it certainly wasn't the right thing. So I will check my work now. SO my joystick issue is now solved, and the dying routine sort of works. The players location is not reset, but I will have to look at where I jumped into the beginning. I may have to shuffle things around abit there. The other thing is the joystick button isn't working but I think I may have just gotten the branch wrong. OK that's got it. I just need sound. Oh and scoring, then the main level is complete. OK Just sounds left and the alternate level. If I wasn't so lazy I could finish this today, but I am lazy and I don't think I will. I think my next project will be to make the Distraction loaders. This will be a true PITA because I will have to figure out the delays for the fast forward. After that some of the stuff won't be too bad, just time consuming. Oh shit, I just remembered that most of the programs will be considerably shorter, so I will have to work out new times. Except for the pictures they will be the same. So I guess the loaders are out. I guess I will have to start at the start. The Distractions.

22 March 2020

I loaded the original and listened for a bit and quickly came up with a couple of bits for sound. I still have the game over and end level sound bits but I think I want short melodies for each. I was thinking about the splash page when I thought, this program is small enough I should be able to include the splash page in the program. So I am just working on getting the graphics in now. Just puttering around. I created the other 2 sounds I need. I also wrote the code for the title screen. So I quickly tested alot of the new stuff and I think all this new stuff is good. So all that is left is the alternate level. I don't really feel like working on this right now, so I guess I won't get the alternate level completed today. That's OK. I did good today, and I should be able to wrap this up in another couple of days or so. Then onto the next. I keep looking at Conspiracy. That will be my penultimate game, but it is still so very far away from what I am doing now. My plan is to do a bit of work on Distractions (just a few programs so I am not stuck on one thing for too long), then Adez and all the Kings Gold, maybe Adez and the Keys of Dengar, then Sol: Survivor. Sol: Survivor will be another big project, but I think I am up for it. There will be several bits and pieces to this game, so it should be interesting. I know it is actually quite a bit of programming ahead of me, I guess I will try to stay focused as long as I can. Somewhere in there I hope I can work more on my line drawing program as well. I'm hoping that I can get some of my lucas list complete and the one new game (Sol:Survivor) finished this year. If everything continues the way it has for the last week, then I will have plenty of time. I got bored and created the loop for the alternate level. I will have to create the random objects and then adjust the check routine.

23 March 2020

I tried to make the routine to add the random objects. It should be for 506 locations, which of course is not easy. I have failed.

24 March 2020

Today I quit being so lazy and finished the game. I just have to do a bit more testing to make sure it's working properly. Nope, not working. OK There are a few last problems. One is sometimes the objects for the alternate level are overwritten by other object making the level unwinnable. The other is for some reason the counter for the levels isn't quite working. So very close.

25 March 2020

I realized that the random items were checking to see if the space was empty. So all I would have to do is put all the things on the screen first and the random items SHOULD find a new spot. So I will try that. OK that's working and I figured out why the level count wasn't working properly. So I guess I am done. YAA! I can't find the issue with Downunder for now so I will add that to the completed list as well. I can see that the Lucas list is going to be a huge PITA. Beacuse unless it is something new I am not terribly motivated to work on it. Just checing the Lucas List. So of the first numerical games, all are completed up to Bopper number 13, which I will make when it is 35 years old. The next games are complete up to Tyrant I, which I have sort of started, Adez which is pretty soon on the list and Vycryle. While Vycryle isn't on the soon list, I am actually looking forwrad to doing a bit of work for this. I always thought this was a good game and hopefully could improve the few shortcomings. Adez & Dengar is also on the list, and I guess I will work on Vycryle II after Vycryle. The goal for Vycryle II would be to reduce the amount of cassettes if possible. Then it is the knot of programs from 50 to 60. I have a couple of them done but there are many left. Also Cauldron and Distractions will be big jobs because they are so many programs for one game. Anyway it's nice to complete another project, and to look ahead. Oh I should also update Boxa, I forgot to put in the real Vic joystick values. Later I will have to make the new TAPs.

I decided to add a timer to the alternate screen. That meant a bit of changes to a few other things, but I think I am really done now. I won't have to made a splash screen for this, I included it in the program. All I need to make is a version of the AJ & KJ loader, and I can start making the TAP. OK both TAPs are done. I think I am done for tonight.

26 March 2020

I had to make one tiny fix for Peg Leg John. So I made the fix and saved it on the TAP. I should open or start another project today, we will see how ambitious I get.

28 March 2020

Made a couple of boilerplate routines. If I worked at this today I could probably have it close to finished, but I doubt that I will. I am starting with the distraction This. Pretty straight forward. I think I will add a speed and colour control, just to make it a bit interactive. Hmm there is more math in here than I thought. This may take a bit longer. There are a number of RL things that need to be taken care of but I'm just not able to find the resolve to get them done. So I put together enough to test it and for some reason it is just returning to BASIC. So wierd. OK so it has something to do with the way I am saving and loading the program. This may have caused problems before. OK so it is kind of working, but not really. It will require a decent debugging effort and I don't think I am up to it right now.

29 March 2020

I have a headache, but opened the program anyway. There were 2 small problems, I didn't clear the screen and I was using the wrong Kernal routine. There is a larger problem though. Something is wrong in my check routine. When x=0 it doesn't reverse direction like it should, and then appears at the bottom of the screen. Looks like, as usual, I had a branch backwards. So I tested some more and the one thing I was afraid of happened. When 2 axis need to be reset, it doesn't work. I think I need a bit more coffee before I tackle this. So I am slowly working on it, it seems to get a bit farther before disappearing, but it isn't working yet.

8 April 2020

Today I did some pretty important stuff. I made a sticker for the 2nd Joystick Adapter. I took a couple of pictures and updated the 2nd Joystick Adapter pages. I think I broke a sweat. I also checked out what size boxes I would need and looked for sticker pages I could run through the printer. I really don't have the money so I book marked the pages for now. I added a couple of debugging lines to my distractions program. So I see what it is doing, I'm just not sure why. I'm a bit too tired to work on this now, but I should be able to figure this out when ever my next programming session will be. Actually before closing CBMPS I quickly looked at it and figured it out. I fixed it! So for sure when ever I work on this again I will finish it.

9 April 2020

Just the way things worked out, I had time to program. So there wasn't much to do. Read the keyboard and change the speed, the colour of this, and the colour of the screen. There were a few mistakes but all easily rectified, and the first distraction is complete. I'm not even sure how many are left, I guess I will have to make a chart. The biggest pain will be finding out how long the new delays for Fast Forwarding will be as they will be smaller programs than before (except for the pictures they are already in ML and will be the same size). All I can do is just slog through it. Anyway I will have to look up the distractions and start on the next one.

10 April 2020

Today I feel so lazy. I had a few RL things to do. I made new covers for Korque, Kerratias, and Minimos. I also replaced the slip cover for Realm of Evil, it was a bit too tight and I ripped it several times putting the cassettes into it. I took pictures so I updated the web pages today. Because it is my way I had to make a HTML chart of my progress on Distractions. I don't imagine I will do anything else tonight.

13 April 2020

Yesterday I converted the graphics for Houset and the Distractions loader to P00 files. Today I started Houset. I didn't get very far, but I did get it set up and started. I just have to keep at it.

18 April 2020

Flooding in the basement. Did a bit more to print out the house. Too tired to continue.

20 April 2020

Finished printing the house. Such a pain trying to figure out print codes.

30 April 2020

I think I have to work on something else. I am just to bored redoing these programs. I can't make myself work on them. I was thinking about my hi-res line drawing program. I think I should work a bit more on that. Or my Auto-conversion program. I still want it to work with more colours. But I'm feeling so blah, I just want to draw or something easy.

13 July 2020

As it warmed up outside, I did more in the back yard. I also worked on a few different keyboard projects. But even aside from the whole end of the world thing, and not being able to go anywhere, it has actually been a crappy summer. Lots of rain. I did have a visitor this morning but we met in the back yard and stayed 2 M apart. It has been long enough I do miss a few people. Because of all the problems, shipping is really slow, and I can't get most of the wood for my backyard projects that I have started. I have done more reading in the last month than I have in the last several years, which is good but I can only read for so long. The same with cards, so I am looking for another hobby to use to pass the time. By the way, I was told I may not be back to work before October! I have inherited my step-son's fathers laptop. It had some issues (which I documented earlier), and caused some problems but seems to be working fine now (except the battery is toast so I have to leave it plugged in). No problem, I have a plug-in in my gazebo. My last laptop was the same at the end. Although it is running the less than desirable Windows 7, I guess I can put up with it for the sake of portability. Sometimes my memory can be quite selective, so I was curious how I passed the last winter. I see that I did very little. Stuck in the black hole, so to speak. Anyway I make this entry in the hopes that I might do a bit of programming to help me while away the time. I may even enjoy rebuilding some of the old programs for a bit.

19 July 2020

I opened up Houset, which was the distraction I was working on last. I have the house drawn, so from there I have to pick a random number (which room) and plot the man's way to each room and back to the home position. While at each room there will probably be a graphic and or sound to represent what he is doing. Sounds can be difficult. Not really wanting to start there, although I know it will have to be done. I haven't started the loader yet, maybe I could start that. I wouldn't be able to finish it, as I need the timing for the wait for each game. Yeah just feeling blah.

20 July 2020

Well that's disappointing. I started to make the loader, and quickly realized I didn't save all of the graphics. I think it starts on page 24. Even so, it doesn't look like it saved properly anyway. I may attempt this a bit later.

22 July 2020

When it started to cool off (it was hot today), I tried to get the distractions loader started. For some reason I was having a hard time getting the graphics where they were supposed to be. Eventually my focus prevailed and I got the little village on the screen with the credits. Because it had taken quite long to get to that point, I decided to just leave it there for now.

25 July 2020

While it was still cool I brought the laptop outside and started puttering. I set up the main loop, a delay and started the joystick routine when I realized I wanted to store the arrow as x&y rather than an absolute number. I have to take a break maybe when I return I will set that up and continue. I wrote the joystick routine, and it took a while to debug. I am out of practice. Once I figured out where to look, the mistake was obvious. So the arrow now cruises around the screen. I will just have to find the locations for the houses and program the fire button and the responces. I think I will stop here for now though. I also think I would like to work on my line program. I would like to get it so that I can just enter points, and it will draw a line. Or better yet, a start, a +-y, and a length. I should also annotate it better so I can accomodate hi-res, multi-colour, and different sized screens. But first I guess I should finish this. I loaded up my Distractions list, it only has 1 program completed. I guess I should try to get a few more before I go off and do soemthing else. I decided I should get a BASIC print out of the loader, and seeing as I can't get the printer to work on the Xvic, I had to copy and paste the whole thing. It was a PITA but it will help.

26 July 2020

I worked on the loader a bit last night and completed and debugged the part that locates what house you are in this morning. There were a few locations that I had to hunt for but it was mostly fine. Next will be the progam selection part, and quick little parts to tell you to load other cassettes. The actualy loader part I won't be able to make until I get the timing for the fast forward button. I also will have to move the graphics so it isn't a full 3K program. That would be bad. I should also chaeck to see if I actually completed the Peg Leg John TAP, if not that will have to fininshed. It's starting to get quite hot, so I may put this away for a bit. Just so the laptop doesn't cook. That would also be bad. So I got all the easy stuff done. All that is left are the distractions and secret lists. I will have to print out the list of available programs and picking the program using the joystick. It probably isn't too hard but I started drinking, so I doubt that anything substanial will get done now.

27 July 2020

I created the data and the list of distractions and debugged it. It actually wasn't too bad. I have yet to make the joystick routine but it is already getting hot enough to melt the laptop so I am going to stop until it gets cooler, or I go inside.

28 July 2020

I mashed out the code for the rest of the loader. I will have to change the data for the wait for the fast forward times. I left the actual load for the time being, I will have to JMP somewhere into lower memory so it doesn't get overwritten. I will also have to decide where I am moving the graphics data to and how I am moving it. So there are still quite a few things to do, but it's very close. I haven't tested any of the new code yet. There are a few things I can't check on the Xvic, and will have to test on a real machine. This will be the real PITA part having to switch between a real vic and the Xvic. I checked out the Autopic and Line programs. It will take some serious looking to see what I was doing there. The line program I want to get so I just have to enter variables and call the routine. It is probably a bit away from that yet, and I think the routines need to be streamlined a bit. It is really messy and there are bits that I don't need anymore. The Autopic program is a bit more organized. Most things are set up like nice compartments. There are a few things I didn't want to tackle like variable sized screens, multiple colours, and changing auto selected colours. While they may not be easy to code they will probably be easier because the program is more organized. Anyway there were a few pictures that would crash the program, my guess is they are a different size or something. I will have to look into it a bit. Its still really hot and I just want to cool off for a bit. Just looking at the Autopic program, I think the 2 pictures that wouldn't work have too many Auxillary colours.

29 July 2020

I really didn't want to but I started to debug what I could on the Distractions loader. It took a while to figure out but my x was being zeroed. I finally realized I had a JSR that did some stuff and reset x. So dumb. There were lots of other small things, but they were all solved fairly quickly. So then I had the Distractions list fixed as far as I could go. Which is where the STOP button on the datasette has to be pushed. I figured I had better check the secret part as well, and of course there were a host of new problems there. Again it didn't take long to figure them out and that is as far as I can go for the moment. It is also dangerously hot for the laptop so I will stop here for now. Later I dropped the load from another program in there (I'm so lazy) and just changed what needed to be changed. Then I made a new list of things I would work on in the near future, seeing as none of them will be new things. Basically a few distractions, then a couple of games that I have been itching to update, and if I am still at this, a new large game. Seeing as I have went a really long time without a picture (because there really isn't anything new to show) here is something.

31 July 2020

I have been putting this off. The things left for Houset are silly fiddly things, and I don't want to do them. They are things that are not too difficult in BASIC but a huge pain to do in ML. Basically after a random area is picked the little man is sent there are does something that represents doing something there. A little animation and some sounds. It is the sounds that I hate. The rest isn't too bad, kidna fiddly, not very challenging. So anyway I guess I just have to do it. Plow through it bit by bit. So I got the RND generator going and now I may have to consult the program. But first Coff-ay. That was kind of the end of that for the day. In the evening I wanted to do something but I am hopping mad, so I made a few changes to the catalogue and I guess I have to call it a night.

1 Aug 2020

I doubt that I will get far but I am attempting to do a bit of work on Houset. I was looking at the bombs in the program and started wondering what the hell I did. So I loaded the AJ loader and BOOM! It is in ML! I thought it would be in BASIC. So something has changed from the original LOGO program. I went looking for it and found there were several things there for bombs. I can't see that they worked though. So anyway I may have to rework them a bit. I am not as concerned with bombs anymore as a cassette can easily just be copied now. I may stick them in anyway we'll see. For now I will have to just plod along and get houset finished. I can always go back and add bombs later.

23 Aug 2020

We had a month of hot weather. Or almost a month, it is starting to cool off now. So I didn't dare bring the laptop out for fear it would melt. The focus on my keyboard project is beginning to fade, I think I am near the end of at least one project. I know how little I wanted to work on my current vic project, but I will have to force myself or I will remain stuck here forever. I hope I will at least try a little coding tonight.

21 Sep 2020

I am crushingly sick. I decided to just piss around and do something fun. So I thought I would start on Sol:Survivor. I quickly realised that I would need the BASIC program I started to get me started. I got it and then thought I would just work on the splash page. I have played with it for hours and unfortunately I can't get the decompression to work. I know I am close but I feel so awful I just want it to work and it isn't. I may have to leave it for a bit. Not sure what's happening, but the decompressor doesn't seem to work. I will have to look at some of the loaders that are working to see what is broken. But that is enough of this for me tonight. I feel broken.

22 Sep 2020

I am crushingly sick. Today I hammered at the problem, not sure why this isn't working. I will skip to the answer. For some reason the compressor's numbers were off and I was missing the last 256 bytes! I will have to look at the autopic compressor and see why this isn't quite right, but for now this is enough. I finally have my picture. So just a note. Like the 0K version of the splash loader there isn't enough room to put the decompressed picture at 5120 to start, because alot of the compressed data is sitting in that spot. So it decompresses it at 6144 to 8191 and then moves it down to 5120 over the compressed data because now we don't need it anymore. It looks like the original BASIC program just left the screen at 4096, so we will do that as well. I know I'm doing this a bit backwards, but I am sick and just wanted something fun. Although this turned out to be more of a headache than I thought it would be. I fixed the text and for now the loader is finished. I am literally 39 bytes from this not working! Although I could move the temporary decompressed data up a bit further. Anyway that is as far as I will go on this for now. I then moved to the main program. I was hoping to get a bit further, but I guess I did OK. I managed to get the opening screen which considering my physical state was quite good for this afternoon. I also have a few things ready for the movement. But anything more will be another day.

So I was just thinking about the last decade. I beleive it was around 2010 that I actively started working on Exploria again. It took alot of effort to get that game to the finish line. Since then I have made 17 new games, only 4 of those are in Basic. One is actually a compilation of games plus 2 compliations to go with my 2 joystick adapter. Even though I don't work at this full time, I have accomplished a lot. After 2015 I decided all of the next games should be in Machine Language, then last year I made the ridiculous decision to eventually turn ALL of the games into Machine Language games. Aside from some minor fixing I have converted 3 old games into ML. There are still many games on the list, but again it is something I know I can complete over time. One thing that made this possible was moving from hand coding to an assembler. I set out to complete all games on my first original next 10 list, and there is only 1 left, 2 if you count the next 13 list I was using for a while. The 1 game is Sol:Survivor. While I may not finish it for a while, I know it will get done and then I will have to make a new benchmark to work for. While not 100% complete, the Autopic program is usable, and if I put my mind to it, I could add a few more features to make it even better and easier to use. The line program, while still in it's early stages is also usable. It will play a huge role in some of the more difficult and adventurous ideas I would like to eventually work on. It has been a very good decade.

23 Sep 2020

On the mend a bit today. As usual while trying to sleep I was thinking about my work in progress. I kinda want to get to the point where I can move the character around. At that point I can either continue or do something else. Before I can do that, I realised I would need to make a map. I had a few ideas for the map as well. Because there will be a lot of space I should try to make use of that to compress parts of it. Although I haven't finalized ot tried it I think I will use a method that will use columns (so I can move left and right) and only detail columns that have things in them. I will also skip down in the column to where there is an object. I also thought that rather than draw the map, as I have for the opening screen, I should use the map routine to put it on. So it will be a fairly tall order but I sense that it will be a better option. I reverse engineered my screen moving routine, but think I should rework it, and I will have to make it work the opposite way as well. Oh and on top of that I will have to add in graphics that I will need. So lots to do, I had better get started. I spent most of the day programming the print column code. It was actually a bit much for my addled head to wrap around. I will have to test it once I relocate back inside as it is too cold outside now. I moved inside and did a quick once over, I found a few things and changed them, then I tried it. The good news is, it didn't crash. I guess I will have to look through my loop as I thought it would hold the space character in A but it is being changed somewhere. That is a problem I can see, I think there is another one. So first things first, A=32. OK the space character was an easy fix, but something strange is happening. It's like the column counter is being altered, because it seems to be jumping around. I will have to investige further. LOL I forgot tables start at zero. Because I am lazy I just put a zero in the first location on 2 tables and now everything is working great. The only bad thing is a realized I had to lose the colour or I would have to add more to my bloated map. Thinking about it I may eventually have to, but I will leave it for now. Now I will have to work on graphics and complete the map, I just have the section that is on the screen for now. I quickly made graphics for the chasm of doom, and I moved the screen over manually to check it out. Impressive! So I will work on left and right movement next. Not sure if that's in the cards for tonight or not, I guess we'll see.

I really wan't going to do this tonight, but I coded the left and right movement. It took a few hours and then I just wanted to get it working. It took about 30 minutes of fairly easy debugging. There are still some issues, one I know is I have the wrong number for the map to wrap around. There is an issuw with some odd characters on the bottom row of the screen. Not sure what that is. I will have to work on it some more, and also add the directions for up and down. But for sure that is tomorrow's worry.

24 Sept 2020

It's official. I am infected. I did take a turn for the worse last night, so far, the symptoms seem manageable. With a bit of luck it will stay that way. I looked at the program and thought I found a couple of answers to the problems but unfortunatly they didn't solve them. I feel horrible so I will leave this for a bit. Felt too crappy to pick this up.

25 Sept 2020

So I managed to fix one of the problems, when moving right it was leaving odd characters on the last row. I thought it just wasn't going far enough, what I didn't realize is there were 2 separate counters. So that is fixed. There is something wrong with when you change directions, the column number doesn't seem to be working right. I had hopedI would have some energy today, but it disappeared quickly.

28 Sept 2020

I had been so sick I haven't even thought about this. Today I had some time and was feeling well enough, I decided to just code up and down movement, and worry about the change directions later (it looks like it will take a lot of thought power that I don't have right now). Took about an hour and I had to keep moving things from under the graphics. There really isn't a lot of room there. Then I tried it and it is a complete failure. I'm feeling crappy now so I won't be trying to debug this anytime soon.

