I have done almost 2 decades of work on some of these games (I know pretty lame), but it is mostly on and off. Mostly off really. Any way I have a renewed interest and have started yet again to complete a project. As far as I know most of this stuff has sat dormant for at least 4 years, some closer to 8...

2010
I had this idea in 2002 or 2003. I had already developed some angular 3-dimentional graphics for another game and really liked them. Then I was thinking about a game concept of just going to alot of rooms and "mapping" them. There would be puzzles and creatures to block your path. I was just in the process of moving things over to the PC and the Xvic emulator. So although  I think there is a very short program of Exploria on disk or tape somewhere in the physical universe, most of the attempt for this game was done on the emulator, Xvic. Then stuff happened and I dropped all vic stuff for a long time. I guess I did try to do some stuff in 2006, but I don't remember it and I assume it was very short lived. At that time I must have been working on Exploria, as I found some maps, and apparently I was even working on some ML. But as I said it was very short lived. I'm not even sure why I stopped. Anyway my life has become relatively stable again and I ran across some of my Vic work. Although it didn't happen right away, I started getting interested in programming again. Sometime in Jan I started coding ML, and in Feb I decided I should document my progress ...
 
Working on Exploria

Feb 14 2010

After hundreds of hours of working, i finally got the routine to display a diamond. 671 bytes of code. Then I realized when positioned in certain places on the screen it would never jump out of a loop. FUCK!!!!!!

Let me back track. in about 2001 I decided to start a game for the vic. My 3K cart was underused but I didn't want to be switching it all the time. I had been using the Xvic emulator for a while and thought it worked quite well. So decided on a project I had just recently started. You explore a semi-three-dimentional world. I worked on it a bit (looking at my notes I did alot more work than I thought), but abandoned it a few months later, because as life does, huge changes arose. My life really never settled down for about 10 years. When it did, one thing I always enjoyed was programming my vic. So I thought I would pick it up again, but my physical vic, my notes, my disks, and reference books were strewn across many storage places. I did have a few things backed up on Xvic (I had wanted to copy everything, but I never got that far) and one thing was some of the work I had done on Exploria. Well i found the graphics and a map, but I thought that was all I had. It turns out I had several hundreds of bytes of ML code already worked out. So I started by coming up with a new scheme to store the maps. I should be able to store 128 rooms in just over 2K. I was pretty happy with that, that would leave about 4K for the game and music. So I knew the biggest part would be creating diamonds and paralelograms. So I started working on this. Then I found my notes, I was disappointed that I had about 6 sheets of ML code worked out already, but it would no longer work with my new plan of storing the map. <sigh> Oh well the new way was better anyway. As i went along I realized some code was quite redundant or just poor code, but I really didn't want to re-code some of the older parts. You see, I write the mnemonics on paper, then I translate them to numbers in a column next the the mnemonics, then I enter the numbers into the vic as data statements, then I spend hours de-bugging, updating my paper (somewhat). Like many programmers I usually work on little subroutines or parts at a time, but even these little parts can be cumbersome to make drastic changes to. So I kept going until today. When I realized what I had done, I hoped I could find a solution that I could implement without recoding much, but I had painted myself into a corner. And I know the code I have written, could be done much better. It could be more versitile and less redundant. <sigh> So tommorow I start from scratch ...

Feb 16 2010

Made 2 short subroutines, one to print one character after making sure it is on the screen, and another one to calculate the screen location using x and y. I'm glad these short routines worked without much fuss, but I am too tired to start on the real work. I have in my head worked out that I will want 3 subroutines. One to make the top of a diamond, one to make a bottom, and one to make a right or left parallellogram (middle). I am simplifying but anyway. I think the trick will be to make each one versatile enough to use for all the different shapes and how the different shapes will react to each other. It sounds funny, but I sort of have the idea in my head. It's just to make these 3 routines make many different screens. The rules will be something like: diamonds take precidence and will print over other shapes (so they will have to be drawn from the bottom up), parallellograms will join, at the ends, with other shapes. This will hopefully work. Then I just have to make one more routine for the sides and I think most of my old code will work for that (although I have decided to move the variables) anyway, I should be able to adapt alot of my old code, but there will be alot of additions. OK I am tired I will leave that for the next time
 

Feb 17 2010

I wrote out the code for the top of each shape. I entered it and realized I had made some mistakes. I tried to fix everything and started de-bugging. I had the whole thing working fairly well until ... I found when the shape crosed the page boundery on the screen something goes wrong. I think my pseudo x isn't being updated properly. I am unfortunately too tired now to figure it out, and tommorow is busy, I doubt that I will have time till another day.

Feb 19 2010

Didn't have much time but I puzzled over my problem for about an hour. It just doesn'tmake sense, I subtract one and the program subtracts 2. I take away the one dec instruction and it's 2 less. Yeah I need some serious time to spend with this. But not tonight, I have to work @ 7am.
 