2 Oct 2020

Didn't think I had it in me today. I debugged the up and down movement. I have an idea on how I can try to solve my issue when you change directions. I will have to show the column variable, that will be a good start. I guess I should start working on some of the other columns in the map. I guess I will also have to work on some more graphics.

8 January 2021

Sadly I lost interest, plus I was very sick. When I got better I went back to work and then in November got laid off again. Concentrated on keyboard projects till now (I still have one thing in the works). I would like to get back into programming but I would have to find something to regain my interest. I have the 2 projects in the works, Houset & Sol:Survivor. I doubt that I would do too much more on Sol:Survivor at the moment as it will be a huge project. If I can get the tenacity to work on the sound effects, Houset wouldn't be too bad. At least one of the programs for Distractions would be complete. I think it would be a good start if I can keep at it. The year, as I had predicted in march, was a strange one. Again no holiday this year.

21 March 2021

It has now been a year at home. Spent alot of time playing keyboard and enjoyed last summer. I am a bit disappointed I didn't do too much here. Played with the line program a bit tonight. Found the bit that was cutting off the last line. I just put a number in there for now, but I think it has to be a variable. Kinda tired so not entirely sure. If I find time I may try to finish the sound effects and stuff for Houset. It is so mundane, but if I can clear that hurdle, I can move on. Just for a laugh I looked at the 'fill' routine in the line program that I started. I thought it would crash, but it fills the first line and then returns. Could be interesting to code that. One other thing, I will have to figure out if I want to use startx,y and endx,y or work with my current x,y length, height. Lots of interesting thoughts floating around. Anyway tired now.

24 March 2021

I really started this too late. I opened Houset and tried to work on it a bit. I did code about 20 lines but I am just too tired to really know what I am doing. If I use the BASIC program as a template, I need to move the guy around the house. The first bit checks to see what floor he's on. I started doing that but not sure if I am just coding garbage. So I guess I'll stop. But it is something, and I guess it isn't as bad as I thought.

25 March 2021

While not a marathon session, I did get some coding done. I basically coded moving to the right floor. Nothing crazy but still a hundred lines of code. Hmmm. Well it's not working and I'm afraid I can't figure it out at the moment. Quickly running out of steam. I closed it but opened it seconds later. There was just one thing I wanted to check. It was wrong but I kept looking and soon found the culprit. There was another issue as well. My house was actaully missing a row. It took a couple of attempts to fix that, and now I think I am done for the evening. Crap there is a problem with going to room5 floor 3. I'll check it tomorrow.

26 March 2021

I found the bug almost right away. Took a while but I coded room1. Needed a bit of debugging, but room1 is complete. YAAA! Completed room2. This is crazy but there were no bugs to fix !! Taken another hour and a half. Its still early I could do one more room, but not sure if I really want to. I went ahead and programmed room3. So there are only rooms4 & 5 left now. Kinda sad that it has taken over a year to sit down with this, and I have programmed over half of it in about 4 hours. I will leave it here for now though.

27 March 2021

It took most of the evening, but I coded the last 2 rooms and 3 sound effects. After yesterdays success I was a bit too confident, and expected little to go wrong. When going to room 4 or 5 it crashes. That was unexpected. I did find some mistakes, but nothing that would cause program termination. I have looked at it but I am tired now and I guess I will have to try to find the error tomorrow.

28 March 2021

WOW That was painful. There were a lot of mistakes. The three worst ones were I used a STA instead of a STY, when I copy/pasted I didn't update a branch, and the chair graphic was in the wrong spot. So this program is DONE! Only took a painful year to do this. Even the 4 or 5 days of actual coding was longer than it should have taken. But it is done, finito. On to the next. I am a little unsure. Should I do a bit more work on Distractions? Another program or 2? Or should I go straight to Adez & all the Kings Gold? I will think about it and report back. So I loaded up Widgets (the distraction not the game) and saw a SYS680. I wasn't sure if it was an actual ML sub or what. SO I had to load a few other things and found out that not only was it a bomb, BUT none of them will work now because that is where the ML loader sits. All of the bombs will have to be removed or changed. Anyway although I probably won't get too far tonight, my intention is to do one more distraction, Widgets. Can't remember what the difference between Widgets and Widget2 is. Started to program Widgets. Figured I should test what I have, and it totally crashes. I guess that's where I stop tonight.

29 March 2021

Debugging is never much fun especialy when the mistakes are so dumb. The first problem was a perfect compare with a number that it would never reach, then there was another LDY xx, STA issue. Once that was figured out I literally coded the rest. Well almost, when I tested it (and fixed the few small mistakes) I realised I had forgot the timer that clears the screen and resets. I then thought I would add a bit that uses the number keys to change the speed. So Widgets is complete. I could do Widget2 because I made the program so it would easily adapt to 6 characters rather than 2 (jusy like the original), but I'm tired and wonder if it might be better to leave it for tonight. I had to load the orgininal and watch for a bit, there are a bunch of lines that didn't make any sence to me. And now that I've watched I think those lines are useless. Well I decided to do Widget2, and it is complete as well. On top of the speed controls I added a few colour controls as well. OK now I am done. I will update my progress charts and call it a night.

30 March 2021

I had some time and I really wanted to update the internet catalogue. It's not quite ready to put up yet, but getting closer. I need a few pictures for the opening page yet. So next I think I will try to update Adez and the Pirates of Ud. I really wanted this to be a fun game and I think it has the potential to be, but I was getting to the end (of Distractions) and just didn't spend enough time on it. I was starting to think that I would just use the current ML and the BASIC as a template, but I am starting to think I may just start from scratch. It will probably just be easier. I look at the early png and think there are a lot of things I can do for this game. And maybe I will have to update Adez I, maybe. Well I just started this too late. I basically have the characters in there and the start of the title. I also have the old scroll routine. I have a lot of ideas for this, but it may be just too much for this game. Hopefully I can sort it out tomorrow.

31 March 2021

I had started to make a map, but that might be a bit too ambitious for the moment. I removed it for the time being. So I finished the title and started the opening screen. I have to take a break but, if I can get at this today I could have the main part mostly in place before too long.

1 April 2021

I didn't get back to programming. I did a little today. Not much. OK I made tha main loop. Sort of have some fo the scrolling stuff going. Still need joystick, music, alt level, well lots. But making a bit of progress.

2 April 2021

Wrote the code for the joystick routine. Almost worked right out of the box. I did have to do a bit of tinkering. I think it's in the wrong place though, it seems sluggish. Next I will have to do the checks and dead routines. I'm not sure if I'll do much more tonight.

4 April 2021

A couple of weeks ago a friend gave me about 7 boxes full of Commodore stuff, and yesterday I finally went through them. Unfortunately there was no vic 20 stuff at all. There were 3 working monitors. He said there were 3 working C64's but on one the keys didn't work, I haven't looked into it but I'm assuming the CIA is toast. There is also a parts 64, with broken keys. There are 2 working drives, a 1541 and a 1541II. I didn't go through the box but there are about 300 5.25 disks. There is a 1525 printer. Another Fast Loader cart along with a Kickman and Temple of Apshai cart. Then there are 2 amiga 500s, and 2 amiga 600s along with 3 untested drives power supplies and a few random cords. A ram card and a modem for the 500s along with about 500, 3.5 disks. There are also about 20 games with boxes although they are in poor shape. Oh and a whole box of manuals (for things like the D&D games), alot of them are just photocopies. So after trying, and finding most of the disks are flawed, I played Lemmings for most of last night. I was disappointed that my favorite Amiga game was not amoungst any of the disks. So after some thought, I think I will probably just sell most of it. I was almost thinking about keeping one amiga to play a few games on, but really I would have to buy my favorite game. I looked it up they are expensive and a bit rare. Also there aren't that many other games that I am that interested in. For what it's worth I have most of those games for the PC and could probably get a few of the ones I am missing for relatively cheap. I am a bit more interested in the C64 stuff, but not by much. It would be a good time to get rid of the rest of my C64 stuff. I may keep one with a drive just for a few old games, we'll see.

Anyway It has made me think much more about my line program. I have been sort of dancing around this but the fact is, I want to use the full 160x160 pixel screen. This would mean using a totally different manner of calculating the pixel. I would have to re-write the calculation routine. I don't want to but I will have to. The reason is the static characters will be set up vertically rather than horizontally. Because we have to use the double hieght mode, it is a bit more simple to set them up vertically. I learned this from Mike. This means that x will need MSB rather than Y. <X is the 4 bits (in multi-colour) in the charcter, >X would be the column number (0-20). Y would be within the column (0-159). I should also finally separate the program into a hi-res and multi-colour program, one for a game called Eclipse and the other for the game Conspiracy. Well that took forever and all I did was create the character box. Still having trouble. I'm not sure what the max screen could be. Right now I have it at 22x22 but I am short about 18 double characters. So I guess that exceeds the 4K we need for custom characters and screen memory. I hate to do this but I think I have had enough for now. So after crunching the numbers on my walk the best I could do is 20x22. If there was anyway to move the screen to 7936, I could do 21x22, but 22x22 only leaves 224 characters for the screen. So I guess that is what I will do. OK I fought with the char box and there are still things that need to be fixed but it mostly works. I started from scratch with the pixel calculation routine and tried a few new to me ideas. This also seems to be mostly working. Everything needs more testing and a bit of tweaking, but it is now late and I am tired.

5 April 2021

I have got the char box this morning. But there are still some issues with the calculation routine. Figuring this out is slow going. But for sure my calculations are not quite right. For the second column I should get at least 4480, and it is calculating 4384. OK it was just that I was shifting one bit too far and one of the MSB addition locations was wrong. So it seems to be calculating properly now. X can be 0-83 and Y can be 0-160. I know it's not really like that but it's almost like a widescreen setup. lol. Now for the really fun part. Creating the line. So I will have to decide how I want to do the line. Should I use start(x,y) & end(x,y) or start(x,y) length, height like I did before. I kind of wanted to use start, end, but there is a lot more calculating. On the other hand, the way I was doing, it there was no real way (except for flags) to know if a line was in the X or Y plane or if it was negative or positive. I am pretty sure I should use start and end points because they are more detailed. It will mean more calculating but I think it will work better. Over the course of the afternoon and evening, between a bit of this and that. I coded the line part. I am SCARED. I hope it works on the first try but I know better. I guess what I am dreading is the long painful de-bugging process. Oh and all of the code is under 800 bytes! Much better and more streamlined program. Now to get it to work. First try nothing happened, then I realised I hadn't set the colour. So I have a line. It's not working right, but I have a line. I think I will have to look at the old program I may not have programmed the offset quite right. Yeah I had a branch backwards. So with just that fix the lines where x=1 with +y and -y are working excellent!! And I made an erase part that also works great! Well the y=1 isn't working, but I am super happy that I managed to get this far this evening! So now I have the Y part working (forgot to store a variable and another reversed branch) but the X part isn't right now. Actually I think it is working. I will have to do more testing tomorrow. Yeah there is something a little funny, but I think I am finished for tonight.

6 April 2021

So I spent about an hour trying to figure it out, and it was ... a reversed branch. GOD! It's certainly not perfect but I will try to work with this for now. While I was walking I thought about something, the rx or halflength variable can be negative. And I used a cheat by just letting the variable wrap around. I didn't think about this but it will also trigger the greater than less than branches when negative, sometimes drawing an offset when there shouldn't be one. The max of rx is 80 so I should be able to do a BMI, but now that I think about it, maybe not. There is a possibility that rx+dy is greater than 128, so that won't work, but I can make a negative flag variable. OK I added that and got it working but it is still inaccurate. I think that is as far as I can take it now. Working on the fill routine. Calculating if it is finished will be the most difficult. Took most of the afternoon to code and most of the evening to debug. Well it appears my fill routine has hit a snag. I'm afraid more thought is required to solve this issue.

I figured I should get back to Adez & the Pirates of Ud. I moved the joystick JSR, it's still a bit weird. I'm not sure about the jump. Unlike the original Adez you jump as long as you hold the fire button for a max of 10 cycles. Here it is an automatic 4 cycles, I think the original Ud version was 2 cycles. I'll have to look into this further. I also think I want to get carried away with this game, I will save some of these ideas for the ultimate Adez game. So it will be more than what it was but not nearly as much as I wanted it to be. Anyway I think that's it for today.

7 April 2021

I'm not sure where I need to start. Still warming up the brain. Busy afternoon, so I didn't get any programming done. I decided I should do something this evening to keep going forward. So I just made a counter and the end level. And a bit of sound. Not much but it is something and it actually made it start to feel like a game.

8 April 2021

Guess I'm not much on the mood for programming (yes I know moods are for lovers and cattle). I did get a bit more done on the web pages. Very late in the evening I opened Adez and decided to program the music. Weird right? So I looked up the notes from the original game and after a lot of correcting finally heard them. Truthfully I just didn't like the short melody. So while listening to it I got a better idea. I quickly figured out the notes and programmed them. I even had an idea from this afternoon that I thought I could use for the alternate levels. So I programmed all of that and figured I should get my end level to continue, so I programmed that as well. Once I got rid of all the bugs, I got to see what the game would be like if I was a good player (the check and dead routines aren't done yet.). It was actually pretty cool, except I will have to change the levels. So there are a few things left. Make a counter so that there aren't too many objects in a row. Fix the level stuff. Make a jump routine for the skeletons and octopus. And the check and dead routines. But getting much closer to something actually not bad. I couldn't help myself. I ended up fixing the level stuff and the skeleton and octopus jump routine. There are going to be a couple of hard things. One will be to make sure there aren't too many obsticles at a time, so it is actually playable, and the other will be trying to fix jumping for Adez. When the counter is really low, I know I couldn't play this. It would be way too fast for me. Anyway that is all for tonight.

9 April 2021

I really want to do something, but I just got up, and I can't think yet. I guess it's good I'm interested in this again. But like all things, nothing happens automatically. I am also thinking about making a third level, but there could be a fourth one as well, where do I stop? Well I created an answer. Because such a game will have the scope of a game with it's own title and this is, for sure, part of the collection of Distractions. The cut down version will be part of Distractions and a sequel will get it's own title. There fixed. So I made a cover for the new game and I may start working on it soon. Technically I am already working on it. So I started noodling with the things that needed to be changed and fixed. Pretty soon I was done. I still have to do much more testing (because I have only survived to the 3rd level so far) but I think it is done.
 

Working on Adez & the Pirates Of Ud 2
 

10 April 2021

So... I guess I'm doing this. I started really late so not much got done, but I had a busy day doing other things. I basically fixed the opening screen to say 'Adez and the Pirates of Ud 2'. I also made a new graphic. I will make a few changes. Two small ones. I sped it up a bit and the palm trees will start right away. I will be making a hill level, an underwater level, a jungle level, and a waterfall level . So I will need to make a map and several more graphics. I will also have to make separate main loops for a couple of the levels. Well I did a bit more messing around and have a few more small things done. I will have to fix the print men routine because I clear the screen now. Anyway as little as it is, that's enough for tonight.

11 April 2021

It's funny, I have been sort of puttering with this all day, and haven't really gotten very far. I was sort of working on the map, as I wanted to figure out what I needed to do. I now sort of know what levels will do what. So I guess I will need a few more graphics and I guess that will be the next step. Oh and I fixed the men thing, I think. So I probably won't get more done tonight, it's just what it is.

12 April 2021

So again sort of puttering. I just basically made the graphics I need. Hopefully soon I can start working on the alternate levels. I also fixed the map. I will have to test it, but the tables are finished. I am thinking about adding a difficulty adjustment, and I got an idea for another sequel. The sequel idea is actually quite different, but might be fun. I honestly don't think there is anymore room for new ideas in the current list though. I will have to put it way way way on the backburner. OK still just puttering. I changed the code to work for the first 6 levels. Took a bit of changing, let's see if it works now. There were several little things to fix. It all seems to be working so far. I will have to make a significant change for the underwater levels, so I will leave that till tomorrow. I will also have to add a level to the tables for the map. There should be 16 levels, and I missed one of the under water levels. Actually it is an easy fix, I'll just do that now. Done. I ended up trying to code the underwater levels. I have it coded but there are a few bugs I just can't seem to find. It is late and I am tired so I'll try to figure this out tomorrow.

13 April 2021

Puttering again today. I guess this is when I am having the most fun coding. Fixed most of the problems with the underwater levels. Right now I am working on the distribution, it seems like the randomness is not very random. Lots of fish on the top row and none in the middle. OK I think I have it now. I can't finish playing the level anyway, but I suck. I guess the next thing will be the music for the next 3 levels. I figured I would check the amount of free space till I reach the graphics. I still have about 900 bytes, so I think I am still OK. Although there are still 3 unique levels to incorporate. Anyway it is coming along, but I will take a bit of a break. I got an idea for a short melody and coded it. Didn't take long. So now complete up to level 8! I started a few things for level 9. The screen setup and the diagonal scroll, but I think that's it for today.

14 April 2021

Debugged the diagonal scroll this morning. It's so nice out today I'm not sure if I will get much more done today. I will have to work on the main loop as I think I will need a new one. Not sure if I should hack the joystick routine or write a new one. Note to self: hack the underwater joy routine for the waterfall and boss levels. Well it took most of the evening, but I coded the new loop and some of the new subroutines. I still have to do the joystick and the music. There are a few issues with ... something. I'm not sure if it is the scrolling or something else. It does work well enough, but for some reason sometimes the rocks won't bounce. Most of the time they do. I've had a few drinks and wonder if I need to fix it. Starting to get tight. I am down to about 400 bytes and still have 2 big levels to finish. I ended up coding the joystick routine, and am now down to about 200 bytes. I really don't think this is going to fit. Maybe I will have to write the boss level first and see what I have room for after that. That's it for tonight anyway.

I was just thinking, the updated version of Distractions won't be finished for some time. Adez & the pirates of Ud 2 will probably preceed the release of Adez & the pirates of Ud 1 by quite a bit. I mean I do intent on working on more Distractions programs, but there are a lot of them, and some will require some serious programming (I'm thinking Artis). Even so, I really don't aticipate the new Distractions release for a while. So that will be wierd.

15 April 2021

I feel a bit bad, but I don't think I'm going to get anything done today. It was nice out and I puttered around the yard instead of on the computer. Chopped one log (they are really difficult to split) ,took the wiring harness out of the old washer, added one board to my privacy wall, used up what little materials I had left on the dog house. Oh and raked the leaves a bit, not all of them. See why it takes me so long to code a game? Although I do think I am a bit more focused than that. Not much but a bit. I did take the laptop outside, but it didn't call me. I know I am concerned with the amount of memory left and what I have left to do. At least 3 of the screens are the same as old ones, they will just be faster.

18 April 2021

Well there is so much I'm trying to tackle aside from this game I'm just trying to get back to it. So I opened the game and first thought I would take a look at the jump routine, to see why my rocks weren't bouncing. The routine is short so I hoped I could just look through it and find my mistake, and I actually did. When I was moving the rock, I had to colour the space and decided to add 120 to the MSB. BUT I forgot to subtract it so I was back to the screen MSB. I'm not even sure how the routine was looking like it was working. So then I thought I would code the music, I already had written the notes out. It didn't take long. I didn't have it right off of the bat but it didn't take long to find the mistakes and correct them. Well this is disappointing. There is less than 300 bytes left. I will try to code the end boss, but I'm not sure I can finish that, never mind the waterfall level. Well I thought I had to make some fixes for the last few unmodified levels. I had made some of the changes needed but there were a few mistakes as well. I will have to double check but I think I have everything except for level 11 and level 15 complete. I may have to make some changes to make this all fit. So tomorrow I will try coding the boss level and I hope I can make that fit.

19 April 2021

I coded the shell for the boss level and literally only have about 50 bytes below the graphics and less then 50 bytes below the screen. I will probably have to use the cassette buffer, but I will definately have to skimp on level 11, the waterfall level. Disappointing. Well I have the boss moving around but I have run out of room. There is no way to defeat the boss yet. Oh and I added music. Oh I totally butchered the game. I managed to squeeze level 15 in, and I think it works ( I will have to check). But I realised the waterfall level would have to go, so it is just another water swimming level. But to put this in cost another 12 bytes and I had to add a few bytes to the end level subroutine to jump to the end. All that is left to code is the very ending with some music. BUT I will have to test everything again becuase of all the hacking and chopping I did. Fix, test, and then have to find a way to save bytes. Repeat. The last 2 hours have been dedicated to making level 15 work. I think I have it now, and if I set it up right all the levels should work. I will have to do more testing. Then all that will be left is to code the very end. And I will probably have to fit that into 100 bytes or less. But I am almost done. Oh testing level 9 and there is something going on there. Anyway actually have to work tomorrow, so that's it for tonight.