Feb 22 2010

Had a bunch of early mornings and I'm tired but thought I would take a crack at solving the mystery of x. My variable x @ memory location 168 was always out when it would make the top of the diamond. So after running the ML with many test numbers I started to wonder if it was starting in the right place. So I checked before I ran the top of diamond ML, and sure enough the number was wrong. So then I looked at my calculate from x/y ML and there it was - a three instead of a two!. I was subtracting 3 from the screen calculation before adding x, which gives 3 characters off of the screen instead of two which is what I wanted. Anyway it screwed everything up after that. Now the 3 routines run fine. I'm fairly tired but I may still start writing out the code for the middle or the side.Ok it's bed time now, but I did make a quick routine for the sides and de-bugged it (I think). All the code including the basic line is about 350 bytes so far. So if tommorow is a good day I will try and write a routine for the middle.
 

Feb 23 2010

My first day off but I am so tired, and I have been playing Dune 2000 on my PC and thinking I should make a Vic version ( I had a game planned which was called Starlords which was similar, but different). So I started coding the middle thing for Exploria and after doing about 8 lines of code started working on a simple BASIC program that will make a 2x2 character tile. I managed to mostly finish it but accidentally changed the ending of the program to page 28. I am still trying to remember alot of those old memory locations and 44/45 is the end of basic not the top of memory which is 55/56<sigh>. I thought there are a few different ways to fix this, one is to go through the BASIC links and find the end, it should be simple, right? How hard are 3 zeros to spot. But I couldn't add any lines to my program. So I tried to look through the numbers in the immediate mode. That wasn't working. OK I'll open my sector editor and look at it on the disk, but after looking for  a while, I realized I still wouldn't know the address of the end even if I did find it. OK the next attempt would be to print it out and just retype it in, it wasn't that long. BUT I have fought with VICE over this alot. I have a really hard time making it print out. After pissing with my old version (1.1 that I like) and a newer version(2.1) for hours I did finally get it to print out, but I was too tired then.
 

Feb 24 2010

Was very distracted today. I retyped my graphics program and added some color changing things (border,screen,aux ect). Then I played with it for about 5 minutes before becoming uninterested. So I returned to the main task at hand. It took a long time to write the code for the middle, mostly because I was distracted. I haven't translated it yet, not sure if I will today. I picked up a disk drive a bunch of disks and a ton of notes. I thought I had my xcable here and was excited to hook it up and transfer some stuff (I really want to get all the fancy programs for my games, like the title screens, the about files, the catalogues ect especially for Kerratias). But it isn't here ... I don't think. I will have to set up a day to clean up around here and another to go and clean up at the other place. Anyway all those secret programs locked away on disks are still locked away. The notes were something else. I didn't know I did some sort of embellishments to Kerratias in 2006! I looked really quickly and assume I tried to make the music work better. I was wondering what I called all those bosses, now I know about Hidei, Gradik, Ik, Pogo, and Kerratias. I found notes for alot of things, I just wonder how some of my old ML coding holds up. I'm thinking not very well. Anyway one of the things I would like to finish (aside from Exploria) is putting all the finished games onto .d64s and .taps. I would also like to transfer all the disks as well, but this might take some time. Anyway back to Exploria, I think I am done for tonight.
 

Feb 25 2010

Before work I translated the code to numbers. I also reprinted the code so it's not so messy. When I did  this I realized I had made a few mistakes and hopefully fixed them. The sheet on the far right is the new ML for the middle, untested, and missing the last 15 instructions or so (they were on the other side of the paper). The other sheet is the first attempt (notice the scribbling out as the author realizes his code is fucked).
Feb 26 2010

WOW! That was easy! (for once)! I typed in the numbers as data statements (added to the current 4 routines), and started to debug. Not that there weren't problems, but they were easy to find/fix. Only took about an hour after I had typed them in. I had reversed some BNE's and put a LDA #  instead of LDA z and did a SBC instead of ADC (I'm not sure what I was thinking there). And I had a small fix in the SIDE routine, I had the wrong shape for the bottom. And I think I am done, although I can't say I have done exhaustive testing, maybe I should. OK after some more testing I had a little snag, my pseudo x wasn't staying current, but I think I have it fixed now. Looks good so far. So I have the routines ; PRINT, CALC FROM X/Y, TOP, SIDE, MIDDLE. Then next routine will of course be BOTTOM. I think it will be reletively easy as it will be almost the opposite of TOP. Just with JSRs to SIDE if it has to. Then I will try to come up with a MAIN MAP routine, to tie them together and to untangle some of the map from memory. I almost think I have made a bit of a mistake as I should have left room for the map either at the start or end of memory. Actually I guess the area before page 28 is still free. All these five routines start at page 4 and I'm slowly working up. I now have 593  bytes of code including the basic statement. I'm pretty sure it is less than my last attempt and it does more! I can hardly wait, it's funny but this is will be a major first hurdle (as I have attempted to do it twice!) and without too much more code I can start making maps, which should be fun. I may have to go to the guru's for some help with math though. I need to figure out an easy way to calculate a percentage from 128. I have some ideas but they are probably much more cumbersome and clumsy than what ever other ways there are. Anyway start coding BOTTOM. Yaaaaaa. Then just before I fell asleep i made a quick splash page. Still in BASIC but easily changable to ML. I have decided I want the music to play while here as well, so I guess that's something else I could work on.
 