22 April 2021

Had to be away for a couple of days. Relaxed most of the day because I was just tired and sore. Anyway in the evening I figured I would make a short victory song to play after the player has won. So I ended up quickly coding it in BASIC and copied the DATA to the assembler. It was the I realised I had 40 bytes to finish the game and the music data alone was 68 bytes. So I will have to scrap that idea. Earlier I had also thought about seeing if I could fit in a few things in the boss level, because it is actually too easy. But I see now there is literally no room for any of that. I will have to wrap it all up with probably no song or anything. Too tired and disappointed to do that now.

23 April 2021

So I got rid of the music data. I got a different idea that only used 8 music data. So I coded the end and a bit that gave a bonus for every extra man left. It was WAY over the limit, so I had to get rid of that. OK I can keep that, but things get a lot more complicated. I will tuck the bonus in what is left of the program indirect area. This will make everything much harder to test. The music isn't looking at the right byte, I forgot to get the score to reprint, the space bar is taking you to level 2, and the title is printing in reverse. Things I will have to fix but I have to take the dog for a walk. But then I will be done. OK I decided I would just fix those things and I guess I am done. Next splash screen and tuck away my code at 703, then AJ logo and autoloader. Very close!Made a few more small fixes. Now it's time to try to get the splash screen. Let's see if I remember how the Autopic program works. Hmmm it took a while to get it close, I still need to do some work to the picture. But it was 10 characters short. Seems to me this was a problem before, but I don't remember what I did to fix it. Anyway I have to take a break for some RL stuff. Well that game is officially done! I will get the the web pages and stuff later today hopefully. Then I will start my new project Adez & all the Kings Gold!
 

Working on Adez & all the Kings Gold 35th anniversary
 

24 April 2021

There are still a few things to take care of for the Pirates of Ud, but I finished what I could this morning. The rest will be making a physical copy and I will need printer ink at the very least. So I put together the shell for Adez & all the Kings Gold. I added the graphics and the first few commands. I have to get to other things this morning so I'll get back to this later and see how much I get done. Well I quickly contructed the opening page. There are 2 in the original, because one is a graphics loader it will now be unnessessary, so the first one will have to go. Unless I include it in the splash page. It could happen. I finally got the printer to work and printed out the main program. I just copied across the music data and saw a horrendous mistake in the BASIC listing. I decided while I was creating data, I would start building the castles. I have castle 1 finished and am already using over 1000 bytes! lol. So I think I am finished for tonight. This is what I did. All of the music data, graphics and castles data is complete. I coded just over 250 bytes, just enough to see the castles and the desert. I am using over 2K and only 1/8th is not data. Thats crazy! If I code tomorrow it will be joystick routines and stuff.

25 April 2021

Not entirely sure why, but my project got corrupted. At least the assembler file was there, but I had to build a new project and insert the assembler file. It didn't show the lables so I had to save, close, and reopen the assembler. I think we are back to where we were. I coded a quick x/y calc subroutine, but I think that is all the time I have ATM. Hopefully sometime today I will start the main loop. The BASIC program actually had 2 loops. One for the desert and one for in the castles. I am kind of thinking I may just use one loop, but we will see. So I set up the first loop, not sure if I will just change it to use for the castles or not. Anyway it's working and will print out a castle when you enter one. I don't think I have the right castle printing when you enter it, I will have to check. Well I had hoped to get back and do a bit more, but it didn't happen. That's OK I guess. I can start on the castle loop tomorrow. And I decided that having the 2 loops just makes more sense. There are many more things to check for in this loop.

26 April 2021

Coding for a while this afternoon. Still lots to code for the loop. I also got some of the numbers for items in the white castle. I think I need to take a break though. Finished the loop, although I missed moving Boom-Boom and a few other things. I will test it and see what I have to fix. Found a few stupid things, but there is a mistake in the castle map! Well fuck! My assembler is trashed. I will have to uninstall and re-install it and I just don't want to do that now. Even uninstalling didn't fix it. I'm not sure what I can do, because my issue is loading things into the Xvic, I can't seem to do it with anything else. OK I found a way, but wasted most of the evening finding a way to make this work. There are a lot of problems in the main loop but I will have to sort them out one at a time. I'm afraid I am not able to continue tonight. Actually it wasn't as bad as I thought. I have most things working, sort of. If I keep coding tomorrow, I should be able to get most of the main loop complete. That is unless my assembler has another catastophic meltdown.

27 April 2021

Puttering this morning. Just fixed the loop so you can get the gem and it won't reappear when you re-enter the castle. Still no ape, no time, no score, no lives. Still have to do a check to pick up gold. Dead routine isn't finished but not a priority at this point. The loop is playing music and moving the player around properly, getting the gem (playing a sound) and exiting. At least in the white castle. I guess I will have to get the placement for the items for the other two castles so I can get them going. OK have the other castles going, but because of the way it checks the player, the black castle will have to be modified. OK that's done. I keep dying in the black castle, even without Boom-Boom (man I suck!), but I'm sure it's working now. I will have to get back to this later. Print score is done. Not sure I want to use the timer, I will think about that for a bit. You can collect the coins now. The gems collection stuff works and although I haven't created the end, it jumps to it when you have all 3 gems. I think I will add a bit to add difficulty, because collecting the gems on the regular speed may not be too hard. Also if you get the gems the game is over, so there is no increase in difficulty. Maybe I will use a timer to limit the amount of time you have to finish a castle, we'll see. I think I will take a break, but next will be adding Boom-Boom. In between some other things I coded the ape routine. Wow! is it ever fast compared to the old version! So now that seems to be working well now. I did have to fix a few small things, but nothing major. I guess the next thing is to finish the dead routine. It's just the sound effect will be difficult to reproduce. Well there are a few small things to complete but the dead routine is finished. All that is left is the ending and a couple of embellishments. Well I added a couple of things but it looks like I may have to do some more testing as there are a couple of things that aren't working quite right. But that's it for tonight.

28 April 2021

A few tiny things to do this morning. A couple of small fixes and I forgot to do a 'game over' text. So that's all done now. Lots of little things, then I finished the ending. Technically I'm finished, but I do want to add one new feature. A few secrets. I am now officially over the 3K of a stock Vic. This morning I only used about 3.5 K although variables and graphics would have eaten some of that. I am now about 4k. OK all of the secrets are complete. There is a funny thing when you go into the secret that the old object under Adez is an Adez character. I think I know what I have to do to fix that, I just cleared the old x and y, I will have to clear the current x and y as well. I also want to add one more (undocumented) mode. They were things I figured I could do now, so they are done. So although the game is a bit different (the end screens and no timer now) I think it is closer to what I had wanted from the beginning. I may do a few more things, but it is basically done. I will just have to make the cassette. It might be a bit of a pain because of the huge bitmapped splash screen. I am definately keeping that.

29 April 2021

There were 3 little things I wanted to fix and change. They are complete and I think that's it. I removed the testing code and I am ready to start the cassette process. I will have to find the 3K autoloader as well. Hmmm that was interesting. I now have the data (most of it I think) for the picture, I will try to convert the program that prints it. Spent most of the morning getting all the programs ready. I think I am ready to try putting together a cassette. But it will have to wait for just a bit. I couldn't wait and started. There are a couple of problems with the splash page. One is I forgot the computer is in graphics mode, so I will have to change it back. The other seems to be my ML program to load. I stored it in the stack but maybe not high enough where it isn't getting overwritten. I will test and try again later. It took way to many tries to get this to work. But the TAP file is finished now. I also updated the SD card, so I can play all the new (versions) of the games on the vic. So now I just have to update a couple of web pages and I am DONE!

Opened up a new project for Adez & the keys of Dengar. Because some of this was in ML I am trying to incorperate the old ML and data. It will save some time. Well maybe. It looks like I am going to have to translate all of the ML anyway. At least the data will transfer. The good thing is there isn't a lot of ML. I converted the first chunk except for one thing. There is a JSR to 4771? and that area is a bunch of zeros. I'm not exactly sure where the ML is supposed to start, so I will have to work on this some more. Hopefully I can also use parts from all the Kings Gold. I know for sure the title page is very similar and i will grab that later. OK I will convert this last chunk of ML and see. Well that was absolutely painful. OK bed.
 

Working on Adez & the Keys of Dengar 5th anniversary
 

30 April 2021

I won't be doing much tonight. Had a hard day at work and I am exhausted and sore. I did grab my notes and found out where the ML is supposed to go, but I am wondering if I am missing some data. I will organize it a bit better and see. Yes it looks like I am missing the swamp setups and maybe some graphics. I wonder if it was an old version on the disk. Nope. Checked out the tape version and it is the same and it for sure has the new fix at 677. So I must have ended up not using the swamp set-ups. I probably ran out of room. Maybe I shouldn't trust the start locations of the ML either. Anyway that is as far as I will get tonight. The ML and data below 8192 is organised. Actually the ML addresses are good. I see what happened. I was going to set up the screens using ML, but when I couldn't fit the screen data below 8192 I just did it all in BASIC. So I will have to make the 5 swamps and the 2 caves data. I don't know when I will have time, but that is probably what I should do next. I'm not 100% sure but I should be able to use many of the ML routines from All the Kings Gold. So if I stay on task, this shouldn't take too long.

1 May 2021

So tired but I managed to get the data for swamp 0. That's it I think.

2 May 2021

Slow going today. I typed in the data for the rest of the swamps and the bit of ML that makes the left and botom borders. So I think I will take a break. I guess I should do the Skaak's cave as well, but first I will take a break. Then I will have to write a bit of code to test the screens. OK entered the data for the end caves. So I made a little shelf for my monitors and finished putting it together today. Of course I had to hook everything up and play a few games. I tested Adez & the Pirates of Ud 2 and remembered there is something I have to fix in level 9 & 10. I thought I would try Adez & all the Kings Gold on my VFLI vic, but there is something wrong with the computer. I will have to look into that later. I loaded it on my regular Vic but I only have a Super-Expander. I thought I had fixed the auto loader to disable the Super-Expander but the version that I used didn't do that. I had to disable it manually, but then everything worked fine. There might be a few things I want to change to keep Kings & Dengar similar. I tried Boxa and Peg Leg John and they both worked fine. For the first time I assembled the Dengar and tried a few things. So the ML is working, but it looks like there are a few things I will have to fix for some of the screen prints. I wasn't going to but I ended up fixing all of the screens. It was tedious, but it is done. Almost done. Just one little fix in Skaak's cave. I'll do that another time. But before I did any of that I got this idea for a song and spent a while programming that. It is actually a pretty cool song but I have no need of it at the moment. I will save it for something else.

3 May 2021

On the one hand using the old code will save time. On the other it will be a huge pain to modify. So I moved huge chunks of the old code over and have the title screen and the first screen sort of working. None of the castles or swamps are programmed in yet, and the colour isn't quite right yet. I won't have much time today, so we'll see what gets done. After work I tried, but I just couldn't get the energy to do anymore.

4 May 2021

So I need the x/y for the castles and swamps. I decided the easiest way was just to code something that showed the x/y in the first Adez loop. Although I really hate double comparisons there would have been no other way to check the locations. Just starting to try and link some of the old and new routines. There will be some issues because I will have to add to some of the old ML and thinking, I was smart, I put variables in between the old ML routines. So now they have no lables and are likely to be overwritten. Hopefully I catch them before I go too far along. Well not sure what is going on but one of the castles (the black one?) is totally messed up. No time to continue ATM. This is going to be quite the mess to pick up later. Did a bit more before work. The castles look OK, except for one. Not sure why but I don't have time to look anymore. Alright. After work I felt good enough to do a bit of fixing. The castles are now printing and I fixed a problem with adez not being coloured. I added a ton of lables, so that when I need to move code there won't be too many issues. Also cleaned up a ton of stuff. Now I'm not sure if I should finish the castles or start the swamps. Hmm there will be several things I need to fix in the castles. I set up the first loop to go to all the swamps, castles and the cave. I get the feeling there will be much more fixing and patching ahead of me. That's it for tonight.

5 May 2021

Did a few little things, but what I will have to do is get the variables set up. The ones in the old ML might be OK, I just have to make them lables and then reserve them. It will be about 20 of the ones from All the Kings Gold. I will have to move the variables. They were sitting above the space graphics in All the Kings Gold, but here there are many new graphics, so that won't work. Lol. I don't know how but I skipped a bunch of addresses when assigning variables. So all I had to do was change 3 and I think I'm good. But it's too close to work time to really try anything. Yesterday I was late because I was fooling around too much. More fixing and re-organizing. I got the notes to see what the old ML variables actually were. So they were things that kept track of Boom-Boom, and the other 2 creatures. I had to make some fixes to castle7, before I had the assembler it was too difficult to fix and fixed it in BASIC. Not that it was easy, but it was easier to do now. So lots of fiddling around. Not much done, but all of this had to get straightened out. Setup a quick loop to test the creatures and got the variables for castle7. So creature2 is working great. Cretaure1 not at all, and BoomBoom only partially. Not sure if this is because I have the wrong variables, or if I translated some of the code wrong. I guess I will look into it tomorrow.

6 May 2021

Again not much time. I managed to get the 3 creatures moving for castle7. There was an incorrect number in the translated ML for BoomBoom. And the creature1 just wasn't getting the right variables setup. I'm not sure what is going on with my BASIC program. I hope there aren't any other problems like this. So next will be the other castles. Got the values for castle8 and there is something wrong with that one too. Creature1 isn't right. This is going to be painful. I have castles 8 and 9 working, but I am almost out of room in that spot and will have to add more variables for the more difficult levels. I will have to think about this. Moved stuff around again. Soon I'm going to forget where everything is. OK finished the swamps and the castles. I set up the caves but it looks like something is wrong there. I'm afraid I'm too tired to go any further.

8 May 2021

Maybe I'll have some time to check this out tonight, but I dropped the loop2 routine into Dengar. I'm sure there will be many interesting problems. I also see that there are some things about the way the player is moving currently, that some of the castles won't work the way they are. Actually it almost works. I mostly have to add more of the things that kill you and you can't go into. Lol. Lots of little things, like the music is longer so it starts again before it's finished. It doesn't recognise the key, it is looking for the gem. ect. Well, the music data is 336 bytes long so I will have to access it differently. Also when the key is taken from a place something bad is happening, it crashes. OK that's fixed. I think I could add in most of the rest of the subroutines. There actually isn't alot to do. Add the new enemies into the checks to see if you died. Fix the music. Add the ending. But I think I need to fix change some things with the joystick. If I can make it work better I will make the changes to Kings as well. But this is all for another day.

9 May 2021

With our short summer fast approaching, I can feel my interest wane. I do hope I can finish up this last project and spiff up the few things on the other two before I become dormant (at least for coding). There is a difference though. This year it looks like I may still not be working till mid summer. Last year I celebrated and drank for 2 months, this year I can't afford it. So I will have some time with not a lot to do, maybe I will come back to this, even briefly. OK fixed the music, then I worked on the joystick movement. It was a bit of a difficult thing. Not so much to program, but to figure out what needed to be checked. I think I have it working better now, but I will have to test it a bit more. I also tried to get the score and lives to print, but I think the score is being overwritten by the lives. First I will take a break. Not entirely sure, there are still a few issues with the joystick. I'm just going to have to keep at it and work through them. Also having an issue with the score printing. It goes to the Skaak cave when you have all 10 keys, but there are some issues with this too. Fixed the problems for the scoring and the gameover. Not 100% sure about the joystick, but moving on for now. Although not tested I added some things to the Skaak cave, so that should work now. I still haven't added the enemy check yet, I think I will save that for last so I won't die as often while testing. I forgot the Skaak dying flag was working so I didn't get very far in the last level. OK so everything seems to be working good so far. I just have to figure out, create and add some special ways to die for the harder levels, and the secrets. Oh and clear all the variables like score, and the castles. So it is very close.

I forgot to mention this. I am building shelves so I can have my vic 20 stuff set up and ready to go. So I have set up a monitor, a TV, and an old flat screen along with 3 datasettes, a vic, my VFLI vic, my cassiopei, and some disk drives. Not everything is hooked up yet and when I have more materials and time I will build more shelves. I will have to see why my VFLI vic isn't working ( I'm hoping it's a capacitor or two). It was fun to play around on the real thing, even for just a bit.

10 May 2021

So tired tonight. I don't think I am able to do anything. Although the 2 things I need to do are relatively mindless. Maybe I can at least get some screen addresses for some of the special bits. Just beat. I have the locations for the swamps but I think that is all I can do tonight.

13 May 2021

I've been so tired the last few days I couldn't even attempt anything. Work has been absolutely draining. Hopefully I can do a bit today. Still really tired so I doubt there will be much heavy lifting. Bleh. Made a new graphics added 3 new variables and I have to take a break. I suck. In a certain way, being this exhasted is almost like being sick. I took the laptop ouside. So I got the last locations for the special things and the secrets. I don't know if I left the code in for all of these things, but I should be able to add the numbers into each area's set up and have it work with little coding. Oh except I will now have to build 10 secret areas. Crap I thought they were x and y co-ordinates but they were absolute addresses so hopefully I converted all of that right. Then the secret address is in x,y. Luckily I kept all of the converted numbers. Only did the blue castle. So tired.

14 May 2021

Still kinda of relaxing today. I played the real vic upstairs for a bit. Then came downstairs and thought I should quickly look at the issue in Adez and the Pirates of Ud 2. So I did find something, I'm not 100% sure this is the problem, but the old character under adez was checked BEFORE the joystick move, so I moved that chunk of code and I'll check it. I wonder how hard it would be to fix the underwater levels. Oh and I want to give an extra life, but I am starting to think it will take more code than just changing the lives variable from 3 to 4. Anyway I will test it and see. Well that took all afternoon to fix, but I think it's working now. I had to free up 9 bytes, so I got rid of the BASIC. Both level 8 and 9 and the 4 lives. I am thinking about changing the timer for jumping. We'll see. Darn I would have to add a few bytes to do it and I just don't have them. So I guess that is the best I can do. So I added all of the locations for the special locations and the secret locations. I tested and fixed the special locations, but I haven't been able to test the secrets yet because I haven't built them. So I'll have to work on that tomorrow, I guess.

15 May 2021

Played the real vic for a while this morning. I had a whole list of RL things to do but I hurt my back and then nothing got done. At least very little. Last night I found the VLOG entry that briefly talked about the fixing the 3K loader. So I looked at the 3k loader and the one MLauto3K2 does have a JSR to reset the vectors, so I must have used the other one for some wierd reason. If I had the energy I would make the small fix to Adez & Kings and save the TAP for that and Adez & Ud 2. But I don't think I have the energy.

16 May 2021

Nothing got done. Had lots of RL stuff today, then someone sent me a bunch of nasty texts and I am too mad to do anything. I think all that is needed is the secrets and the ending. Although building the secrets won't be difficult, it will be time consuming. Then I will have to insert all the checks for the new creatures and obsticles. None of this is difficult I just have to find the time. I found something interesting while looking for programs yesterday. I was working on a few C64 games, none every got completed, but I saw a version of Kerratias for the 64! I am curious how far I got with it. I wanted to change a graphic for Ud 2, so I did. I saw one small thing that I had to fix and another I just thought I should. So when I have time I can resave Ud2. Put a fork in me.

17 May 2021

Had a bit of time in the evening and basically just slogged through it. I was only going to do a few, but in the end just made all of the secrets and the ML to go with it. I only tested 2 and see I am going to have to fix both. So I think that's it for tonight. Hopefully fixing won't be too painful. But that will be another day.

18 May 2021

Trying to fix any issues with the secrets. It seems like there are alot of them. So many little fixes. And then locations just aren't matching up. I have the left-most castles and swamps mostly working, but I need to take a break. It took most of the afternoon but I have all of the secrets working, I think. Hopefully I can check on this later and wrap it up! OK all of that is done. Kinda funny I was testing (and most of the collision checks are either off or not coded yet) and died just before I collected the 10th key! I had to cheat to check the cave. I thought I was finished but I forgot I still have to do the checks to see if you have died. This shouldn't take too long but I have an early morning, so I will leave it till tomorrow. Then on to splash page loaders.

19 May 2021

Before work I figured I would check all of the characters. There looks like there were plans for a dragon as there is a couple characters for it. lol. So I kinda wish I had organised the characters a bit better, perhaps a thought for future games, as I just added characters as I needed them. It's much to late to start changing that now. Anyway there are 13 characters that can kill you (not including the dragon) and they are spread fairly randomly through the character set. So I will have to do 26 checks! Hope that doesn't slow things down too much. I sure notice the random spin slows things down in the Skaak cave screen! I may have to find something else for random numbers. Well that was a shit show! I was only supposed to go into work for a few hours and didn't get home till almost 9. I still had to have supper and walk the dog. So it is 10 now and I am completely empty. Even though coding the check won't be hard, I just can't do it right now. Hopefully tomorrow.

20 May 2021

Added the checks but I guess they are in the wrong place, because if you don't move, the enemies don't see you. Crap I guess that's all I have time for.

21 May 2021

Moved the check routine, and noticed a few problems. One it still isn't always seeing a collision. The other was if you are standing on a brick and it disappears you don't fall. OK fixed the not falling problem. I'm still not sure why it doesn't detect all of the collisions with enemies. I will continue to work on that, I guess that is all that is left. So I checked the old characters for the creatures and I think this is done! So I will try to make the fixes for Adez & Kings and then start the splash pages for Dengar and start making TAPs. Not Sure I will have time today. I have a different big project that will need my time and focus for a couple weeks. But I kind of want to finish this before I leave it, it's so easy for me to start to forget how things work and then have to figure everything out again. Trying to fix Kings and the same code doesn't work. I don't get it! If I keep the code that checks under Adez to see if a block has disappeared then he cannot climb windowsills. Maybe I have to check Dengar again. Yeah there aren't as many windowsills in Dengar but they don't work now. I'll have to take a break. After some thought I found a solution, and it was only a few bytes of code. SO I am done. I just now have to get this all on TAP. I will have to check but I think the splash loader is already in ML, so I will just have to make my AJ loader, and maybe a few other loaders. Again I will have to check. Well most of the loaders are for moving the screen and memory around. I did have to dissemble the code at the end of the splash page by hand, so that took a while. So I used my old trick of loading the keyboard queue and dropping back to BASIC. I will have to change all of this. It shouldn't take too long, but I don't think I am up for it tonight. I also finally remembered what I was looking for when purusing the old disk files. I was looking for the old Vic disks (well D64s), some of the AJ disks that I haven't got to yet, but mostly my old disks that had Compute's games and a bunch of commercial games that I had broke. So they are found now. I hope I can hook up a disk drive soon to my real Vic and then I'm sure I will be re-living all kinds of old interesting things.

22 May 2021

Started right away. It tried to resolve the branches and then loaded the AJ loader. I fixed that to run at 4609 and soon I had it working. The splash page took a little longer, there was more to do. But I must have got a couple branches wrong, so I ended up just reloading the data. I didn't need to make any changes to Mike's code anyway except for the end, where it jumped to my stuff. I just swapped in some of my splash page stuff and soon had that working too. I put it all on TAP but realised there was something changing the VIC chip registers. Sure enough there were STAs for 36866 and 36869. So I changed the data and the end jump, but something is still not working. I am out of time for the moment. I will try later. Found the culprit. I missed that I also changed 648. Now it's working fine, just so frickin hard. Alright I updated Adez & the Pirates of Ud 2 and Adez & all the Kings Gold as well. So I think I am done with Adez stuff for a little while. I was going to update Adez & Mr. What as well, but I think I am all Adezed out. We will see. I know for sure I have to focus on a different project for a couple of weeks. I may still putter around with stuff a bit. Who knows.

Well shit. That doesn't work. The JSR I used in the autoloader to disable the super expander resets a few things, but not enough as the function keys are disabled completely. My guess is there is still a vector that I have to change. I will have to investigate further. If I didn't need the function keys, it wouldn't matter, and this reset would be enough. But I DO need the function keys. The other method I have, does a cold start reset, so that is no good either.

23 May 2021

I played Dengar last night and there were a few problems. There is a thing in the loader that I will have to fix. Then there is something going on in Skaak's cave when you don't have all of the keys. My guess is, it is trying move enemies and they are not set. Then lastly there are a few things that are just impossible the way the enemies move. I think I will have to make a few adjustments. So I fixed the aj loader, and yes there was no check to see if you were in the cave without enough keys. So those two things are fixed. Next I will have to make a list of enemies in all places that I think are too difficult. And as far as the problem with the SE, I'm not really sure how to fix that. So Dengar has been fixed, recompiled and TAP has been made. So I think I am done these 3 games. I just realised, when I re-do one more game I am half way! Of course that is only by titles, not actual work. I am not going to even try to calculate that.

After archiving some of the old folders, I looked at the current bunch of projects I have started. I shouldn't have but I started the project folder for Adez & Mr. What. Not much in there ATM. I guess the first thing will be to figure out how this game works. But that will be another day.

24 May 2021

I was sure that I hadn't finished the instruction booklet for Adez & the Pirates of Ud 2. So I opened the file and it was actually complete. So I looked at some of the covers and instructions. It's raining today but I don't think I'm doing much today. I guess if I get bored. So I played Dengar on the real deal for a bit. Damn it's hard. Then I started thinking about my attempt at half movement. Something I tried a bit in the game Cowboys for Distractions. I think this is the way I will go for my next platform game. I think I know how to program it and it will only take 9 character graphics to impliment. I guess I will either not have many enemies or they will have to move in full characters.

27 May 2021

Wow. I knew I was trying to concentrate on the other project but I didn't realise how many days had passed. Very little has been done. But I did want to note I finally made the cover and instructions for Adez & the Pirates of Ud 2. I was waiting for some new printer ink and it arrived a few days ago. The only other thing related that I have done was I played the Disk Version of Exploria on Xvic. I just wanted to see some of the other levels. I was tired and died quickly and soon just went to bed.

31 May 2021

Yesterday I had some time so I grabbed the Exploria folder and started looking through the old notes. The first thing I found was the first program had only about 25 bytes free!!! So after combing the notes I think I found where my problem lay. Oh the problem? Is that the elevator would not change the colour back when the player was riding it. I am not 100% sure this will fix the problem but I will try it when I have time. I scribbled a patch into the notes and it is 23 bytes! So it will JUST fit, if it works. I just have to make a point of doing it. If only I could figure out the 2 bugs in Downunder...

1 June 2021

Another thing I was thinking about was Realm of Evil. When I completed it a few years ago I had always had intended to make a disk version, but at the time it was severly low on my priorty list. But now I have a permenent place set up with all my vic stuff, I am starting to think I really should have a disk version for Realm of Evil as well as Exploria. Exploria will need a small fix (if it works) and then I will have to re-code all of the loaders (for cassette also). Although not a huge task it will require anywhere from a day to 4 days. Depending on how motivated I am. Realm is a different story. The first thing I will have to see is if there is any room left. It seems to me I literally only had a few bytes free. For all of the loaders and saves I used LDA #1, TAY,TAX for the open routine. And I will now need a LDY #8, meaning I need an 1 extra byte for each open (I think there are 2 in the main program and 2 in the dungeon). At least the dungeon program wasn't as big, and the loaders shouldn't be an issue. Again if I can find room it will be a project that will take 1 to 4 days. Depending on my motivation. At the moment I am sort of in limbo. I really don't want to start even a simple project until my current project is completed on saturday. But I can sure think of a lot of things.

3 June 2021

Had a few minutes before bed. I decided to try to fix Realm of Evil. The big worry was that there weren't enough free bytes in the main program to add the LDX #8 (I thought it was LDY but anyway) so it would load from disk. And there actually were JUST enough. I saved new versions of all of the programs so they would load and save via disk. Well except for one. I forgot that both main programs load before, through, and after screen memory. So I needed a little load/save program to put it to tape without destroying the graphics and ML on the screen. I will have to modify that a bit more to make it work for disk. Then I will also have to update my Disk boot loader, because I am sure it returns to BASIC with a LOAD/RUN in the keyboard buffer, and it needs to stay in ML and perform a JMP (to 4946 I beleive). Anyway I have to tap out. Oh I forgot to add, I added a shelf to my Vic work area. So now everything is a bit more organized. I still have one more shelf to add, but it won't be for at least a few more days.

7 June 2021

I put the Realm d64s on the CASSIOPIE and decided I had better put TAPs on there too. It actually took several attempts to get the planets to align and I had to move and fix my load/save program several times. But I have a half-assed disk version on Realm of Evil. The issues? No boot loader yet. There is something in the Aj loader that prevents the spash page from working. For some reason the Character loader saved the screen as well. And the dungeon program doesn't have the cassette buffer stuff in it, but still saved the screen. Because the cassette buffer is now untouched it will work fine as long as the dungeon program is not loaded first. So I started playing and am just fumbling my way through getting the items to continue on. I may have to document this somewhere. There is no map in my notes to the Ibering Dungeon and I got lost in there for a LONG time. I'm wondering if I should keep the cassette dialogue (put dungeon cassette in ect.)? It would be a huge pain to remove. I guess I'm more interested in playing the game than I am in making a great disk version. If I use my disk editor I could probably fix the dungeon program without too much fuss. Actually looking at it the dungeon program just has to not overwrite the screen. I should be able to fix that.

8 June 2021

Spent all evening looking through old disks. I finally found my sector editor, and realized it wasn't going to work. I will have to try to re-load my load/save program and change/fix it a bit more. I might be able to fix the AJ loader with the sector editor but it is low priority. Then I will have to re-write the boot program. I'm not sure anything will happen today. It's beautiful out and I'm feeling lazy. More like a read a book in the sun kinda day.

10 June 2021

Yesterday I re-saved the dungeon program. It was a bit of a wire and duck tape fix. And figured I would pick up testing from where I left off. I loaded my character and all of his stats were the default ones. Then he had NO items! I figured I would let the game load just to be sure and yep back at the start. I wasn't sure why the character hadn't saved, and wasn't looking forward to debugging this. I really wasn't sure why it wasn't working, I was positive I had tested the saving functionality. Then later it hit me. The disk cannot save the same filename, I would need to perform a scratch. This is not good. I'm not sure how many bytes this will add, I would guess around 20-30. And this will be OK for the dungeon program, there is about 1K there, but the main program just doesn't have the space. I'm not sure how I am going to do this. It is supposed to rain all afternoon, so I hope I make time to do a bit of programming today. Patched together something but I will have to test it. I guess I should try to enjoy the little bit of sunshine before the rain. Well so much for that. The crappy thing about my patch is I will have to resave R1,R2 & R3. R2 only needs to change the JSR. If I could find the 2 bytes, I could use my sector editor but I think it would be quite difficult to find. Well I set it all up, and I did have some errors, but I think it is error free now. Unfortunately it is still not working. I'm not 100% sure that it I have the proper calls for the disk drive. I guess I will have to keep at it, but first a break. Man! It took all afternoon to realize I had made a mistake in the code. So it SHOULD be working, I can try to add it to the character loader. Next will be the long and painful task of transferring everything. Just to make sure, I checked to see where the ML ended. It was at 762 and the space ends @ 767. It also fits under the graphics in the Character Builder. So for the main I was able to not use a single new bit, by hijacking a previous patch and jumping there first before running my patch. The dungeon program was just a simple JSR but it skips the patch. SO now to transfer them. I had to convert them to TAPs because I can't seem to get CASSIOPEI to transfer D64s and it won't recognize my PRGs either. So this will take a while. The only true saving grace here is the web connection. CASSIOPEI will connect to my home connection and I can transfer the files directly from my laptop downstairs to my actual Vic (the CASSIOPEI) upstairs and like most internet interactions it is very fast. Alright time to try to transfer files, this is going to take a while. Well it might have worked but I don't know because it kept asking for me to press record on the datasette. I think last time I must have still had the CASSIOPEI hooked up and never pressed stop so that it would at least try to work. I can try this tomorrow, but I guess I will have to actually go through and make a disk version.

11 June 2021

Today I did what I should have done from the start. I made a whole new project and folder for the disk programs. I copied all of the programs and started to see what needed to be fixed. And truthfully I am at a loss. There should have been NO reference for any cassette button pressing. The only thing I can think of, is for some reason the SETLFS was trying to open the cassette, which still doesn't make sense. So anyway I changed the cassette references to disk and went through each program making sure I got all of the cassette calls. I hope I found them all. I also made 2 small fixes. The AJ loader was set up like a save for some reason and had X&Y pointing to the end address, so I changed that. Then the splash loader had 512 unneeded trailing zeros, so I erased them. I saved that project and opened the cassette version and put back all of the cassette calls and made the 2 fixes. So hopefully I have 2 working verions of Realm. I will just have to build them. Oh except for the Disk boot loader. I guess I should quickly change/fix that. I found what I thought was the autoloader, and I guess it is, but it is an ancient version. Maybe even the code I pilfered to make one, because it looks like it is POKEing colours to the C64 colour addresses. I may have to look at my cassette autoloader to see what I actually need in there. Basically everything is different. So I re-wrote the ML. The one good thing is I needed to move the last little bit outside the cassette buffer so it wouldn't get overwritten, but I don't now. So I guess I will have to test it out. YAAAA! It works! So now it will be a pain, but I will have to get this all over to the real vic. Yep after a few hours of transferring files, it still isn't working. I'm not sure why. It crashes in the splash loader right after it prints the title. So I skipped the loaders and then it crashes when I tried to save the character. I imagine it will crash when it tries to load the dungeon as well (because it did before). I figured I would test it on the xVic and it did the same thing. So I'm not sure what I did wrong. I may have to leave this for the time being. My best guess is it has something to do with the print routine at 51998. For both crashes that is what it is doing. I may have to dissemble the code there to see what it is I messed up. I really don't want to, but I don't see any other way. I'm afraid that didn't help much, I would have to dissemble a whole lot more to figure out whats happening. Well I can't figure out the crash in the splash loader yet, but it looks like the crash in the dungeon load is actually my new patch. It looks like it isn't where it is supposed to be. Try again. OK finally I had the little scratch ML in the wrong place. It was being overwritten by another ML patch. So I had to re-save ALL of the programs yet again. But now it works. At least from the splash page. I played until I got the light green key. It is puzzling. I am doing something in the AJ loader that makes the splash page loader crash. I'm just not sure what it is. OMFG!!! There was a stupid mistake right at the very beginning of the code. A LDX #0, STA 198 which of course should have been STX 198. I saw it, I KNEW IT WAS THERE!!! It never occured to me this stupid thing was what was causing problems. I thought it was fine and kept forgetting to fix it. Then when going through the code instruction by instruction I finally realized when the program loads, A could be ANYTHING! I don't know what is an invalid number for 198 (the number of keys pressed) but I'm sure there are some. I would guess over 64, definately over 128. So an invalid number was entered into 198 and by the time it started to print stuff everything went wrong! I just checked and now everything loads fine. Wow how horrible is that? So I will have to resave all 4 programs again to try to get my real disk to work. It is now 9.20pm I hope I can have this ready before 11pm. It took about 40 minutes to transfer the files but then it was all working. I started playing and got to quiet island dungeon. I saved several times and then I thought I should just check. Well the biggest disappointment of all. The character save isn't working. Back to the drawing board again. So disappointing.

12 June 2021

A quick check and I see the character is only messed up when saved from the masters house. The save when loading the dungeon is fine. This leads me to suspect there is something wrong with either the save patch (that temporarily moves stuff from the cassette buffer to the screen, so it isn't overwritten. Which actually isn't needed in the disk version) or the scratch patch. I could just skip the save patch, but then wonder if the cassette version might be buggered. I'll have to do some checking later. I am quite puzzled by this, as both saves use the same routine. The only difference is the dungeon save goes straight to another load, and the master save jumps to 4096 to return the ML to the cassette buffer and then jumps to the start of the program. Looking at the saved character it looks like it is saving vectors. It makes no sense, I am done for tonight.

13 June 2021

So it is saving a bunch of vectors. It looks like it is saving 768 and up. So I see what it is doing, I just can't see why. It is puzzling because there is no set-up before the routine that I can see. And both places jump to the same subroutine. So it is odd that there is a different result from the same subroutine. I am obviously missing something.

14 June 2021

Today the chase continues. I tried saving from the masters house with a few RTS and it seems to work fine. In fact I removed all of the RTS and it still seems to work. So WTF?

16 June 2021

I realized I forgot one important detail the last time I checked. There was no file to scratch. So maybe having to scratch the file has something to do with it. I will have to set it all up and try again. Hopefully I can figure this out. Well doing it one step at a time does not reproduce the problem. I can't seem to reproduce the problem now.

17 June 2021

Haven't had much time to sort through this but a couple of things occured to me. When testing the save, I did NOT load any of the first loaders. No splash page, no AJ loader, and especially no boot loader. The splash page and AJ loader probably don't matter much, because aside from display graphics they don't change anything, but the boot loader does. One possible problem is that the stop key vector is changed. Could that interfere with my scratch save? The other thing is stealing the interrupt. I always wondered if this would cause a problem. After doing a bit of quick reading, my stealing the interrupt would leave the Program counter and the register on the stack. Maybe I should PLA and discard them. I just don't know. I guess when I have some time I will have to test these things. Plus I think I need to play with the BIT, BVC, BVS & SED instructions a bit. These random thoughts before bed. Oh and I need to make a better explanation of what items you need in Realm of Evil.

I was just looking at the old notes and realized something. The easiest probable fix for this is to not JMP to the cassette fix routine at the start of the scratch patch, and then instead of JMPing to 4096, JMP to the start of the program. I think I will try this tomorrow.

18 June 2021

That didn't work. More testing. So when the runstop test vector is changed, the character save is corrupted. I'm not entirely sure why but testing indicates this is true. So I quickly looked at the code at 63344 (where the vector points) and there is a RTS but if I point to it, it causes other problems. The wrong vector LDY #88 and then RTSs this is actually a wrong place to JMP to because the 160 is actually an operand and the 88 is a CLI. Anyway a JMP to the RTS doesn't work. I tried a few other places and it just causes problems. So my solution will be to replace the original vector before the save and then store the other one back later. It will take 16 bytes but I can get rid of the save patch, so hopefully I can make this work. So the first test it seems to work, I will take a break and then test a bit more. I still find it odd that the save before loading the Dungeon works but the save that goes back to the game doesn't. Also I had better double check the cassette save. I am glad I have finally cracked this problem. It was really bothering me. Soon I can make the disk version. Disk made. That seems to have gotten it! That was a crazy bug. I'm still not entirely sure why it was happening, but I'm glad that is finished. Not sure what is next for me. I hope I can keep coding, even if it is just fixing up old programs. I wanted to do something more tonight, but just lacked the energy. I started working on the disk cover for Realm of Evil but didn't complete it. I will have to make disk versions of Exploria, Dynasty, Betelgeuse and Tau Ceti. But some of these may be a long way in the future.

One other small thing I did in the afternoon was quickly look at the 2 boxes of computer stuff in the shed. One box was just hundreds of 5.25 inch disks. I brought that in. The other box has a 1525 printer and literally is a box of manuals. I'm not sure if there is anything in here worth saving. But I will keep it for now.

19 June 2021

Not sure what is going to happen in the next couple of weeks. I took on a new temporary job that I start monday. I may be too tired to do much programming after work. Hard to say. I mean it IS summer. If it was frozen out I wouldn't have much choice and would have to find something to do inside. But I do like to try to enjoy the short summer we have here as much as possible. Anyway. I started Adez & Mr. What. I have the screen set up. There will be some things in this game I don't like to play with in ML. Like random numbers, and timers. I guess I will just have to deal with it because most games use one or both. I have just been a bit lucky so far (and a bit lazy). Looking through the code, this will be easy! lol! I know it won't be easy but it may not be quite as hard as I thought. I guess we will see. So I programmed the main loop, and Adez is moving around. I guess I will have to start with the random numbers. But first a break. Added the random boxes. I will have to start the enemy routines. This is where things will get a bit more complex. I started to add the enemy's varaibles. I really want to cotinue but there are other things that I need to do. So I guess, with some disappointment, I will leave it here for now.

20 June 2021

Fixed the disk cover for Realm of Evil. I also built the enemy routine this morning. So many stupid mistakes. There is still something not quite right. Enemy2 is resetting enemy1 sometimes, not sure why. I need to take a break. I finally found the error, it was (surprize) a wrong branch. I was horrified when I finally saw it. It SHOULD have been an easy thing to find. So now there is just the dropping of toys to check if they are in the right bin. But before I continue I will break for a bit. Had a really shitty day so I got drunk. I then decided to try to program. I made a sub to handle the enemy dropping toys. There were a couple of errors but it all got fixed quite quickly. Now I need to handle the player dropping toys and grabbing them from the enemies (and also the dead flag). While it will be more complex than the enemy routine it shouldn't be too bad. But I AM drunk and I have to work tomorrow. Maybe I will leave it for another day. Added a bit for enemy 3, now I am done.

21 June 2021

I wrote the code for handling the dropping toys in boxes for the player and fix a bit for the enemies. But I think I am too tired to debug it tonight. Well that's a surprise it seems like it works! More testing is needed though and I think I'm done for today.

25 June 2021

Tweaked alot of the code and just general debugging tonight. There is still a lot of testing and fixing ahead. There is an issue when you place a toy in the wrong bin, the next time you get one right it loops 16 times. I just added a bit to start enemy 2 and it looks like there are some problems with crossing variables between the 2 enemies. It is almost a game. Aside from debugging, the only section left to program is the game over bit. But I think I am finished for tonight.

26 June 2021

After work, fixed the looping, but I will have to check the 2 enemies. Have to go for a bit. Back and when there are more than 1 enemy everything goes to shit. There are so many problems I'm not even sure where to start debugging. LOL. Setting and resetting variables in the right place helps. It actually seems to work now. A bit more testing. Re-arranged a bit of code. I think this will be as good as it gets, although I am thinking about a few things. OK added a bit to keep track of misses. Added game over. Unless I can think of things I want to add, I think I am done. Nope enemy 3 is causing problems now. For some reason it is not execting it's code every cycle. I cant really see why it isn't working. I may have to look at this tomorrow.