Feb 27 2010

Feb 28 2010

ARRRG. All for the sake of 3 bytes. I did some mucking about and found my TOP routine was missing an option. So I kinda knew I had put it together half-assed so I added the option (added 12 bytes) and started optimizing other things and managed to save 12 bytes. This would have worked perfectly except my BNE was no longer in range of 128, in fact it ws 138. <sigh> So I had to change it to a BEQ and a JMP, adding 3 bytes to the code. Now everythings messed up. What I have done for the time being is moved the SIDE routine after the MAP MAIN (it needs some work too!). Changed the JSRs up 3, and put a JMP to the new side routine. It is a clumsy workaround, but I want to do more testing before putting anything in stone. I think I will eventually move everything down the 80 bytes or so, and leave SIDE where it is, so I can work on it. That means I will have to change 4 JSRs to the new location of SIDE and 2 JSRs in MAP MAIN,oh and a couple of JMPs in MIDDLE and BOTTOM. Still playing with the programs. TOP is now finallized, and it is much longer than 3 bytes (more like 19!) but I thought at this point, make it work right and I'll fix the other stuff up after. For now the JSR point directly to SIDE which sits above MAP MAIN. MIDDLE BOTTOM & SIDE need a few changes, but I have run out of time again. Time to go work a graveyard.

Mar 1 2010

Pissing with the code a little bit at a time. MIDDLE is becoming a huge pile of code. I have the left side working but the right side is still not putting the right characters on the screen. It's such a pain in the ass too, as I have hardly any BASIC room (between page 10 and page 16) so one program holds DATA for PRINT, CALC from X/Y, TOP, MIDDLE and BOTTOM. (actually this program won't fit in the 6 page space and I have to reset and reload everything). Another holds MAIN MAP, and SIDE. And the last is the BASIC map program. This is worse than compiling. I am too tired to continue but I think I have almost finished fixing MIDDLE. I know just a few more tweaks and I hope to have it done. The problem is a mess of ML equivalent IF/THEN statements checking if the character is this then the new character is this other, when the two shapes overlap. As I play with my map maker I make notes of the possibilities. There are some things I just won't have room to account for, so the maps will have limitations although it will be more of a visual thing. Anyway as soon as I have MIDDLE and BOTTOM locked down I will save those 5 as one binary program. This will save alot of load time, but difficult for me to debug. Then I will debug MAP MAIN and SIDE some more. When I have fixed some of this I will put up a new pic.

Mar 2 2010

Still just doing small things. I fixed MIDDLE, BOTTOM & SIDE so they all displayed correctly (under most circumstances). Then I wanted to move the code together so there were no spaces in between. And somewhere along the way something happened. BOTTOM or SIDE is not diplaying correctly anymore, I'm not sure which and I can't seem to find the problem. I checked all the JSRs and JMPs the branches and I even zeroed Y with no luck.  Like I said it was working. I also added some color control to my BASIC program. I was thinking I would save the first binary ML block, but then this happened. I did manage to get some pics of a couple of cool possible screens. Back at it tommorow.

 

Mar 3 2010

AH HA! The problem was a JMP in BOTTOM it jumped in a bit too late and some vars weren't initialized for the second loop and every one after. So I moved everything down tight. So here's the rundown:

1024-1036 BASIC
1037-1087 PRINT
1088-1140 CALC FROM X/Y
1141-1314 TOP
1315-1576 MIDDLE
1577-1729 BOTTOM
1730-1929 MAP MAIN
1930-2035 SIDE

So all the subs are finished (I sure hope so, I have no intentions of doing this yet again), and tied together. I'm extremely happy to be done this part. I'm not sure what I'll work on next. I guess I should do then next hard part, adding special characters and stuff to the map. I'm sure I will play with my map maker some more. I will (soon) add a save feature so I can start saving my creations. But I think I'm done coding for now. And look at that almost 1000 bytes of code! So I finally saved it all as one program, so no more stupid data statements , at least for this part. So I added a bit more to my BASIC map maker. I quickly came up with the first bit of music, and started to try and figure out what is the best way to put it in the game. For now I just have a basic program that works half assed, with more data statements. I also worked on the maps a bit I have the first 12 rooms done, but many more to go. I have a hand drawn map for the first 32 rooms. We'll see how far I get tonight. By the way these pics are NOT rooms in the level (yet!), just me checking stuff out. I also made this gay thing just to run a little guy through all the screens I made so far. It's a piece of crap but I'm using it to make sure the screens match on the edges. I was going to make a list of things to fix, but I am starting to get to the brain dead phase, so it will be another day project. Only finished to first 24 screens, but there are a few that need a piece moved here and there. And one pic of the simple Explorer.

Mar 9 2010

Checking the consistancy of the maps. I have only made the first 32 rooms but it will take a while to get them to match up. Also fixed Mini Explorer, so the man goes diagonal as he would in the game, and some other things that were bothering me. Not really feeling like doing much so I prolly won't.