29 June 2021

Trying to debug this before work. Not very successfully though. I can't seem to find why it is just disappearing.

30 June 2021

I found it!!!!!!!!! The reason enemy 3 is disappearing. It is an unfortunate set of code. In the main loop, one of the first things done is enemy 1 & 2 are placed on the screen. For some reasom I thought this was done later. Then the player is taken care of, and a JSR to a delay. Then enemy 1 & 2 are erased and moved (but not placed on the screen), then enemy 3 is erased, moved and placed. Then the loop repeats. This would have worked had the enemies not been placed right after enemy 3. When enemy 1 or 2 occupies the same space as enemy 3, only enemy 1 or 2 is visible. I didn't see it because of the way the loop is constructed. Also I was concetrating on the later part of the loop because that was where enemy 3 was placed and moved. I only looked at the branches of the code preceeding it. SO, I will have to re-arrange some of the code for you to see enemy 3 (because he has always been there, just invisible). The issue is that one of the enemies will disappear no matter what. If I have enemy 3 visible, enemy 1 or 2 will disappear when they are occupying the same space. I will have to think about this. Well now I moved the code, enemy 3 doesn't overlap much, but I did add a sort of EORed graphic. There is just one other thing I will have to fix. When the player dies from enemy 3 it puts a space in an odd place. OK that should take care of that. Looks like I am done. That took a lot longer than I expected. But I have to admit I have not been fully focused on this. So I will see how large the program is. I may add the splash page to the main program. I guess I'm getting a headache so maybe I will continue this later, but the last of it shouldn't be too bad.

1 July 2021

Happy Canada Day! So I spent a little while getting the graphics for the title and putting it into the game. While doing that the main game loaded and I noticed a few things I may have to fix. The one I am unsure about is when the enemy accidentally drops a toy in the right box. In the original you get the point, so far in the new game you don't. I decided to not let the enemies score for you. And I think I am finished tweaking the game. So I guess I can put the AJ loader together and make a TAP. Done. Updated the web pages. So I am halfway for updating the games, 22 done, 22 to go. Of course this will be the harder half as there will be some difficult ones. I am not sure, but thinking about updating Exploria before working on Sol:Survivor. One thing I have learned though, starting fresh, for the most part is easier than having to use old ML routines. I have used BASIC programs as templates, but never line by line translations. Of course new code brings it's own challenges as well, as shown by this last program. This last one was a huge pain at the end, so I am glad it is finished.

Well I made a project for Exploria. It took some time to get the program to load as I did not know the start address. I figured it out eventually. I guess I could have used the disk sector editor to find it as well. Anyway I will try my patch to see if it works (fixes the colour error when the elevator is going down). If it works I will just have to change all of the loaders to ML. Well that is a problem, I only have 17 free bytes and I need 21. So I decided to just convert the loader to ML for now. It has to be done anyway. But then I find this mysterious ML code. WTF? After using the sector editor and looking at it I can only assume it is a patch. I must have been desperate for memory! So I think I can at least start. OK if it were a plain jane loader it would be complete, but it is not there are a couple secrets I need to add. Oh and I found a place for my patch. Because this was an early ML game I didn't know about the spot at 673, so there will be lots of room there. So part one of the patch is in place. I will just have to make a jump from each program. Now I just have to add the secret to the loader. Finished the loader and tried the patch. It doesn't work. It just makes the whole elevator red. I just put it back for now. Too tired to continue.

2 July 2021

So these are my thoughts on this. I could try to fix the colour problem, but I would have to disassemble large portions of code to figure out the whys and wheres. If I start I may as well do the whole thing as I think I could program better. So it might be better to not start. I guess it's why I didn't do it at the start. I'm not sure I'm going to do all of it but I started to disassemble the code. The problem is I just don't think in hex so I have to convert everything to decimal, or just disassemble by hand. Not sure which is slower. Probably converting from Hex because I know a lot of the numbers for the mnemonics. Yeah just looking at the 3 routines so far, they are all patches, so I'm sure if I could get even just contiguous code, it would be better. Well I think I have had enough for now. So I think I will make a disk with the current programs, and hopefully circle back and look at this at some point. Slowly putting together my disk for Exploria. I should make one for Dynasty as well, but fairly low priority. When Distractions is complete (hopefully less than 5 years from now) I will have to get a disk version of that as well. I was thinking I MAY do Betelguese and Tau Ceti, but we will see. On the one hand I think it would be a very good option, but I don't want to get carried away with it either. Darn I had trouble getting anything to work on the real disk and when I checked I realized I tried to save the programs at 4096 instead of 1024. So now the splash loader is HUGE. I will have to move the data down and then move it back up in the program. All day pissing around with this and I just seem to get all of the pieces together. I think I have it now. I just have to send it to the Cassiopei, but it is late and going up and down the stairs (my laptop is on the main floor and my vic is upstairs) at this hour, well it's just too late. I will have to try to get this before work tomorrow. Oh and I bought a penultimate cart today. I am moving into the 21st century! I put together a test disk on the xvic and found a ton of more problems. I will have to resave all of the programs, not sure if this will work on the real deal.

3 July 2021

This morning before work I tried to do what I could. I got the AJ and splash loaders on the disk. I was going to see about resaving quad 3 & 4, but thought I should check what I have so far. So the loaders work, but none of the game programs work! Then I ran out of time. This will take a while, I may have to wait till my day off.

5 July 2021

Tried again this morning, but another failure. I don't understand I saved everything from 820-7679 so I'm not sure what is going wrong. I even tried loading a program by itself, and it just crashes after the title screen. After work I loaded a couple things on the xvic. Then it became obvious. The cassette uses the cassette buffer to load and save, so any ML in there has been corrupted. DOH. I loaded a cassette version just to be sure and there it was, all of the ML that goes in the cassette buffer on the screen. It was at this point I remembered. I had to load the cassette version, run the ML to put it into the cassette buffer, make sure there is a RTS there, then poke the memory location for the LDX #1 to a #8, then poke the beginning and end addresses into 43-46, then save to disk. Then do that for the other 3 programs. It will be long and painful, but everything I need is already on the Cassiopei. All I will have to find is the address to change to 8. It is already late, I will tackle this maybe tomorrow.

6 July 2021

Not feeling the greatest today but I was determined to get this done. I looked at my notes to find the location of the one byte I had to change. After finding it, I loaded the first game. I found the JMP on the screen, changed it to a RTS and ran the ML on the screen. I double checked and changed the load from cassette to disk. I then poked the start and end addresses, and moved the top of memory onto the screen. I tried to save it to disk, but it wouldn't. It seemed to have a soft crash, where at least I could recover. I figured I would try the game and it crashed so something had been modified. I checked the beginning of the program at 820 and at 1024 (just in case) both seemed fine. For some reason I looked at 828, and there was my problem. The reset zeroed 828. I was lucky it didn't zero the whole cassette buffer! So I poked 828 with the right number and tried the game, and it worked. So one problem solved. After a few more failed attempts at saving to disk, it finally saved. I checked it and it worked! SO I only had to do this 3 more times. Through trial and error, I finally figured out what was (actually wasn't) happening. Some of the Basic memory vectors I was playing with (43-56) weren't being updated and the computer thought there wasn't enough room for a filename. I kinda got it straight by the last program. There were lots of things to check everytime it didn't work (which was often), although I got better as I went along. One thing to note is game 4 has the disk load already at then end. Then I went to check the disk. and it crashed after the boot. I remembered I still had to fix the JMP after the load, it was looking just after 4096 rather than just after 1024. After this fix, I tested each of the 4 games and they all worked! So although the game isn't fixed (and I may not come back to it for a while) it is working. I will have to make a TAP with the new loaders. That took WAY longer and was much less successful than I had hoped, but at least I have my disk. Exploria and Realm of Evil have been quite difficult to get on disk! They both use the max amount of memory for each memory configuration. Exploria uses 820-7680, 6860 bytes! And Realm of Evil uses 4096-16384 plus memory at 673 and 828! I even saved the screen memory, so it is a HUGE pain to save! So I'm glad they are done now.

9 July 2021

It arrived!! My Penultimate+ cartridge came today! Of course I had to put it in right away. I spent most of the morning checking it out. Although it is cool to have bout 40 games at the touch of a fingertip, I doubt that I will play them much. I do really like The Future Was 8 bit games. Some of these I will play on a semi regular basis. But it was the memory expansion that I really love. I don't think there will be much reason to unplug it. I don't have a lot of things to test it with at the moment. I will have to load a few other interesting games on the Cassiopei. I also got a reply from Jan D concerning my inquiry about the D64 transfer and web stuff. It is a crazy program!! It will take a while for me to make heads or tales of it. So while there is a lot of excitement about new things, I am sort of in limbo concerning my next project. I don't know if I am ready to pick up Sol Survivor yet. I almost think I need to work on Gem Hunter a bit to get an idea of some of the code involved. The other thing is there are a lot of RL things asking for attention. It is hard to say, what will happen, if anything in the next several weeks.

11 July 2021

Well that was fun. I spent a few hours helping Dr Tynehul get his onions and Boulder Dan getting his diamonds. I then played a few of the AJ & KJ games (Exploria, Adez I, Adez & the Pirates of Ud 2, Adez and all the Kings Gold, Adez & the Keys of Dengar (I guess I was in an Adez mood)). I am really quite happy with most of this. I should play a few of the other newer games just to make sure things are working as they should. I would like to convert some more of the old games, but don't think I have the patients. I may have to take a bit of a break, just so I can focus better on whatever it is I decide to tackle.

I know I am just looking for the low hanging fruit. I tidied up a few web pages. Added about 10 lines of code to Gem Hunter. Played the game for a bit, just to see what I had to do. Wow! another game that was totally devoid of sound. It's funny but I have come to realize how important sound is to a fun game. But I don't think much more will get done tonight. I will probably go back to looking at stuff and dreaming.

13 July 2021

I guess I didn't write about yesterday. Not that there is much to write about. I did a very tiny bit of work to Gem Hunter. Then I played it to see how the game played. Oh and I put Adez and Mr. What on the Cassiopei. Cleaned up some fo the folders on it as well. Played it for a bit to make sure it worked. Then I stopped. Today is about the same. I puttered around a bit with the web pages and then dissembled a bit of code in Exploria. It would be nice if I could fix a couple of small things in this game.

14 July 2021

Converted a bit more of Exploria. Got tired of it. I wish there was a way I could convert hex to decimal automatically. Actually I wonder if there is a way to use the vic to do this. All I need to look for is $. Well it took about an hour or so to program, but it totally worked! I just have to change the S00 file to a ASM and erase a bit of commenting. So all that I have to resolve (which will still be a pain) are the branches. I probably could have solved those as well, but I was too lazy to program it. I may still do that, as I don't think I want to resolve all of the branches. But that has saved a lot of time.

15 July 2021

I realized that I would have to look for the letters (B?? but not BIT or BRK), which would be hard but not impossible. Then keep track of the memory location. This would be difficult as I would have to keep track of the letters to build instructions then have a chart (like a dissembler)to see what the instruction was and count out the right number of memory locations. And then continue to count memory locations to get to the right one. Plus I couldn't do backwards branches because I am writing the new file as I am converting. So long story short, I will have to convert all of the branches by myself. While this will be a pain, I will grab my notes and it should help. If I am totally stuck (maybe no notes) I can try to look at the data. Not sure if this is something I want to do today. It is fairly hot so I will be splitting my time between outside and in. Stay out as long as I can stand it then come in and cool off. It has been warm for the last 2 weeks and will continue to be hot for the next week and a half. One thing I forgot to mention is there are many graphics in Gem Hunter that were un-used. I have an idea that as usual I had to cut back from my original idea. We will see but I hopefully can put some of these other things back in the game. I just tried a simple loop to make the cave but it kept crashing. I removed the scrolling and it doesn't make sense! It wasn't poking the right characters. I just used a hard number to make sure and yeah rather than poking 1s there is a V and then several Fs. I guess the Fs are coming from the second LDA, but that doesn't make sense. The Accumulator should be reset to 1 at the beginning of the loop. I don't get it. I am getting mad so I will leave it. After hours of frustration I found the problem. I made a mistake on the BASIC stub and it was trying to rechain the BASIC program, putting link values into my code. ARRRGG! So it works now. It was such a stupidly simple bit of code, it didn't make any sense that it wouldn't work. So maybe I'll just leave it there because I am tired.

16 July 2021

Wasn't in much of a mood to do much. I tried to compile the Disk Wizard but it wouldn't again. I added all parts of the program to one window (I thought it might be easier for me) and it still wouldn't compile. I finally looked at the errors and realized there are several constants and subroutines that are missing. I'm not sure if I should look for them in other parts of the program or just try to make them myself. Most do not seem to be too crazy (like wait for keypress). But I'm not going to do that now. I then just looked at the forum at Denial. Looking at many interesting things. I downloaded a tape adjuster program, something I had thought about converting myself (from the C64 program Headaligner), but someone beat me to it. (Surprize!) The cool thing is that rather than using custom graphics, they used poxils, and it uses the whole screen. Very cool! I had hoped to get back and do something this evening, but it is late and I am tired again.

17 July 2021

This morning before work I made the cave routine for Gem Hunter. It's not much but it seems to work. Next I guess I will add the creatures. But probably not now. Off to work soon. After work I was just beat. I added a bit for the end of the cave and tried a different colour. That was fun.

19 July 2021

Added the creatures and treasure to the caves. I think that part is pretty much done. I just have to add the joystick routine. I should add some sounds too I guess. Very half hearted in this. Maybe when I get some of the player movement in there. Even with the graphics, I haven't even used 1K. I will have to really expand this to make it a 3K release! Played on my Penultimate+ cart for a while. So I played the original a bit more and I'm not sure if I should make this change or not. Should the player automatically move forward, or should he (like in the original) move only when the player is moved down? I admit I am kind of leaning to the new idea. Almost finished the main loop. Just stuff to do with the fire button and creatures. Then the subs for end level, dead and the big one FIGHT! Although pretty minor stuff got done today, but it is starting to look like something.

23 July 2021

Between being busy and being uninterested I did nothing. So today I decided I would do something I am interested in. It started out that I would have a map and then there would be a platform game that would take you through said map. But before I finished the graphics for the map I started thinking about fonts. So I started making a new font. It isn't as nice as I had hoped and is missing numbers and stuff. Then I started thinking about how I need to start working on first person ideas. So I made some tree graphics and set up the screen for a first person something. So I don't know what this is yet. But it is something. Thinking about this, I have the graphics all wrong. I was going to do a semi bit-mode graphic thing, but it will have to be sprites. It is something I haven't done although I don't think it will be too hard (for what I am doing anyway). I think I need to break this into 2 different projects. One will be the platformer and I will work on my half character movement, the other would be a simple first person something.

26 July 2021

Just too busy to do much except think about some of this stuff. Just a note to myself, for the first person idea I would have to replace an old idea and I was thinking maybe #18,32,63,64,68,97 or 99. I was, for a moment thinking I could change the second part of Sol:Survivor to use this. After a bit of thought though, I think I should continue the way I have been going with that. Even if I don't complete this, I do want to see where it goes for now. Playing with the graphics, but I am too tired to be able to make it work.

27 July 2021

Spent about 30 minutes writing code for the tree. It looks OK. I think the issue will be to make a formula that will work for this, and for sprites. It is kinda cool to watch.
 

Working on Castle Queen
 

11 August 2021

I have been thinking about something I tried to do forever ago. I thought about looking for it but I think that the program has been lost in the ether. There wasn't much of a program anyway. It was just the graphics and a screen that showed what it could look like. It was actually my first attempt at some isometric graphics. I didn't even know the word at the time. It would even predate Exploria. Anyway I just decided to re-create them as best as I could. It didn't really have a name so I decided to call it Castle Queen for the time being. After playing Exploria I think I would like to try another game with the isometric grpahics. Maybe, just maybe with pixel movement. I doubt that I will do much more as I am still busy. Home has been busy, work has been busy. I guess that's what happens when they lift restrictions after 18 months. Hopefully I can pick something up soon. I tweaked the graphics a bit more and added some colour, so here is another pic.

Oh and I played Dynasty the other day. Now I want to try to make a disk for that game too. One thing at a time I guess.

12 August 2021

Nervous about tomorrow so to pass some time I coded. I wrote a routine that will poke a character sprite around with the background as well. I haven't tested it fully, but after several hours it seems to be working. I am using the isometric graphics. What will be difficult will be determining when you are off of a tile. If I get some joystick stuff in there I can test it a bit more, but I doubt that there will be time tomorrow.

13 August 2021

While having coffee, I added a bit to move the coarse directions. I shouldn't have, but I did. And then added the animation. Seems to work fine. Next will be joystick and maybe stuff to move enemies.

14 August 2021

Very hung over today. I still managed to get the joystick routines to work, but it took longer than it should have and I think that is all the brain strength I have today. I set up something to show the character underneath and the x and y numbers. I will have to set up some rules so the character stays on the blocks. I won't be easy, but I think I can do it. Then next I will have to move the enemies. I think I will make 4. They will be easier because they will only follow paths (maybe double back if they sense you?) and they won't have to follow the rules too much. I also have an idea for the level set up. Store the width and depth of each platform and the height, add in the enemies (start pos, end pos), ladders, keys (maybe as an offset to save memory) and endings.

16 August 2021

So coded for a bit, I just worked on getting the NW edge working. I think it is. I will try the other directions and see if I can get it to work. I am a bit concerned though, I have already used up 1K. I still have to finish the joystick (checking to see if you are on a platform), move enemies, and the level maker. Plus the 300 bytes for graphics. I was hoping to fit it into an unexpanded vic but it just may not. OK there is a bit of an issue and it took a while to understand why it was happening. At the Map1 (0,0) check, if you move up and left at the same time it will cross the boundary. I think I kinda understand why, but not entirely sure how to fix it. Well I decided to attempt the up ladder stuff and I almost had it. The problem is that when you get off the ladder you are not centered and now all of the checks for edges are different. I will have to look into this further for solutions. But perhaps later. I kept coding and I have all of the directions working. I have had almost fully working portions, but never the whole thing at once. I know I am close I just can't seem to get off of the top of the ladder (and maybe back on, but I can't check it). Running out of steam but I have to work early in the morning anyway. 1500 bytes!

17 August 2021

After work I tried to fix my problem. I do have it working to get off of the ladder, but now I can't get back on. It is a tricky problem with my ladder flag and the way I check the spots for edges and ladders before I check for joystick movement. I'm sure I will have a similar problem at the bottom of the ladder as well. Too tired to figure it out now. But I did make some progress. I made a new cover for this game and it will be replacing number 97.

18 August 2021

Last night I was thinking about how to solve this problem. A quick check to see if you were going down would suffice. But I thought what if in the split seconds before the joystick was read again you went left (or something). So I had 10 minutes before work so I saved a check to the joystick, to be used for up, down and left. And then in the ladder routine checked to see if you were getting on or off the top of the ladder. Boom! It works! I will have to make some small adjustments to this yet but I can move all around now. Now off to work.

19 August 2021

Tired AF! I just tested it and see 2 little things I need to adjust One is where you get off the ladder when going down. The other is when going right, there is a place on the edge where it stops you (0,0) and it shouldn't. Then I will have to get the other ladder on the screen to test. OK still testing. There is one stick place once leaving the ladder, but I think I will work on something else just for a bit. Figuring out the movement is frustrating, but I do almost have it. I really want to work on the level set up, but I should instead look at modifying my sprite movement. There are a few things I need to change into variables. One are the 4 sprite boxes, and the other are the masks. Maybe it just seems harder than it is. Looking at it, I think I am just having a problem finding a place to put variables. I want a contiguous place for them and yet I don't want them to be in the way of my program. I guess I could put them in between the graphics and the space character. Hopefully it will fit. I just tried making the mask and character OR parts and it isn't working and it seems other parts of the movement aren't working. So frustrating. Got home from work and it's the strangest thing. It seems to work fine (except for an odd thing on the mask that I can't figure out yet.)

20 August 2021

Brain is not fully engaged yet. I am going slow and just replacing the mask and characterOR parts. Hopefully they work and the next part will be the characters that the sprite live at. Well it's almost working, for some reason when the index is increased, it is doing something strange. So 1 sprite looks fine and the other does not. Doh! In the end I hadn't reset a variable. So the character stuff is working now. I would like to have the character face the right direction, so maybe I will fix that. Yaaa! One more step complete. I now have the different masks and characters set up. The right and left player sprites are working! Unfortunately there isn't enough room for the enemy masks and characters. But because they are in a table I can move them somewhere else. I am starting to change some of the numbers to varaibles, but I am starting to have difficulty wrapping my head around all of this. The sprite is OK I think, but when trying to move out of the box it seems to be reset. Oh I will have to put all of the variables back. I think I know what is wrong, more testing. OK I have a good portion of it working now. I think I have everything in place, now I will just have to try changing it to the enemy to test. But it is time for work. I got home from work and tried to code, but I am falling asleep as I type this.

21 August 2021

Well here goes nothing. OK well, sort of working? For some reason it is using the same sprite. I'll see if I can fix it. I thought maybe it was the offset for the graphics for the sprite, but it isn't. Not sure what is happening or why it is. I will take a bit of a break and see if I can trouble shoot this. Not sure why but this is taking forever. I now have 2 sprites appearing but the backgrounds are messed up. I need another break. Yeah I messed everything up. I'm too tired to figure this out. I decided to come back and try again. One thing I thought I might change is the joystick routine. It uses the same variables as the sprite, so I changed them. Then all of the sudden a bunch of branches were out of range. That didn't make sence, all I changed was the varaible. But later rather than sooner I realised I changed all of the varaibles from zero page to absolute. Crap! OK I have the player moving and the background right and it seems to be working. But it is flickering really bad. This is something I wanted to address before but there are issues. I will have to leave it for now. I also added the enemy routine, and it sort of works. For some reason it isn't moving the coarse x. And there is a problem with the erase part, so I have just left it out. I now have the enemy set routine working, the erase is mixing both sprites. So more work needs to be done. But not tonight.

22 August 2021

I'm going to be honest and say I don't know what was wrong. But I did see quite a bit of code that should be changed fixed and re-arranged. After I was done, the routines worked fine together. Yaa! Now to make it more complex again. I will have to make the enemies work for 4 of them. Just added the Y direction movement, I guess it isn't working. I'm not really sure why, also trying to get the player to pick up the key. Nothing is working again!! ARRGG! Well the key is working. The player is working again. For a while the enemy was overwriting everything, but I seem to have that stopped. It isn't working though and I don't think I can fix it tonight.

23 August 2021

I think the places where I am storing some of the variables are being changed by the system. When I am less tired I will try some safer memories and see if I am still having difficulty.

25 August 2021

My concern was the system was corrupting my variables. I may have been right. I changed them to safer locations and they aren't jumping to crazy odd numbers, but they aren't changing either. And my animation flags aren't working. Yes that was probably the problem, plus I had some branches backwards. So now the robot (1) is moving! And the animation for it is working as well. Now I jst have to see why the animation for the player stopped working. The only issue is when the player and robot cross, the characters are messed up. I moved the enemy put back (erase) routine and it SHOULD have just worked but now it looks like the players old characters/characters underneath (map) aren't getting read properly. But at least when the 2 cross the characters are put back fine. OK the animation flag was not being increased, that's the easy one. Now to fix the map vars. OK I know what's wrong. When I wrote the joystick routine it checked the map vars for the sprite (because at that time those were the ONLY map vars), but now there are 5 sets of map vars and the last thing to use the sprite is the enemy. I wouldn't have known but the robot just happened to be crossing a ladder and I momentarily moved in only one axis. If not for that, I could have been searching for the problem for hours! I guess I should change them to player maps, that will be a bit more clumsy though,as I don't have lables for all 4. OK that's done. So there are 2 things I want to do with the sprites before I move on. One is to stop the flickering on the player. Because of the order I have done things in, it will require some serious brain power. The other thing is to expand the enemy move to work for all 4 enemies (I may have room for a 5th but not sure yet). Oh and I want to change the graphics a bit again. OK did a bunch of little things, and started the map maker. I shouldn't have but I guess I need to start it sooner or later. I'm not sure this is all going to fit into an unexpanded vic, but I'll keep going until it doesn't.

26 August 2021

Well Damn. It was working! I worked on the map maker this evening. I had a heck of a time making the diamonds so making left or right leaning rectangles is out for the time being. I got the diamonds to finally display properly and quickly make a routine for the ladders and the keys. I THOUGHT I had it all working. Then after I took a picture (when it was working) I added another diamond, and everything fell apart. I am too tired at this point to debug the ladder routine, so I will have to leave it for now. Starting to feel like a game, although I am running out of space quickly. Down to about 300 bytes in the main part of RAM. Not sure the 300 or so bytes in the cassette buffer and at 673 will be enough. Again I will just keep working at it. New pic, test level. OOOH.

27 August 2021

It didn't take long to get back on track. I was using Y for 2 indexes and being tired last night lost track of which was which. So I added the exit, and player co-ords. I'm just thinking about how to save the enemy direction nodes. I also had an idea how to fix the map maker for trapezoids, more on this later. There is still lots to do but it's maybe looking like it may fit in 0K, maybe. Finally getting the robot to start at the right spot. Next I will have to get it to look for nodes.

27 August 2021

I was just about to start coding for this node idea, when I realized how much code it will take. It would be the better method to use but as I said it will take way too much memory. I got a much more simple idea using counters and I think that is the way I will go. Also copying the information seems redundant. I think I will just try to use a pointer to the place in the map. The benefit of this method is I can have as many points and change of direction as I want. WOW!!! I can't believe it! It actually works. Now the difficulty will be to make it work for 4 robots! Oh and I'll check to see where we are for memory. Lol. About 100 bytes left. I can try to see if I can tighten my code a bit, but I think I need about 700 more bytes to finish this. There are about 200 bytes in the cassette buffer and about 80 left @ 680. I had wanted a song, that alone would be at least 300 bytes. But another 3K seems like it is too much. Tidied up a few small things. You can collect the keys and finish the level, although I will have to make a fix for when you don't have enough keys to not go up the out door. Not sure what I want to try next. The trapezoid part of the map maker or fixing the enemy routine to work for 4 robots. They will both be difficult, especailly with the amount of memory I have left. OK fixed the ending without enough keys. Well trying to fix the enemy routine and I ran out of memory. Not entirely sure how I want to move forward. I, at this point, am just trying to get the map maker to save the enemies properly. I'm over about 40 bytes. Maybe I should take a bit of a break and come back to this. I remembered there is room between the space character and the sprites, not much, but a bit. It will keep me working for a bit longer. Well I have the first robot working but for some reason the mask is messed up. Hmm I'm looking for why the numbers aren't matching and I can see why. I guess I do need a break. DOH. I have variables stored there, and they were overwriting my masks! I moved it above the variables and now no problem. There's even 10 bytes to spare. OK can I fix the enemy routine in less than 10 bytes? Well I've made it fit, now to test it. Nope, I guess I will have to debug it after my walk. I found a couple of things, but I think I'm getting further from a fix than closer. I will keep at it for a bit, but getting tired. It is frustrating because I know I am close, but I just can't figure it out. I just wanted to look at it one more time, and decided to slow it down. I saw that the first cycle was fine but the next 2 were not. I looked at the code a realized that 3 vars were not being reset except in the first time through the loop. SO the first enemy is fixed. There is definately a problem in the map maker is setting the robots values, but also possibly more in the enemy loop. Missing an INY in the map maker. OK and the enemy loop was using the same sprite for all 3 robots. I think I found the problem. When moving the enemy x and y stuff I was just using one index, but I needed two. One to access the enemies across a range of 24 to the sprite zero page adresses which was on 4 adresses. Then I ran out of memory. I found some stuff that was redundant, and we try again. YAA!! It works. Well sort of. I had a counter to only move the robots every 3 cycles, but the way I have it programmed only robot 1 waits the others cruise along every cycle. I think that is enough for tonight. OK I made a quick routine that moves sound3 (the level end sound), that I had to temporarily remove, to the area at 690. It just fits! 2 bytes to spare. Not sure how I can finish this game with just whats left in the cassette buffer.

29 August 2021

CHOP! So now my goal is to fit this into the remaining memory. So many of the things I was going to include are now off of the table. Trapezoidal shapes for the map : gone. Different speeds for the robots : gone. Even the method that I will use to check if the player and enemy collide will be heavy handed. Instead I made level 2. I decided to make the robots move in circles to prove that I could. Took out a ton of redundancies at the beginning of the code. Later I hope to quickly make the collision routine and dead, game over stuff. Well shit I made the cheapest dead, game over, & new level routines that I could, added level2 to the cassette buffer and I am at 1023!!! No more room! So I have a game, but I really wanted a few different levels. I have no idea where I can put them. I have 6 bytes @ 7162 & 10 bytes @ 7510. Neither is enough for a level, no matter how cheap I make it. OK I made a cheap level, and squeezed it in. Then I think I found a place for the last 2 levels. The input buffer has 88 bytes and I won't use much of that after the game is started. So I will try there. I badly underestimated how big a level was. I thought I could fit 2 levels into that space, but I could onky fit one. So I tried in the stack, and of course it crashed. I will try a bit higher and see if I can make it work. I tried something else, I realized I didn't need the Y data for the diamonds and that save a few more bytes, but it still wasn't enough. I just couldn't make the level work in the stack, so I have no choice but to just make this for 4 levels. I should make level 3 a bit better, I have a few more bytes, but aside from that there isn't any more I can do. I fussed about it anyway. But I guess good or bad it is done. It looks better than it is. I feel bad, it could have been so much more. I will have to revisit this concept again. I wanted to get this onto a TAP, and started getting the picture ready, but it will need a fair amount of doctoring and I am tired now.

30 August 2021

Worked on the title screen today and made the TAP. I will send it upstairs if I have time. While I am a bit disappointed in the final game, it is quite an accomplishment. My first game with sprites and I had to do the isometric view, and try to fit into 3.5K! I may try to make a few small fix ups, but there isn't room to do much. I really wish there was room for one more level, but that ship has sailed. Anyhoo time for a walk. I am working on the cover and hope to do all of my usual rituals later today, but we will see. I think I may be in the sauce tonight. One thing I was thinking about was making another 4 levels and putting them on the other side. I guess I have one already finished.

TAP is done, at least side 1. Well as predicted I am in the sauce, but I decided to make 3 more levels anyway. I was doing well until the last level. For some reason robot1 is not doing what it is supposed to. I am far too gone to figure this out. I checked the data that it reads to calculate it's path and that's fine. It doesn't make any sense. So I guess I will leave it here for now. So very close to finishing. I guess I will have to wait to cross this one off.

31 August 2021

Hung over so trying to figure it out didn't work. Something is overwriting the end of the level, so I just got rid of the second robot. I'm done. I did think of a way to save a few more bytes but probably won't code it. For the end of the robot movement I can add the flag (128) and the amount of bytes to move back, together. That would limit the movement to 32 moves but that seems fine. I know I will want to revisit this again, but hope I can add more stuff. I will probably will have to add 3K.

1 September 2021

Did some of the webpages last night, and also the cover and instructions. A few more today. Sent the second side upstairs to the real vic. Played it a bit. Took some pictures. Updated the catalogue. Nothing strenuous. When I got home from work I continued to fix and change web pages and things. I guess the next question is, where do I go from here? There are many projects started, I guess I just have to find something that interests me. I guess the other thing is, I am not in a hurry.

2 September 2021

I made the change in the second game for the robot terminator. The hardest part was changing the terminators to add in the number of bytes back (and that really wasn't that hard). It saved 2 bytes in the main program (lol) but 1 byte for every robot, so 10 bytes in the second set of levels. This saved one byte in the level in the input routine which allowed me to return the second robot. YAA! I guess even though the game does fall a bit short, I am still super happy with this game! The things I am disappointed with are: when the player and enemy sprites collide but does not result in player termination, the rules for platform edges and ladders aren't followed (that's the big one). The lack of better sprite integration (sometimes difficult to pick up keys, get off ladders ect.). No music. Not as many levels as I would have liked. What I am happy about: first attempt at sprites and although small look really good and are animated and load in and mask out the backgrounds. The isometric level design, this made things much more difficult for my first attempt but also made it look really good. The robot movement, I have never had planned routed movement, I always thought it would be difficult, this counter method was actually fairly easy (of course I have to make sure all this works as there are no checks). And the map maker, probably an improved (and lesser) version of what I created in Exploria. But the ladders and other integrated things make this version much better. I just have to make a new TAP, again I am in no hurry today. There is a part of me that wants to expand the memory and add in the things that this version is lacking. Well I made a folder for it, but I'm not entirely sure that I will go any further with this. I did start working on a bit of stuff, but then I got drunk. While I would like to do more tonight, I don't think I will.

3 September 2021

Just an odd day. Off and on I coded and then tried to debug the middle part. Not exactly sure how big it is but everything above 8192 is almost 1K already! Not having a lot of success. Oh and I decided to add 8K, just because many people feel the 3K cart is a waste, but also because it can translate to a cartridge fairly easy. That may be something I may look into at some point. Too tired to continue this.

5 September 2021

Drove most of the day. When I returned, because there is a dangerous criminal on the loose, they suggested people stay inside. So I spent a couple hours de-bugging the mess that makes the middle of the trapezoid shape. I'm guessing it is about 300 bytes. I think I have it working now. Probably need to test it a bit more, but it seems like it is working. If it continues to work tomorrow I will try to move on to fix the collision stuff. Oh but it looks like I broke something else. Everything is running 100 times faster, and the warp isn't on the emulator.

6 September 2021

Last night I was in the hospital. Turned out it was a kidney stone, it was a long painful night. So I don't think I will do much coding. But I did think of something I want to include in the map maker. And that is a join, if it is character @ and it lands on a character C (orG) it will turn into character L (also A and B (orF) to L). I will have to include this in the top and middle routines. Fixed the top routine, but my brain is too addled to fix the middle. Oh yeah Happy Kenny Shields day!

7 September 2021

Feeling horrible tonight. Tired and sick. No coding tonight, but I have to mention something. As well as the computer running too fast. The robots are not in the right place and the game crashes. I don't know why because I haven't gone past for map maker section for almost a week. So when I am able I will have a lot to troubleshoot.

8 September 2021

I know. I didn't do anything again today. I am feeling better at least. But I have been thinking about having some friends over to play some vic games, and just so that they actually come, I will call it a retro party. In this theme I have been thinking about what things I will need. I have 2 working Vics, a flat screen 19" TV (old school square screen!) several monitors, several disk drives, My CASSIOPEI, and Penultimate+ cart. So I was thinking I would just leave the penultimate cart in 1 machine and use the CASSIOPEI to show off my games. The one issue I just thought of is that I will have to fool around with memory carts for my games. DOH. Oh well, what can you do. At least none need the 16k cart yet (because mine doesn't work anymore). I did think I should have a couple of copies of new games, and maybe a nice handout, but I don't think there will be time for that. We will see if any of this happens. I checked out a few vic vidos and ended up quickly watching the vic videos I have at one of my Youtube channels. Firstly I think I need a separate channel for vic stuff. Secondly, while not horrible, the videos there could probably use a bit of re-editing. But most importantly is: I had planned to make more videos to show off the games I was most proud of, and only did 3. So there you go, more random useless thoughts.

9 September 2021

Finally coded the fix for joining in the middle section. A little bit of testing seems like it works. I feel confident to move on. I guess the hunt is on for what is speeding up the Vic. I know it is nothing serious because a simple RUNSTOP/RESTORE fixes that issue. My guess is I am using a zero page location that I shouldn't. The funny thing is, I don't think I am using any new locations, so I don't know where this is coming from. I traced it down to the sound, but again there is nothing funny going on there. I thought it had to be the delay (still doesn't make sense but..) so I took them out and then things were fine. Odd. I made a new sub with THE SAME INSTRUCTIONS!!! and it worked! So I'm not sure if CBMPS is doing this or if it is just because my program is so contiguous (4096 to 9128) but it doesn't like that subroutine way down there. So odd. I took out all of my RTS and it did it again, but I am sure it is because a different sound uses the OLD delay. Just weird. So although this worked for Realm of Evil, I'm not sure why it won't work now. I wanted to move everything above 8192 anyway, but I was hoping I could do it later. I guess I will have to do it now. Then I accidentally unplugged the laptop! OK I only lost a very little bit. Just quickly checking I have a little less than 4K left to finish. I think I am good with the game, but I hope I have room for the splash page and stuff. All I have to do with the game now is fix the collisions, see if I can fix the flicker a bit, and make more levels. Oh and I want to add 2 extra things. A teleporter and a change character. The teleporter will be easy. The change character, not so much. I may have to load the current level into lower ram and change the map there. Because I want the change to be anything. A key, a ladder, a platform, a teleporter, a robot, an exit, maybe even another change. But perhaps this would be too much for me to do. I guess we will see. OK. Reorganized everything so it sits above 8192, I decided to add the splash page and it's data (which needed a bit of fixing and then I had to run it through autopic again). Lots of little things to get everything together, but we are good now. I took out all of the RTS and just tried it. BOOM! The game works again perfectly (or as perfect as it did before). So I have about 2K left, but again I don't have a huge amount of things to do. The collision fix should be about 200 bytes or less. The flickering hopefully less than 100 bytes. Adding an extra sprite will be almost zero as I have allocated the space for it already and will just need a few small changes to the code. Making a level creator will be a separate program, and finally a music player will be 500-700 bytes. Although I may make it a bit longer if I have the space. Just for laughs I should make a cart version to see if it will run. So anyway, I'm not sure if I will do much more today, but I'm glad I have a working game again. Well almost. There are a few more fixes ahead. For some reason the player's mask or character isn't right when facing right. My guess is that stuff is on a page boundary, if that's all it is, it will be a simple fix. The other problem is the last 4 levels use a few different numbers (the platforms do not have the trapezoid numbers, and the robots use the combined terminator/bytes back). Not a difficult fix, but something I will have to do. OH! and something else I would like to include is a straight up and down movement for the robots (maybe even a pause!) so they can go up and down ladders. So yes the right facing issue was a boundary thing. I saved several bytes and it looks fine now, but I will have to watch it when I change things. I changed the program to a combined terminator and move bytes back, but forgot to omit one instruction in the map maker. It should work now. A few more small fixes but now the robot mask is over the boundary. I will have to put something there to fix that. OK. Time for the dogs walk. Just a quick thought. Have a change on a timer! OOOOhh!

10 September 2021

Coded the bit for seeing what characters are under the enemy characters. This SHOULD keep the player on platforms and ladders. It is 59 bytes, if it works. I was hoping I could add it to Castle Queen but at almost 60 bytes I think it is too big. If it doesn't work it will be difficult to debug and fix. It isn't working but I just remembered I thought to get ready for the 6th sprite I would add it in. So it is looking at the wrong robot ATM. I think all I have to change is the table for the sprite. I hope that's all. I'll try again. Well crap it's still not working.

11 September 2021

Some days you never forget. Even though it is 20 years later. Even though it happened in another country and several thousands of miles away. But I won't dwell on this here. I figured out a way to trouble shoot this. It took about 30 minutes of looking at numbers, then I found the mistake. I was saving a number to get the fine part of the index, but I was saving it too soon. It would be 40 instead of 0! While I was looking at the numbers to see if they were right, I quickly noticed something. The player was now following all of the edge and ladder rules! So I think this is working. I am out of time for today, but happy I have this working.

Back from work and I doubt that I will do anymore programming tonight, but I just thought it was funny. All I will be doing till I complete this game is a constant breaking and then fixing the game. I am so glad that this little routine works. If I counted it right it is 59 bytes long. I am hoping there is a way I can squeeze it into Castle Queen. That would make me super happy! Just looked at it and saw 2 things that saved more bytes. It is 53 bytes now. I was so happy but now I can only find about 14 bytes to spare in Castle Queen. Unless I find something huge I can remove, I don't think I can fix Castle Queen.

12 September 2021

I set up my vic stuff outside and set up a second system. I was going to invite people over but didn't in the end. I did try to make a disk for Castle Queen as well but I must have been too far from the house for the wi-fi to work, so I couldn't send files between the laptop and the vic. When it got dark I moved everything inside. What a day. So a bit during the day and then after I came in, I looked at Castle Queen. It is so disappointing but there is no way to include the fix without sacrificing something else. So all I can do is move on. Next issue is flickering. At this point I am almost fine with the way it looks. Added a 'Game Over' to the end and added a sound when you die. Still kinda working on that, I don't really like it. I took the tune I wrote during Adez & Dengar and put it on the title screen. Took a little bit to debug but it seems to all be working now. It's funny now, with the title tune, I'm not sure I want a song during the game. Can't get the dead sound to work properly. I guess I am tired, time to call it a night. I just wanted to see where I am space-wise. I have used 6548 bytes! So I guess what ever I want to do, I will have to wrap it up in about 1500 bytes.

13 September 2021

My plan for today was to start making the map maker program, but there is one thing (2 things) I have to do first. That is to include the 2 new things to the map maker and then the main program. As I said, the teleport won't be too hard. It will be the change. If I were just changing platform, that wouldn't actually be too hard, but I want to add (or remove) other things like ladders, keys and teleport (maybe robots too!). After thinking about this, I will limit the change to platforms, ladders and keys. Well I was going to add the 2 graphics characters I needed and ended up making a new font. I thought my opening page looked a little plain in the regular Vic 20 font, so I made a new one. OK added the teleport and change graphics. I feel like I should have done more, but it just didn't happen.