Mar 25 2010

Finally got my XE1541 plug in the mail yesterday. Tried it out today. My old machine runs windows 98 and I thought would be the best candidate for some of this old software. I tried running Star Commander but it crashed alot. I did manage to get the files for Kerratias I needed. I couldn't seem to get the whole disk of Vycryle though. I then figured I'd try it on another computer, but was getting tired and just gave up for now. Until now all the files that were transferred had been done with wav2prg and done probably in 2002 or before. Anyway I haven't done anything much, just kinda pissing around.

Mar 26 2010

It has taken about 2 hours to do what I've been trying (not too hard) to do for the last 8 years. I transferred the 20 some finished Aj & Kj disks and about 15 others. There are still about 30 vic disks to transfer, but I'm not too worried about that now. Just glancing at the work disks there are a pile of interesting programs all sitting there. So I just have to finish transferring Kerratias, and drop them into Zip files and the library will be complete (started). I am using cmb4win so I can (theoretically) write disks as well. So I should have a gateway to my vic. It will take a few days for me to go through all this stuff.
 

Mar 27 2010

It's been really fun walking down memory lane. There are some fantastic ideas on my work disks! I wish I could finish all of them tommorow, but I know alot of this is time consuming (for me) so many of them will have to wait. I checked out a game I was working on before I stored away all of my vics called Boogieman. I was surprized at the amount of work that was already done. I have a very short basic program that jumps to the few ML routines and loops. It looks like all that's missing is a startup/reset routine,using the fire button, dying, tabulating score, and going to the next level. This is definately the next game I work on. I guess I should get my ass in gear and get back to work on Exploria. I needed a break though, and I think I am ready to start coding again. I'm not entirely sure where to start but I think I will try the main player routine (which is more than half of the enemy routine). I guess I'm still unsure about a few things; like should I keep the map 128 rooms? (will I have enough room after using over 2k for maps?) How should I implement the special characters (especially elevators! and change blocks!)? I guess I could start by adding to my map program and trying things out there. First I think I will transfer a few more disks. Ok ALL my vic disks are transferred. here's a laugh all 50 or so fit on a USB stick I got for free from Staples. I found some other interesting programs. A start to Donkey Kong 3, a start to a vic version of Snokie, and many many others. But I know there is also a start to a version of Hunchback and Loderunner's Rescue, I guess they must be on tape ... somewhere.
 
 

Mar 29 2010

I did my first actual work on Exploria in about 2 weeks, but it wasn't much. I'm trying to finalize the tables for the special characters on the map. And I added a check on my map maker to see what they bytes are in the two locations I allocated for the special characters. Next I will have to create a new subroutine to assign the characters, there are 37 of them so far so it might take a while. Also one of the cool things with the emulator is something  I would have a hard time doing with my real vic. I can add memory @ both BLK0 and BLK1, so my ML is sitting safe below page 30, and my temp BASIC stuff sits @ page 32 and up. Handy for me.
 

Mar 30 2010

Still just pissing around. Finally finished the disk for Kerratias, changed all my old covers from PhotoDeluxe 2.0 format to TIFFs, made a tap for Korque, then a WAV file. I will have to make a tape autoloader before I can migrate some of the games back to tape. I know how (mostly) I'm going to do it, I just need to do it. Then I will make WAV's then the circle will be complete muahaha! Just out of curiousity I checked to see if you can still get blank cassettes, and sure enough they were there, I also found where I could still buy 5 1/2 inch disks! Ok so back to Exploria. I am slowly, painstakingly trying to find the right spots for each special character, I may have to change a few things, but this is the way I have to do things; I figure them out as I go along. So I worked until something ate my basic program, and it crashed. I'm not entirely sure this will work, mostly because of the memory restraints, I may have to use a fairly uniform screen selection, but this will still help figure out what that is. I did fix a few graphics but I still have a few more to go. So no coding yet.
 

April 5 2010

I know I shouldn't fuss over such things but I spent the last three days trying to get my tape autoloader to work. It's working now but I have to include something to stop the run/stop key. Man, what a battle. I think what was happening was I was overwriting some other vectors or maybe the program counter or something. Anyway I got it to work. It is part of the disk autoloader (overwrites the basic warm start vector and jumps my program) but it wouldn't overwrite the cassette buffer so the ML program itself is part of the header which is a technique borrowed from Betelguese, and Korque. Then I spent hours (it seemed) writing the .TAP files changing a few things here and there and adding the program to the tap. I finally have one game on tape, Korque. I thought I would convert all the .TAPs to .T64s but they won't load the autoloader. Anyway too tired to make the final changes to the autoloader. I am trying to get back on track with Exploria but having a hard time, I just have to quit putting it off.

April 6 2010

I'm not sure why I thought this would go quickly. I guess the disks were easier to transfer or it was just such a long time ago I forgot. Anyway fixd the autoloader, finished my first .TAP and .WAV files. So Korque is completely completed. I have started working on Tyrant I and have most of the game on .TAP but I have to fix a couple of things. Another few hours and that one should be done as well. Then I think I will just try to mirgate the programs over to .TAPs as I can, because it is time consuming. Ok I fixed what I needed and Tyrant I is complete as well. I kinda wanted to work on Exploria, but it was too late to start anything there, I will try to accomplish something tommorow.