14 September 2021

Fixed the dead sound. Added the teleport and change to the map maker. Now I will have to make them interact with the player. In a fair amount of pain so I may not get to this today. OK I have the teleport working. Change will be a pain. I think I will have to turn the ladders and keys sections into subroutines. I think I will also have to move the exit to the beginning of the level data. Yeah this will be a pain. Baby steps I guess. OK moved the out. That works. I tried to turn the map maker into a bunch of subroutines. Nope not working. It was a reversed branch, but I just realized something. If I want to reprint the keys, I will have to keep track of which ones have been picked up. Well there goes that idea. Unless it is the only one, or I account for the keys re-appearing. Actually that may not be the worst thing. OK a couple of little things fixed and the map maker is working again. So now I will have to build the change and test. Just looking at the space left I probably have room for about 20 levels if I don't make another song.

15 September 2021

I think I finished coding the map maker for change. I don't have time ATM, but I will test it a little later this afternoon. Just a quick run and it seems to work, so next I will have to add the change to the player joystick routine. Back from walking the dog and a few random thoughts. One was when I started a few weeks ago I really thought 8K would be way more than enough memory to finish the game. But as I realize, it didn't take very long to fill that space and I am now under a memory crunch again. I guess the big difference is I decided I needed to fit everything into 8K. I wanted the option to turn it into a cartridge. I wasn't thinking about the fact that everything had to be in the one program (like the title screen), none of these loaders that I usually use. I am pretty certain that with the extra 3K (of the original vic) I could have made it happen with whatever little things I may have to cut here. At any rate there is the option of going to a 16K cart, but I really don't like that option. Anyway I hope to complete this in the allotted 8K. So another thought occurred to me. Maybe the cassette version SHOULD be different. Use the loaders and the extra 3K, this would give me a lot of options. I guess we will see how ambitious I get. So back to a bit of testing. I should have things set up for 5 robots, but I haven't tested it yet. Another thing I didn't try are platforms with no sides. I hope this works otherwise it could be difficult to debug, it would also mean Castle Queen would have issues as well (maybe this is where I could save enough bytes to fix the collision routine). And lastly I still have to code the change bit. It won't be much code, but because it is tied into so many other things it could be disasterous. OK the 0 edge platforms had an issue in it. I was assigning A twice. So that's fixed but ther is an issue with the ladders. Also it is only showing 4 robots, not 5. Oh and the 0 direction works! I will have to test directions 5 & 6. OK the ladders weren't checking for characters @,A,B or C. A few more instructions but it is working now, also I had to add colour as well. Now to see about my missing robot. Well that is odd. I just had him moving in the 0 direction and he wouldn't appear, but once I made him move he is there. So I guess I just can't have robot 5 not moving. OK now to test directions 5 & 6. For some reason it won't work for robot 5 but it seems to work for robot 1. So there may be an issue with robot 5 yet. I have been playing around with a complicated set of enemy moves and it works great! Robot 2 is now moving down the ladder waiting then moving back up the ladder. So cool! I'm not 100% sure but I think something is using the locations for robot 5. I will have to look for this later. First I want to try to code the change and see how that will work. Crap I just found a bit of a problem. I was using 673-675 as temp varaibles for the map maker, but when using the change this will change things for the robots. I will have to change them all. OK coded all the changes, I am nervous to try. WOW! I think it works. The change doesn't actually do anything yet, but the screen is reset. I will just have to put the number of men left back on the screen. Also the collect or numkey variables is changed, I'll have to check into that a bit. Ouch! Down to 900 bytes!! Well the ladder doesn't work, but I am out of time. Much more testing and debugging ahead. Back from work and I just looked at the map ladder bit and there was some issue with the logic of my branches. That fixed it. So now I will just have to do a bit more testing, then make levels. I would like to continue but I am just too tired.

16 September 2021

Today I will try to make a program to make levels. There are several things I'm not sure if I can include. Like the robot paths. I kinda want to have a level title screen, but I don't know if there will be room. Oh if I have time, I removed some redundant code from Castle Queen. I should see if I have room for the fix. Damn only 40 bytes. I still need another 15 bytes. Found a snippet of code that was common and turned it into a subroutine. I now have 66 bytes! I can fix it!!! Hopefully there is enough room to fix the alternate levels as well. Well it seems I have 10 bytes to spare, now to test it. Well that appears to work, so now I just have to fix the alternate levels. I finally feel that the original version of Castle Queen is complete. Compiled so I have what I need to make a TAP, D64 and later a cassette and disk. Now I will start with the level editor. Instead I tried getting a cartridge version to work, but still a huge failure! OK started the level editor. I have the joystick routine working, but having issues getting it to select a platform. I think for some reason it isn't seeing the one that is there and is trying to make a new one in the same place. I'm so tired I don't even want to debug it. Instead I added the level title to the game, and once I had it working realised I will have to remove it. I needed more characters for the numbers and that alone ate up a ton of bytes, but with all of the formatting and printing stuff it left me with only 400 bytes to finish. That is not acceptable. I want to have at least 20 levels, so the titles will have to go (unless I do the fancy cassette). SO for now I decided to edit a few levels by hand, and I see my reverse trapezoid is not working. DOH! I was putting the negative in the wrong byte. So although levels 1-3 will be similar, they are different. Level 3 gets to show off the cool way that you can program the robots. OK I was going to save the cool robot moves for later but I decided I may as well show off right from the get go. So level 1 has a robot moving up and down a ladder, level 2 has a super tough robot to get by, and level 3 has a robot come straight for you before going into a pattern. Yeah maybe level 2's robot is too hard, but I have an early morning so I will have to work on this tomorrow. Well I just checked, I have about 700 bytes to finish. I have data for about 8 levels in there already (although they will have to be modified quite a bit). I may not fit 20 levels in there but it should be close.

17 September 2021

Too lazy to work on the level editor. I just decided to modify levels. I made a few more changes to the first 3 levels and modified the next 3. So I think I have levels 1 to 6 complete. I also found a bug in the change part of the maps. I think I have it fixed now. There was this odd thing that when you got all the keys none of the rules to stay on the platforms were working but after I fixed the change map bug it hasn't re-appeared. I hope it stays that way. Also the 4 bytes I added for the fix seems to put the char or masks into a boundary again. Just checking, and I haven't used much more memory. I still have about 700 bytes left.

18 September 2021

Did a bit of housekeeping. Updated some of the internet pages (I have a big update coming soon). Made the new Castle Queen TAPs. I just have to transfer them to the CASSIOPEI. I should be able to make the disk version as well. But first, off to work. So tired when I got home, but I did transfer the files to the CASSIOPEI. Unfortunately the disk splash program isn't working. I'm not sure why.

19 September 2021

Blah. So I investigated the disk version a bit and it seems like the AJ loader is doing something that makes the splash load crash. That is SO odd. I have never had this problem before. Congratulations to the stupidest mistake of all! I found right at the beginning of the splash program a LDX #0, STA 198! So after a cassette load I can assume A is below the input threshhold, but for a disk it is above 88. Making the input queue larger than possible and crashing the machine. AND the worst part is once I found it, I remembered that I DID have problems with this before! I will have to check and fix any versions of the splash loader I find. PLUS this very likely could be what is crashing the cartridge version. What a stupid horrible mistake! So the disk verison of Castle Queen works fine now, and is complete. I will just have to make a cover. Yep now the cartridge version of Super Castle Queen works fine. Unfortunately I won't have time till later to work on anything, but when I return I can hopefully get a handle on the level editor. I opened the program several times. I even wrote a bit of code. But I just can't seem to focus. I just ended up modifying levels. I think I am finished up to level 9. Down to about 600 bytes now.

20 September 2021

Wanted to fix level 9 a bit. Changed level 7s colours, I will save them for another level. I also remembered I have some fixing to do. The change and teleport disappear always, also the problem with zero height for the diamonds is also in the trapezoids. I will have to tackle the player flickering after all. Some levels it is very annoying. I was thinking about adding a timer to the change, this is possible, but will require more code. Also there should be a skip for the ladders and keys if the change is triggered a second time. I have many things to do today so I should try to do the RL things first, even though I don't want to. When I returned instead of fixing anything (also one more fix I thought of, have to re-print the men left after a change) I made level 10. The robot paths are quite complex, and I die often.

I didn't want to start fixing stuff but I started. So the trapezoid issue was something different. I simply wasn't checking if the trapezoid was 0 height. So I think that is fixed. What other low hanging fruit can I pick? So started to fix the change character, in that it always disappears. I realized it was because the platforms drew overtop of it (and the teleport). At this point I think removing the teleport after a change is OK (I may feel differently about it later) but I do want it there to change back and forth (sometimes). I did some tinkering and then the game just started crashing. I was pretty sure that something in the graphics had crossed a boundary and was being read wrong. Sure enough. Luckily a quick fix. So I coded the change character to re-appear after the platforms were drawn. But then it was like getting stuck in a loop as the player is still standing on the change character. So I made a timer and a respawn, so hopefully it will be off for a short while. I will need the timer for the change anyway. That actually works really good. Added the fix so the men left shows after a change. I have the timer portion working partially. I think there is an issue with the way it is set in the map maker. OK I have all of that working now. I also added a bit that if you get caught when a platform disappears. All that is left is the flickering. Oh and this odd thing with the ladders now. I am sure that I had the colour poked to memory as well but it seems like it is not working with the change. Found the issue, it was in the player change when I added the index I forgot to add it to the colour as well. There was a small bug in the new dead routine as well, but I think I have it all working! Well crap with the new fixes and levels I am almost out of room. There about 100 bytes left! Also I have 12 levels complete.

21 September 2021

I tried to get rid of the flickering, but I would have to do a major rewrite of the code. Just becuase of the way the sprites interact with each other. So I guess I will have to leave it. There isn't much room to fix it anyway. There was an odd thing, but realized that the change timer wasn't reset and it would try to change after the timer counted down on the next level as well. So I guess I will try to make one or two more levels and I guess that is it. I made what I thought would be level 14, and went to make level 13 and found I am about 50 bytes over. If I could I could make it smaller but there is no way to do this.

22 September 2021

So I made one last level (by the way the level editor will not be finished, there is no point) and I have to decide if I am keeping it, and what other level I will cut if I am. So lucky 13 levels it is. I was thinking I could tuck the level intros inbetween page 17 and 24, for the cassette verion, if I want. That should be enough room for the new font. OK for the main game I have decided to cut level 12 : The Bridge. It looked cool, but was quite easy. If I can have more levels in the cassette version, then this will be back in. So with this cut I have about 30 bytes free. Just one more tweak to level 2. OK so I copied the whole thing to the cartridge version, so that is done. I then chopped up the bits for the level name stuff and added level12 there (although I guess I have to test it) I stuck it at 4120. It uses about 800 bytes, but I think I could put about another K of stuff there, maybe. But I don't think I will. I think I am done. Played it and lasted until level 10 Lemony. I just have to make a couple of loaders. But I think that will have to wait till tomorrow.

23 September 2021

I used the 8K autoloader, and modified the 8K AJ loader but something bad is happening. I think when the loader is loading in the data @ 4120 (which is still the screen) it doesn't like that. I'm going to test a few things but also try the 0K loader as I think it forces the screen to page 30. Nope something odd is going on but I can't figure it out yet. WHo knows maybe the loader is at fault. I guess I am going to have to go through this line by line. But it won't be right away, I have to work soon. It's too bad, this would be finished today if the loader would work. Just full of nope. Back from work but I don't think I have enough juice to fix the loader tonight. I also think I should add a few more levels, I definately have the space. Played a few more times. Level 6 Change This is the one I always die on. If I can make it past that level I can usually make it past the next several levels. I could make it easier, but I won't.

24 September 2021

Not sure if I am on the right path but I think I have it loading the first part. Unfortunately it is not loading the second part. I wonder if I need to close the file and open it again. I will try that. It took hours and hours and hours to find my stupid mistake. For the file name Kernal routine I had the LSB and MSB reversed! I may have to make a slight change to the autoloader yet, but first a break. Nope auto loader is good. So I am done this for now. I want to make a few more levels, even though I don't think I will ever see them again. Lately I can't get past level 6. There was a bit of internal debate, as to whether I should remove the graphical title screen. It does take up about 2K. But the more I play this the more I like having the title screen in between play. So just looking at the space that's left (I can't put anything at 6144 or above because the title screen graphics will overwrite it) I have just over 1K free. So I should be able to make several more levels. I'm hoping I can get a bit more creative for them. Some of the last ones showed off the new features, but weren't very hard. Fixed level 12. It is harder now. It is tedious without a level editor but completed level 15. It has the most complex robot movement so far with 40 moves! Working on level 16 and I see an issue that I should address in the map maker. Hopefully it won't take much to fix AND that it doesn't push the masks over a boundary again. I actually had another fix to make, so that the change could be there at the start and undone. This unfortunately has put me over the 8K memory limit (by 3 bytes). I will have to move another level into the lower memory area. But I will have to do that later. I finished level 16 and it is quite complex but I still have about 800 bytes left. Although that will change once I move another level. At any rate I will make more levels until I run out of memory and then I will be done.

25 September 2021

So I moved sound4 (the dead sound) into the lower memory area. I had to get all of the new addresses. I'm pretty sure there is a way to do that all in one program for CBMPS but I don't know how to do it. That's OK I can make it work. For now, I am loading the whole thing into 16K just to make things easier. So I have about 800 bytes to fill. Started level17. Realized that I needed to fix the trapezoid routine to do the same thing as the diamonds, but it doesn't look right and I think I'm just going to leave that for now. It's actually still nice out today and I think I should try to be outside. Kinda pissed off so I am working on level 17 but it's not working and I don't have the patients to fix it. OK there was a funny thing in the trapezoid map maker that had to be fixed. Finished level 17. Actually I want to add one more robot. I ended up adding 2. Then I made level18. It is a little easier than I had hoped but it is what it is. I have ideas for the last 2 levels not sure how far I will get tonight. A level editor would have been handy, but I won't be making it at this point. Started level 20. I have the platforms and most of the gameplay, so then I started programming robots. They have to sync up and not collide other wise they will leave nasty graphics on the screen. I lost track of something on robot3, and I am too tired to find where I lost count. I will have to finish this tomorrow.

26 September 2021

It took quite a bit of calculating, but I finally got it figured out. So all 4 robots do a crazy dance around the platform. If I was not so lazy I was going to add another piroette, but I think one is enough. It is actually quite hard to dodge all of the robots. So I put everything the way it is supposed to be (hopefully) and I will load the 2 programs and hopefully they will work together. I have 40 bytes free in the lower memory, and 32 in the top memory. Yeah there are some problems with the 2 programs working together. I will have to take a break and fix this later. SHIT!! The title moves the graphics from 6144 to 5120! OK I have everything working except the title screen. The issue there is something is overwriting something near the bottom of the picture. Crap I think I have to move it. Yeah I do, it takes up 2K and at 6144 the graphics are using part of the screen (@ 7680). OMG. SO if I move the screen to 4096 and move the lower ML to 4160 I should have just enough memory to display the title. What a crazy balancing act. Hopefully the variables that are there are zeroed. It is sort of working. This is going to take a while. First the music counters are at 4096 so I will have to move them. Then there is an issue when jumping to the lower memeory. I will take a break and return to this later. At first I thought it was that I hadn't updated any of the new locations in the JMPs to lower memory. And although I was right, there was another huge problem. I was still working under the thought that there were 64 characters on the screen, and I quickly found that there are 256 characters on the screen. Meaning that this overwrote the ML yet again. And moving it up out of the way then I am 62 bytes into the title graphics. So I am hunting for places I can save memory, cut code. The plan is to try to move sound4 back into the high memory, that should be more than 64 bytes, enough to make everything fit below the screen and graphics. OK 12 bytes to spare. Now to move the lower part and get the new addresses. 8 bytes to spare in the lower part. Well this SHOULD work. Wanna hear something cool? IT WORKS!!! Just testing everything and there is something wrong with the robot on level15. Hmm somthing triggered the link BASIC again and overwrote level 15. It may have been me resetting the vic. Anyway testing all of the levels and they are all good. It wraps around after level20. Some of those last levels are pretty tricky. So I will attempt to put this on a TAP. I don't think I need to change any of the loaders. Wow that didn't take long. I guess I am done. It seemed like a long project but I guess I made one game and then expanded it and made another one. Because this game took 22 days. Although I was pretty obsessive about it. The two games took about 43 days, and pretty serious coding for the most part. A far cry from the previous Adez projects. Really happy with this one. Especially when I went from just fitting it in 3K to just barely fitting it in 11K! Of course there are 3 sets of graphics in there plus 20 levels.

27 September 2021

Today I rested. Well sort of. I had to work an odd shift, but when I returned home, I was too exhausted to do anything. I wanted to sort of bask in the accomplishment of another game anyway. I just looked and have created 3 new games for this year (and updated quite a few). All of the new games were not planned ideas, they just happened. So I do hope I can return to some of the planned projects soon. I would like to get back to Gem Hunter and Sol Survivor. Maybe update some other things like Exploria, Quiggly & Vycryle. But it will really depend on how motivated I am. Always lots of things I can do. I definately want to get the list of old games that need to be updated to be significantly smaller, but don't want to just do the easy ones. Last night I updated most of my web pages and the catalogue. Just have to print out the cover when I have time and transfer the TAP upstairs. Made a few small updates and fixes to the web pages tonight. I think that is about all I will do.

28 September 2021

I have a late shift tonight, so did a bit more housekeeping. Printed out the cassette cover and instruction booklet. Took some pictures, and sent the TAP to the CASSIOPEI. Played the game a bit on my real vic, and took some more pictures. There is a big difference in the sound and colour between Xvic and a real Vic. Not sure if anyone else will like it but I find the game fun. Took a black felt pen and crossed out number 102 in the book. I will have to make pages for Castle Queen and Super Castle Queen to go in the book, whatever was there is irrelevant now (but I don't throw anything away, it is a rule!). There are a few other things to do, but I am in no rush. Kinda in a holding pattern for the time being, which I think is fine.

29 September 2021

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1 October 2021

Made a disk version Super Castle Queen for myself. I couldn't beleive how easy it was. All I had to do was change the device number in 2 spots in the loader, and re-save everything. Oh and change the boot loader to JMP to the right place. I played last night and lasted till level 14! I also made a cover for Castle Queen's disk. I made one for Super Castle Queen but I see there is a mistake I have to fix. I think the only thing left on my list is to set up a download page for both games and make an entry at Denial. Got called into work today, so it might not be today. Also it is very nice out still, almost like a second summer.

7 October 2021

This week has been full of nothing. Well I posted a link to Castle Queen in Denial, and of course found out that it didn't work. Did a bit of testing and found that the TAPs made on my version of xvic don't work on the new version of xvic. So I made a D64 (without the extra levels) and that's it I am moving forward from that. I would like to see if I could make a fast loader for Super Castle Queen because it takes almost 5 minutes to load, but first I decided I would take another crack at fixing Exploria. Because it shouldn't be too hard. First it took a long time to find the decimal converted file. I went to add it to the CBMPS and it put a return after EVERY SINGLE LETTER!!! So I will actually have to convert everything by hand anyway. I was just trying to get the first little bit straight and found I lost a byte somewhere. This is SO frustrating. It seriously would be easier to start from scratch. The worst thing is, that all I want to do is a little fix to the colour when the player is going down the elevator. Just from my quick looks at the program there is nothing that jumps out as where the player is coloured. So this may take a while. After a bit of being mad, I just started turning the asm into something I can understand. I found the mistake in the first bit (before 1024) and just started converting all the stuff after. So the 3 large subroutines that make the platforms are converted. That was about 500 bytes. Hopefully I didn't make any mistakes. I did see something that I should remove. There is a BRK if a certain (probably never happens) condition is met. That would save about 5 bytes. Looking at the code, it isn't too bad. It certainly isn't like looking at the BASIC for my first game, THAT was atrocious. I am thinking about doing the next sub, we will see. I converted the map main and the side routines. That is about 1k. The next 5 routines are short but I think I will leave them for tonight. After that it starts the elevator routines. Wow! There are 7 elevator subs!

8 October 2021

Converted the screen move subs and the first elevator sub. I hope that when I get through the elevator stuff I will ba able to find a way to fix the colour. At that point it will be hard to decide, but IF I fix my issue should I continue to disassemble and convert the program? Maybe solve some other small issues. But then I will have to fix ALL of the programs. I guess I knew in the back of my mind this would be harder than starting from scratch, which is why I didn't want to do it. OK converted all of the elevator stuff. I have now about 2K of code in the assembler. I also see a possible mistake in the fix I tried a few months ago, but I will need more memory so I will have to put it at 675 for sure. Yep that fixed the problem. So I'm not sure if I should apply the fix and bow out, or what. Actually I think that will be it. I could disassemble the rest of the game looking for places to save a few bytes so I could have contiguous memory for some of the last bits of code, but there will no absolutely no visible difference. The disk will be easy to fix, the cassette will be a little harder. Anyway that is for another day.