April 7 2010

I don't know why it's been so hard to get motivated. At least I did a little bit today, I worked on the first 32 rooms and the stuff in them. Which also meant a bit work on my map maker. Now I just have to clean up the joins and the first 1/4 of the map will be done! Yeah now I think I know why, making maps is tedious and any other opposites of fun. Almost done fixing the first 32 rooms, but tired.

April 8 2010

Finished the first 1/4 of the map.

April 9 2010

Started a bit of code. Just a bit to clear the screen to the left. I started to do one for the right, I just figured i'd have to reverse a few things, but there is a flaw with it, and right now I can't wrap my brain around it. When it's done I will add it to my mini explorer. I think this will be where I string the ML together to test (for the player routines).

April 10 2010

So tired and I get a graveyard tonight and a morning tommorow. Yaaa! Anyway I fixd the code for the clear screen right, if I have time I will do the code for either up or down. Did the code for up, down will be similar. Just won't have time to type it in and de-bug it. I am forcing myself to do at least a bit of code so I can keep going on this project, maybe it will build some momentum as well. Maybe.

February 20 2011

I guess this is what happens! I lost interest and then forgot about it until it was -40 weather again! So I started re-familiarizing myself with all this stuff, and found the Korque and Tyrant I .taps were flawed. So I went through the very long process of fixing them. I now have almost every format for the two games. I just need to make physical tapes and that will be it. I decided in the end to cut the about and catalogue programs from the tapes, it's just too long of a wait for too little. I will be including the catalogue papers in the tapes anyway. I am debating about putting the instructions inside the tapes as well. Anyway, I have been trying to figure out where I left off  here. It's great that I left a good deal of documentation, I still had to figure out alot of stuff. So I have spent the last two days organizing this information in my brain. Today I took the code from the last entry and typed it into E12 (the current data statement program). I caught one mistake as I was typing and then saved it. I really didn't think it would work the first try, but it was saved, what the hell. WOW! No de-bugging it just worked! So I coded the bit for down, but subtracting 22 from 0 = 233 which just plain would not work and had to add a fairly lengthy workaround. I'm not sure if I feel like doing much more today, we will see. OK I coded and debugged the down routine and added it to the simple explorer. I realized I needed to color the whole screen for this to work and made a quick little routine for this as well. I checked everything on the simple explorer and it looks great, but I am starting to wonder if I can afford to lose 300 bytes for a cute but pointless chunk of code. Ok so I played with it some more, and made some small fixes to the map maker and the simple explorer. I also made a list of things I will have to do to finish the game. I think the highest on the list right now is animating the elevators. I was just looking to see what I would have to do to make it happen, and I think it shouldn't be too difficult. Then on to handling the traps, another big thing. Anyway 2 new pics.

February 21 2011

As the 21st becomes the 22nd, I give up tackling de-bugging the latest portion of code. Let me backtrack though. After work I pondered what I should do next. After investigating my notes I saw I could eliminate one of the special characters on the map. This would open up an extra 128 bytes, and realistically,  to finish assigning the nibble would greatly increase the amount of code. I really should do this, BUT then I will have to change alot of code. For the time being it is a headache I don't want today. So I decided my goal today would be to animate the elevators. I figured I could save some time and code by just setting it up to use the diamond subs. So I looked over the code to see what variables I would have to assign and made my code. I typed it in and played with a couple of things then I tried it and it doesn't work. I'm afraid I don't have the brain power to figure out whats wrong tonight. I tried but I think I have to look at the diamond code, also looking at it, maybe making fresh code wouldn't be so long anyway. I will probably play with some more stuff tonight but I think I am done with anything important now.

February 22 2011

I sat thinking about this for most of the morning. Should I create a new code or just use the diamond code? It seemed what ever I did wasn't working, not even close. So I started to write out new code and the more if/then stuff I had to do the more I realized this was already done in the diamond code. So why wasn't it working? Finally after inspecting some of the old code, I started to realize that the actual address was less important then an X/Y address. This is the problem with dealing with old stuff, you just forget everything. So I coded a new section to work with the X/Y address and by supper I had it typed in and de-bugged. So I still have to code a counter section and a set-up section. This last bit is another 100+ bytes of code so I am now up to memory location 2411. The map will start @ 4096. So 4096-2411=1685 bytes left to make a game!!! I am scared I will run out of space. So I guess I will have to tighten up the map by removing the extra special byte (then more fixing and re-coding). I had hoped I would make a down elevator but I would have to make a separate routine for it, so I guess that is gone. I should finish the count routine, I want to include a section that moves the player if they are on it. Hmmm maybe storing the player as X/Y would be smarter. This would help I think. Anyway I have a long way to go, I'm not sure if I will make it. In other news I transfered Bopper to a .TAP file last night and made a WAV, so one more done. Well I coded and typed in the counter section. Another 100 bytes! It's not working but I need a break, so I will de-bug it later. I guess that's tommorow. Tried to transfer Blondie. Thought it would be a straight forward thing, but NO. I used the cassette buffer for a ML program and on the disk it's the first thing loaded! I will have to change it some other time.