9 October 2021

As I suspected this was no easy task. I ended up accidentally recording over the old Exploria TAP and had to go hunting for a backup. So after that, very carefully I pieced together the new Exploria TAP. There is a secret that will allow you to load other quads although it will take a really long time. So although I haven't fixed the disk, it wouldn't take very long, it will be much easier. And although I won't be crossing out a title in the book, I do get to remove a title from my Lucas list, and that makes me happy! When I have a chance I will have to send a new version to my CASSIOPEI.

Exploria is the last ML game that needed very little fixing (although it took a huge amount of effort to get there). All the remaining games on the Lucas list are in BASIC (or with ML subs). Most won't be too difficult to convert (some may take some time) except Distractions. Just thinking about it makes me cringe. Literally 30 different programs that will have to be converted. So I do have a couple of things that I hope to do as I move on. An Exploria disk. I also have to make some actual cassettes for someone! So I will have to get at that soon (my excuse is that it is a holiday weekend and nothing is open). I hope I will get interested in either Gem Hunter or Sol Survivor (or both) before the year is out. Oh and the disk converter for my CASSIOPEI, I will have to work on that too. Oh and videos too.

10 October 2021

Well I already messed that up. The versions between the old disk and the new disk are different, by a lot. I think the old disks just loaded from 820 to 7679 (or so) and the new disks are closer to the cassettes where they load from 1024 to 79??. But even the cassette version is different. I'm not sure what version is on the real disk. I don't have much time before work. After a quick check the version on the disk is the 820-7679. That must have been fun trying to save those. At least changing this version will be relatively easy. I guess the other version wouldn't have been too bad either, I just wouldn't have been able to clear the screen. And unlike the cassette version where I had to verify to where I was for loading and saving files. Anyway I ran out of time for that.

12 October 2021

Today I made copies of the cassettes for Castle Queen and Super Castle Queen. I captured most of it on video. Not sure if I will keep it all or not. Just have to get covers and pop them in the mail.

17 October 2021

Working lots and it has still been nice out. At least that is my excuse. I did get the cassettes in the mail finally. No programming at all, but certainly lots of things I COULD do. Apparrently today was the last nice day, so I might be doing more programming soon.

18 October 2021

I tried to get the Exploria disk fixed but totally messed it up. Not sure what happened but there are problems when the player moves over a change and does nothing when you move over a teleport. Very disappointing. In the back of my head I thought I should do it on a different disk, but didn't so the old files (that worked) are gone. I could attempt to make files from the cassette version but I would have to know where to change the device number as well as fix the JMP to the new colour routine. Well actually the first level is fine, just 2,3 and 4 don't work. I may end up doing it that way anyway. So then I opened up the D64 copier from Jan D. I did find most of the missing routines, but there are a ton of constants that are missing (or maybe named differently). Many I have no idea what they should be, so this could take a really long time. Also there is one routine I can't find and it has something to do with the timing to recieve data from the CASSIOPEI. This worries me. I will take this as far as I can without bothering Jan. But I suspect I will have to get him to help a fair amount. The worst thing is, the way he has it set up, it should just compile. But it doesn't. I guess I could always hook up a C64 and use that to copy disks, because the D64 copier works for that machine. But I don't want to give up on this yet. Well I kinda feel like playing games more that programming so I am going to do that.

19 October 2021

Nothing. I fixed the splash page so it will work on PAL systems too. I can't find the disk now and have to go to work.

23 October 2021

Another disappointing day. I hooked up my C64 and tried to load the Disk Wizard, and it wasn't on my CASSIOPIE. So eventually I found it on my laptop and transferred it. But I just couldn't get it to load. There was always a load error. So I thought I would try backing up a couple of my Vic tapes. I spent about an hour doing this. Then when I tried to load them on the laptop, the TAPs were empty. So that sucks. I then figured I would send over a few PRGs. So I sent Planet X-1, Pitfall, and The Keep. Planet X-1 was kinda cool, too bad I can't load the map. Pitfall was sadness and disappointment on this NTSC machine. The Keep was awesome! I was doing really well but had to leave so I shut the computer off. Don't want anything to overheat. Oh I bought heatsinks, maybe they will be here before Christmas. I also did another bad thing. I bought Attack of the PETSCII Robots. I bought it with the box, but mostly because of the SNES adapter.

24 October 2021

A productive but ultimately disappointing day. So I found the remaining missing bits of the Disk Wizard and got it compile. I was very excited and yet cautious. I transferred the disk wizard and a few D64s to the CASSIOPEI. I loaded it and it ... sorta worked. None of the right keys seemed to respond. I did find a few wrong keys that eventually made things move around a bit. Then I realized the CASSIOPEI menu wasn't lining up as well. It seemed to go as far as selecting the D64 and Initializing the 1541. Then it would stop. So reluctantly I went back to the program and started to slog through the code to try to understand it. I just happened on a bit of code and realized it was making the lines 40 characters long instead of 22. I figured I should fix that. Then I found the bit for reading the keys and found the key matrix must be completely different between the 64 and the vic. So I changed the key numbers to reflect the vic key numbers. I found the code difficult to follow and just decided to compile and try this version and see how far I got. So I tried it and then it seemed to be working! I could see why I couldn't get any further before. At the bottom of the screen (where it would have probably printed off of the screen before) it asked if it should continue by formatting (Y/N)? So not only could I not see the question but no key would respond to the Y or N keys. So I was able to get it to format and start the copying process. The first D64 I tried was Planet X-1. Unfortunately it was mostly empty and was many screens of zeros. As we approached track 18 I started to see things and there were many familiar tokens such as the splash screen, and the familiar directory. Finally it was done, so I reset the computer and tried the disk. In the splash screen there were a two odd characters and it made me worry. I pressed a key then it crashed. So I did think the disk sounded a bit worn, maybe I'll try another disk. This time decided to try Doom. When it was finished I reset the computer and tried the disk. It loaded the main program then shifted the case, started loading something else, cleared the screen, printed a small a in red and crashed. So POSSIBLY it was the disk drive, the drive I was using made a lot of noise and had seen better days. I connected a different 1541 and repeated the process with Doom with exactly the same results. So this is bad. I can look at the copying routines, but I don't feel confident I will find the fault. Especially if the problem is in the reading from the CASSIOPEI. I have purused the CPIO routines and they look intimidating. I guess I should at least try to solve it before bugging Jan again. Although I will have to at some point because there is a pretty serious problem with the cassette backup to TAP mode. Another thing I may do, is use the sector editor (both on the vic and the laptop) to compare the D64 to the actual disk. See if I can find a pattern in the errors. And maybe if there aren't too many of them, fix the disk? Anyway I have this project, the web files, and make some videos as the things I hope to concentrate on for the near future. Maybe tomorrow.

25 October 2021

Well. This morning I took the laptop upstairs and opened the Disk and D64 in my sector editor. I started comparing the sectors and it was apparrent fairly quickly that the last byte in each sector was either a 0 or a 1, rather than what it was supposed to be. I also found out that the Disk for Planet X-1 was toast, which I had suspected. So I worked on Doom. Then next step was to see if it was read this way or if it was just saving this way. So I fired up the Disk Wizard and tried again. This time I watched the sectors while they were being copied. Sure enough there was a 0 or 1 at the end of each sector, so it was being read wrong. This really concerned me as this meant the CPIO routines were at fault. I decided I would try my best and started looking through the code. It turned out that the last byte was read separately by a separtate routine, so I could compare the regular routine to the last byte routine. It still took some time to find the error. It turned out that the variable holding the byte as it was shifted out, was being reset for every loop (every bit),so only the last bit was being read. So I moved the 3 instructions resetting the variable out of the loop and compiled again. I tried the Disk Wizard again. When it finally got to the sectors containing data, I watched the last byte. I couldn't know for sure it was right, but it was changing, and looked right. This time I held my breath as I loaded and hit run. The disk drive chattered and the screen said it was loading daemon. Soon the Doom splash screen appeared and I played, for the first time, Doom on my real Vic with a real 1541!!!

Now to get Exploria and Dynasty ready to transfer! And hopefully tomorrow or the next day I can start some of the other things I have been wanting to start. OK FINALLY got the Exploria disk working for the xvic, so I should be able to transfer it tomorrow. I also see my code for skipping empty sectors won't work. I'll just get rid of it. I guess I already had the Dynasty disk ready to go! I got the map on the Planet X-1 disk, so that's ready to go.

2 November 2021

Although I haven't made any entries, I have been busy. First I copied many D64s. Including Exploria and Dynasty. I got my copy of Zeptopolis!! And I have started a new endevour. A Vic 20 youtube channel called 3.5K Adventures. So far I have only uploaded a welcome video and a new one of Exploria and one of Zeptopolis. I hope I can add a few more in the next couple of weeks. Editing is the longest and most tedious task. I have reached out to the community a bit and feel a lot better about my work. I know there are many programmers who are MILES ahead of me at Denial, but most of them are programmers by trade. I am still sort of taking a break. Still a few things to do. Slowly update the webs. More vids and then more programming!

4 November 2021

It's funny how perspectives can change. Now that I have a Penultimate+ cartridge I see what much of the Retro Vic 20 community has already experienced. Before I had a 3K, 8K and a 16K cartridges (although the 16K cart didn't see to work) so expanded games were sort of out of my realm. But now litterally almost any expansion is possible (just the bank switching stuff that will give you more than 35K. Maybe someday). So I have been able to try some stuff that uses the full 35K, like Doom! And anything inbetween on my real Vic! I mean anything is possible on an emulator, but to do it on a real Vic is surreal. It has made me think about the restrictions I placed on my games. Should I make games that require 35K and a SD2EIC? I think that the answer is clear. Even Ghislain de Blois decided with his masterpeice Realm of Quest V that it should work (with some current hardware) on a real Vic. So I will continue with my restrictions, because I want everthing to run on a real Vic sort of in the period from when it is from. But I will leave the door open for some big projects. It is one of the things I do fear though. Big projects. I read the blog on the making of Realms of Quest, and understand any project of that scope (35K or more with memory swapping) will have huge maps and tons of coding. I'm not sure that I could continuously work on a project that took 3 or 4 years. I think that is the reason I do like coding on a Vic, is that most projects don't take too long, and languish. So this has been a lot of babbling just to say that nothing has changed. In other news just more of the same. Updating the webs, more videos. Also copying cassettes. No programming yet.

I tried to use the Computes! Turbotape on the Super Castle Queen but there must be a conflict because as soon as the turbo tape loader loaded it crashed. Or at least reset. So I guess I will have to look at it and customize it for my game. But again not today. Now to copy tapes. I copied Tau Ceti and Cygnus, and thought I should test them. So I popped in Cygnus and finished the first game. I thought that should be enough, but for some reason let the next program load. It never did. I tried the other side, and then the verion on the CASSIOPEI. Something is broken on that version. I will try it on the emulator. Nope doesn't work on the emulator either. Not sure what's up. I'm sure I checked it before I moved on, but at any rate, it doesn't work. After hunting down the problem for a while, I figured out what is not working. The last bytes of a loader are at 675. The loader is loaded in ONLY every other program, the actual games assume that the right code is still there. Unfortunately the byte at 675 is changed and no loading occurs. So I only have to consider the fix. Whether I fix 675 by storing a JSR there OR move the whole thing up a byte or 2 in every program. The second option is what I SHOULD do, but the first option is easier. Then I will have to resave the entire TAP and test it. I should look at my actual cassette copy as I was sure I had a working verion. Still the fix will have to be made as I can't get the backup function to work on my CASSIOPEI. It is so odd that I didn't find this bug before. Looking at the last program it also has a load in it and yet I distictly remember programming an endless loop. Maybe there is another newer version. I might check on the other computer. OK so he weird thing is, that the original version with the spelling mistakes works fine. The corrected version doesn't. I started fixing the programs but will have to compile them tomorrow.

5 November 2021

ARRRRGGGGG! So I tried to recompile Cygnus. All of the files were the old ones with the spelling mistakes. Plus it STILL isn't loading the program after Htar. I am SO frustrated. I have to leave this for now. I found the problem MUCH later. I'm not even sure how this worked at one time. The varaibles for the load name were absolute not immediate! Each game had this problem. Crap I was about to make the changes and realized I still have the old files. I'll have to get the newer files before I can continue. OK did that. Fixed the programs, saved them all to TAP, and tested them. It took a while to remember how to solve some of the games. I went back and made a fix to the desert picture and resaved it again as well. I then edited and uploaded the video for Boogieman to YouTube. I hope to record video for Loderunner and Quadrant tomorrow. Resave the games for Cygnus on cassette, and one other game. Lots to do. I may have to get up early. I also went looking for the one page of notes I had for Sirius. I was almost getting the itch to program another text game. But I have far too many projects on the go. And then I started to understand what I would be undertaking. The urge to program Sirius began to fade. At least for now.

6 November 2021

Bleh. I hate disassembling code. Maybe if there was an easier way, but even CBM prg starters Dissassembler is kinda bad. The first thing is, that it is all in Hex which I dislike, and don't understand. I have to convert everything to decimal, number by number. But more importantly the branches are not labled, they just have the memory address tied to them, which makes no sense in the assembler (as soon as you make a change the addresses are no longer valid)(plus they are all in Hex, so it's even worse). So I have to figure out branches and lable them myself. It's almost better just having to convert from the numbers, but that too is tedious. I have had enough of that for now. I do have other things I want to do today. 2 videos, some cassette copying, and some testing for Jan. I guess I should get started, some of this will take a while.

Well that's unfortunate. The day just sort of evaporated and all I got done was some video. I guess it's just the fact that, where I have the Vic set up ATM I only have a limited time to use it. Basically during the day, and I'm not much of a day person. That's why using the emulator was so attractive (at least for programming). I have as much time as I want with it.

8 November 2021

Posted another video. Converted a bit more of the turbotape. This is going to take forever. I hope to transfer a bit of stuff to the CASSIOPEI, and return Jan some information. FRICK! I just checked the Cygnus TAP and it's still buggered! I don't feel like figuring this out right now. I decided to look at it anyway, and eventually I found out that I forgot to remove a RTS. So I think, I think, that it is fixed. I transferred a few files to CASSIOPIE but forgot to send Cygnus. Well didn't get as much done as I had hoped but still doing stuff. OH AND ! I got my copy of Attack of the PETASCII Robots today! I will leave it sealed till I can get some video, hopefully tomorrow. I tried another attempt at using turbo tape for Super Castle Queen. I was thinking that there might be some stuff around 673 that might be causing trouble, but unfortunately that isn't the problem. To be honest, I'm not really sure what's going wrong. Even loading it manually doesn't work.

16 November 2021

Converting Turbo tape is slow going. Plus there are some things I am sure are errors. Some of the assembly doesn't make sense. Still lots to go and then I have to try to figure out what it is doing. In the meantime I found another fastloader that was disassembled. It is in German, but I get the idea. Unfortunately it is only the loader, not the save. I may be able to turn the loader to save, but I will have to see. I should be able to make it work for Super Castle Queen, there isn't anything in the cassette buffer. I was thinking I would like to use it for Realm of Evil as well, but there is some ML in the cassette buffer. I think it is OK though, as it is re-loaded everytime. Yeah if I can get this fastloader to work that would be fantastic! On other fronts, I am starting to understand how to play PETSCII robots! I have uploaded 6 game videos to youtube, the next is PETSCII robots. Then I have one for the Penultimate cart and the CASSIOPEI. Nothing going on programming-wise. Oh and I do want to test and add the SNES gamepad support to many of the games when I have time. Just so much going on. Working crazy hours, a huge dump of snow (about 2 feet), and my wife has lots of DR.s and Dentists appointments. OK off to work.

18 November 2021

After looking at the disassembled fastloader, it might not be worth it. It uses a lot of the vics regular routines and then jumps into the BASIC interpreter. Disappointing. So I used the CBM disassembler and disassembled Turbo Tape. I will now have to convert numbers and make lables. The mnemonic I thought was wrong was converted the same way as what I converted it at first as well, so I guess it is right. I think this is going to be really hard to understand for me. I also downloaded a ton of games and programs. It just seems like I have so little time. I set up the second Vic downstairs on a big TV. Played PETSCII robots a bit and got a little further, but not today. Still trying to get cassettes ready. I changed the lables and really like them!! Got J cards done but when I went to make the instruction booklets I realized I was out of staples. And out of time again.

19 November 2021

Just played games today. I did get a new stapler and made the instruction booklets, but that's about it. And I started a new idea. Something else I won't finish.

20 November 2021

I fixed the lables so the cassette lables are red. It looks way better with just that one difference, although my printer ink is going to take a big hit. So after realizing I have to re-do all of my cassette covers again (to get rid of the lines, so they look better). I am back to the question of making cassettes with O cards or just going back to J cards and using plastic boxes (norelcos). I am making instruction booklets anyway (and I am making them a bit bigger too). I thought the O cards were a good look but now I am not so sure. I wanted to try something so I quickly programmed a print map routine and a joystick routine for my new idea. I was shocked! It actually worked the first time I tried it! So I don't think I will do any more tonight but I have the start of something.

24 November 2021

After looking at and thinking about the turbo tape program, I decided I would look instead at the save program. It would limit what I was looking at, and also I don't really care about how it is implimented, just what it does, and how it returns. So I started disassembling that. I kinda see what is going on but there is still lots to disassemble.

25 November 2021

I feel hopeful that I might be able to solve this. Although there is still a pile of stuff that is over my head. I finished disassembling the loader and see a place where it checks for a load error and if not it starts re-setting a bunch of stuff for BASIC. Including line re-chaining. So I'm not sure if there are anythings that I need to be re-set for the game, but for sure I don't want to re-chain anything. On the one hand I would like to check for a LOAD ERROR? but on the other hand, what are you going to do? It didn't load. When I have time I will experiment with changing the JMP to the beginning of the game. I will also have to move the last bits of my load stuff from the loader I only need about 6 bytes to I should be able to find a place. I also tried to load the game with out the AJ loader. And as long as I load it right (non re-locatable) the first part (<8192) loads regularly (it's only about 1500 bytes) and the second uses the turboloader. It seems to work fine.

26 November 2021

Today I decided I would look at my VFLI Vic. Although a poor soldering job everything looked like it was making connection. I reseated the memory chips and decided to just take a look. AND IT WORKED!!! So it was just the chips weren't sitting properly. The video signal is pretty bad though, so I think this Vic really needs a re-cap. So does the other Vic downstairs. So I guess I will have to get at that sometime soon. Still waiting for my heat sinks, I guess they are stuck in customs. LOL. OK so I just tried using the JMP at the end of what I thought was the loader, and saved a new copy with my own JMP. I loaded it up and it -- sorta worked? I was looking at my bitmap image and the song but for some reason after a keypress it was a screen full of garbage (the song was still playing though) and just alternated between 2 screens of garbage for each keypress afterwards. So something still isn't quite right, BUT I am on the right track. DOH!! I keep forgetting that this game requires the screen at page 30, at page 16 the screen overwrites some of the ML. So I tried it again and it WORKS!!!!! I will have to try this on my real vic with a real datasette but this is awesome! I just wish that I could make the first part turbo load as well, but for now I'm not pushing my luck. Next I will have to try it with Realm of Evil. Oh I guess I have to try it with my loaders to see if they interfere with the turbo loader. Hmmm yes it doesn't like my loaders. I'm not sure why. I wonder if there is a conflict? I don't think the turbo loader uses any of the memory at 675, but I will have to see. I grabbed the ML that is in the cassette buffer and disassemlbed it. Not sure what is going on , but I think the JMP to reset the I/O vectors may be what it doesn't like. I think it is tapping into the vector at 812,813 and maybe (just maybe) I don't have to reset it. But that is it for tonight.

27 November 2021

So I tried quite a few different lines of attack to see if I could get it to work, or even see why it isn't. For some reason it seems to be when it overwrites the vectors. The ML is there where is should be and if I do a SYS 849 it loads the last part and starts. Maybe I need to see if I can get rid of the new vectors as I don't need them anyway. BY JOVE I think I've got it!!! I just loaded it from the beginning and it loaded no problem. I will probably have to shut off the cassette motor though. 5 bytes. I am definately in the home stretch! Not sure if I will finish today. Nope I decided that was fine and I am done with Super Castle Queen. Feels like I have been fighting this forever. I should leave some notes for myself so I can use it again later. I probably won't need it for most games, but definately for larger longer games it will be a great tool. Archiving it now. OH and I am sending some more cassettes to Spain. Cool!

26 December 2021

Work got a bit crazy for me. I have been so tired the last month. I found that making videos took much less effort, so I made a quite a few of them. I have quite a few 'in the can' as well, but I assume I will slow down on production of them soon. I would like to get back to programming and maybe some music. In the meantime I hace started the unenviable task of finally updating the AJ & KJ website. I have 8 game pages finished, 16 to go. The layout is a bit better, and I added a paypal cart. I think the Catalogue page is complete, and the About page will stay the same. The Home page needs a few pictures. I keep hoping I will get them soon. Bleh I did another 8 pages, so there are less to do tomorrow. I actually have 12 more pages to fix. I forgot about the 2 Joystick pages. It should go quickly. Hopefully uploading won't be too much of a pain.