February 23 2011

Slow going today. Debugged the Elevator Count Code (I think) it took almost all day. And they were mostly typos and one wrong translation. I had instruction 101 instead of 105 so a ADC Z instead of ADC #!!! Anyway I would like to test it but I think the next thing I need to to is to get rid of the other special character for the maps and see what it will affect. My back is killing me and I still have to go to work yet!

February 24 2011

Well I coded the Elevator setup routine, and for now left the map alone. The Elevator stuff has taken a painful 350 bytes and I don't think I'm done. I checked everything by itself and it seems to work fine.So I fixed the simple Explorer to add the elevator routine, and well ... I can see the elevator. I had to adjust the Y value on the elevator I was working on. But the sides are doing the opposite of what they are suppose to!! They are 0 height at the top and max height at the bottom! I hope the fix for this doesn't eat more precious bytes! Hmm I think I see what is going on. I think I have the directions reversed. Again I hope this won't take much to fix. Thank goodness! I had a dec/inc reversed! So it's all sort of working now. I'm not crazy about this, but I have to clear the screen before the elevator re-draws, but it is what it is. So anyway it's done! Next remove 1 byte from each map screen and then fix the (hopefully) just 2 subs that will be affected. But now off to work.

February 25 2011

I did some work but none of it got saved! Even the fix from yesterday is gone. So about 6 hours of pissing around is GONE! I had some issues with the elevator routine and it seems like the part that moves the player doesn't work either. But nothing got solved because everything was lost. I will have to re-build momentum to get over this bump.

February 26 2011

Ok! Redid the work I lost and I have 2 issues. 1: I hate the whole map redrawing so I will make a small routine to redraw just where the elevator is (another 100b). 2: The player does go up the elevator, but he doesn't go down! DOH!  I will be about a 20b rewrite, because the player shouldn't move at the top or bottom. Although it shouldn't be a difficult fix, I will have to move the Elevator Set-up routine. Maybe I should work on moving the map today as well and get all this stuff out of the way. Crap!!! The more problems I solve the more seem to crop up. So I have to rewrite the Elevator setup again! YAAA! The elevator now works (I think). And it was about a 40b fix. OUCH!  I coded 2 short routines to store then re-print behind the elevator, but I outsmarted myself and I will have to make some more rewrites. I am getting fairly tired, not sure if I want to do this one more time (as I have had to change then move everything up a few bytes at a time every time there was a small fix). I tried to fix it but I think I made it worse. I was really hoping to finish that tonight. Well tommorow I guess, then ... THE MAP!

February 27 2011

I looked over the stuff I did yesterday, and I found I had made a loop that would never be jumped out of. So I fixed that, and the elevator routine works except for one small thing. When the player rides the elevator the elevator has already moved to the next position before it checks to see if the player is on it. At first I thought I could simply increase the Y by one to adjust for this, but that only works when the elevator is going up! I would have to check to see what direction the elevator is going before adjusting Y. This code could be an extra 25b and then one of my branches would be out of the 128 instruction boundary! Plus the 3 other routines on above would need to be adjusted as well. I must think about this. I may have to do it anyway, but I sure don't want to. I don't want the player moving where he's not supposed to either or leaving character on the screen that can't be erased. Ok I had actually tried to fix it last night (working while brain not functioning), but it fell a bit short, and I do have to add 2b to the routine. Of course the change cascades and everything gets moved up 2 and jumps must move up 2 ect. I can't wait till this is fixed and I can save it permenantly as a ML file. I also see another small mistake in the animate code. I hope it's a simple fix as that code is below 5 current routines. I am totally puzzled as to why the player riding the elevator isn't working right. I think I need a break. WOW! slowly but surely tracking down the errors. The first one was a JMP was updated improperly and missed a whole bunch of instructions, but it is still checking the wrong locations on the screen. And the elevator is the not joining on the right side when it should. I was hoping I would be done this and onto the map but it's taking WAY longer  and is SO frustrating. It is almost midnight and I have FINALLY ironed out all the bugs. Man I was getting so frustrated I was ready to give up, but I am relatively tenatious. For the player riding the elevator I just played with the numbers till it looked right. It took forever!! Then I looked at the animate routine and thought one of the replace character parts was wrong. It turned out it was right and I needed to add one more change character. So instead of moving and changing everything I took an easy was out and just jumped to another subroutine losing 1b to a NOP. OK all this fixing is costing precious memory. I am @ 2832 and moving toward 4096. I will save this all as one big ML block here right away. These are the routines so far:

1024 – 1036 Basic
1037 – 1087 Print
1088 – 1140 Calc from X/Y
1141 – 1314 Top
1315 – 1576 Middle
1577 – 1729 Bottom
1730 – 1929 Map Main
1930 – 2035 Side
2036 – 2089 Move Scr Lft
2090 – 2144 Move Scr Rgt
2145 – 2204 Move Scr Up
2205 – 2290 Move Scr Dwn
2291 – 2304 Color Screen
2305 – 2411 Animate Elevator
2412 – 2562 Elevator counter
2565 – 2698 Elevator Calc
2699 – 2754 Save Elev BG
2756 – 2806 Print Elev BG
2807 – 2832 Animate Fix

4096 – 6656 Room Data (for now)

7168 – 7679 Grphx & Variables
 

The next big routine will be handling the traps, if I can fit it into 500b or less I think I can make this game work in 6K. And that is the goal. But first I must fix the map. I hope I can do it without damaging to much of what I have. I have 34 rooms mostly finished, only 94 to go (for this level)!! Well compared to this afternoon, that was a walk in the fucking park!!! A quick little BASIC program to move the map around, 2 changes in the ML, a couple changes to the BASIC map maker and done. The map should now sit from 4096-6528. I know it's not a big deal I saved 128b, but I think I will need it. Ok time to relax.

February 28 2011

Although frustrating, yesterday was a good day and I solved most of the elevator problems and moved the map. I had a fair amount of BASIC controlling the elevators in the Simple Explorer so I converted it to ML and made a Elevator Main sub. I think I am done with elevators. Well except for one little fix, when the elevator moves up 10 at it's topmost position it doesn't print anything. This is a holdover from my Diamond routine, a safety net I thought (and maybe I do) needed. When the whole of the diamond is off the screen it doesn't print anything. This would be fine except for the sides (which for the elevator are 10 spaces) don't print either! I have an idea for the fix, but it will be mucking about in routines I don't want to move. Plus I would have to change a few things in the Map Maker. I'll sleep on in. So it took me a while to de-bug the ELEV MAIN routine because I made a typo, but it's all working now. I guess I will have to start of the trap handler routine, but I am thinking about player movement as well, but I should do that later. Wow finished 3 routines that handle printing the traps and setting up the enemies, but OUCH! A whopping 377 bytes! Less than a K left. Lets see: 195b in the cassette buffer, 833b left between my current ML and the map, 639b left between the map and the graphics (but I will need some of that for room changes) so probably closer to 300b, and I might be able to squeeze 180b in between the graphics and my variables. That's a grand total of about 1500 b!! I hope I can do it. The big problem is that none of it is continuous. I still have lots to go. I guess I will start on some of the player routines next. I think the change rooms is the next biggest one. I figured I'd try and get Blondie onto a TAP. I thought I would be lazy, but the truth is I think I am going the hard and long way. I thought I could just save it all as one program and make a little ML routine to move the ML from the screen to the cassette buffer. Something I had planned to do with Exploria. My first attempt has failed. I think that something needs to be reset for this to work. Because when I load it, it stops with an illigal quantity error, I hit restore and try again and it works fine. Maybe I will have to save a bunch of different programs. Well tomorrow work, so I may take a bit of a break. I hope not as long as the last time.

March 1 2011

This is me enjoying a bit of a break. All I did today (after work) was fixed the simple explorer (EX) for the 5th time to incorporate the newest ML routines. I looked at my handywork and was satisfied ... except for the ... damn it! So I turned it off and figured I would tackle the relatively simple task of migrating Blondie to TAP. I remember having some similar problems with the Betelguese loaded. I think something just needs to be initialized. So I added a CLR statement and it seemed to work fine. I say seem because it work just loading the program but when I loaded the whole tap it crashed. My first thought is that  for some reason it is putting something in the tape buffer. So I will test it again, I really hope I don't have to move the ML at 828. Crap it did it again! One more try. When I load it without the loaders it works fine. So strange. I hope my loader isn't doing something funny to muck up the rest of the game. I will test a bit more. OK I'm loading everything except for the autoloader, let's see what happens. Crashed again. Hmm. Requires more thought than I can muster tonight. And I thought this was going to be simple ...

March 3 2011

Won't be doing much for the next couple of days, bewteen work and such. I finally figured out the Blondie mystery though. I realized that the cassette operation generally printed stuff on the screen, and me being lazy I like to use the top of the screen for loader instructions. This is where the ML was temporarily held and, there was a good chance it was being over written. In fact a 100% chance. So I chnged the title screen loader to cursor down about 11 times and everything seems to work now. Ya! One more title finished. Actually most of the difficult ones are near the top of my list. Betelguese, Vycryle, Vycryle2, NM 156 and Cauldron will be the hardest because of all the programs that have to chain together properly. I have an idea NM 156 is not cassette friendly, because I am sure it has a ML routine in the cassette buffer. But I will cross that bridge when I get there. The next Ml routine for Exploria will be the change room thing I think. We'll see.

March 4 2011

I saved Beleguese on a tap last night, but it didn't load, so today I solved that mystery. I had named the second loader LO1 instead of LO2. Tiny fix, now everthing works. Just takes 20 minutes to load the whole thing! That was OK I was listening to Gojira while waiting. Too tired to do much more, but I think I will have to start back to work before I start to lose my momentum on Exploria. OK just transferred Adez & all the Kings Gold to .tap and .wav as well. The next one will be Vycryle and I think it will be kinda hard.

March 7 2011

Did some work on Vycryle, I transferred the loaders and title screens and basically what will be the first tape, but haven't tested it yet.I knew I had to get back to the project at hand or it would be forgotten till next year (or later). I guess I really haven't wanted to allocate any more memory because I think I may run out and not be able to complete the game (without adding more memory, I really want it to run with just 3K expansion). But I have no choice, this must be done if I want to finish at all. So I allocated 6530-6926 for the change room data, and 6930-7009 for the teleport data. I now have about 160b left in between here and the graphics, so I may as well leave that for music data. So let's take stock of the available memory again. 820 to1023 is open, thats about 200b. Still 833b between my current ML and the map. The area between the map and graphics is gone. And the area between the graphics and variables is still from 7455 to 7636 at the moment for about 180b. For a grand total of 1200b. I have to do map changes, teleportation, enemy movement, player movement, music and loading new levels in that. There really isn't anywhere else I can steal memory from. I don't know ... OK well I coded a few short routines to do the map change, but I really don't have a good way to test it. And goodbey to most of the cassette buffer. I guess I should start coding the player stuff to see if I can fit this all in, but I am getting really worried. I have actually filled the temporary (emulated ) disk I am using. I will have to make another one so I can keep going. Kinda funny, I thought these things were hard to fill. Anyway some more pics and a gif to show the elevator moving.

I was just checking some stuff and found out my map maker had been destroyed! I went back a version, but there are alot fo things I will have to fix again. This version worked with the old map and that was the first thing I had to fix. It still has alot of the old objects that I'm not going to use in it and it does everything in BASIC. I started the new disk and will try some of this stuff out tomorrow.

March 8 2011

Didn't do much today. I made a list of all the characters and a list of how the player should react to them. I tried to add a few BASIC lines to my explorer to test them, and aside from a couple of very special cases, the player does not go up levels (at first I thought he would be able to climb 1 step, but this may take too much to program). There are a few unexpected things (as usual), but I ran out of time. I will test this more and hopefully feel confident to try putting some of this into ML soon.

March 9 2011

Only spent about an hour doing vic stuff today. So I tested the Vycryle tape. The title graphics seem to be wrong, but I made and saved a character. When I loaded the city some of the letters from my characters name disappeared, not a good sign. I saved the other 2 programs and will test a bit more tonight, but I have an idea I will be disappointed.

March 10 2011

Having trouble trying to get the player in Exploria to react to the environment properly. There are a couple of little things that would just ruin the gameplay. When I get this nailed down I should be able to start doing the player routine in ML. I did manage to find (and hopefully fix) the problem with Vycryle. It added (then removed) letters to the filename for the diskdrive. I took out the stuff that added but didn't see (till later) the routine the removed the letters, and made the name get shorter and shorter. I fixed the character loader, but have not fixed the other 3 programs. Well the character loader works, and sure enough I saved from V1 and it removed the first 2 letters. It took a while to locate the line, because my programming from that period is well ... atrocious. So I guess I have to look for that stuff in V2 and V3. I hope Vycryle 2 is a bit easier to look at, then finding these things won't be as hard, seeing as I will have to locate them for 6 or 8 programs. Having problems loading the character saved from V1. Ahhh after some investigating it was saving without the last variable (the disk version must do this as well) and was causing an error when the loader tried to input a variable that wasn't there. I will have to check V2 and V3 for this as well. OK they seem to be alright. Still have a problem with V1 though ... or is it V2? ARRG! Oh and the instructions aren't finished.HA!

April 6  2011

Trying to force myself back into something, but I am just too distracted tonight. I printed out the basic thingy for the player and can see where I think I need a quick little fix, but my basic is SO messed up I should strip it down and start again, so my ML will be better. I started to check to see where I was with the Vycryle stuff, but I don't have the patience to load all the programs just to check one variable. I want to move forward but I don't have the motivation. Isn't it always the way ...

April 7  2011

I printed out the BASIC program so I could look at it. It didn't take too long before I found (I think) a solution to my problems. I finally got my notes out of the closet and lo-and-behold I had been programming stuff. Of course it was other things like handling the rooms items and stuff. I had 3 short routines that would go in the cassette buffer but I don't think I had typed any of it in yet. I think I will hold off on these and try and start the player main, because without that, there will be nothing ... Anyway I changed a few things and it's working better, but there are still a few problems. Moar testing, maybe I will be happy with it yet.

April 12  2011
I have been playing the the character movement for the last couple of nights (on and off as usual mostly off). I think I have the movement where I want it. Of course it's all in BASIC yet so it's very S....L....O....W.... But I have a good template to draw from for the ML. I haven't handled falling and death things yet though. I am a bit disappointed, the player really needed to move by pixils rather than character blocks :( . I think I have a good idea of how to impliment it in the future but I'm still fighting to make sure I have enough memory to finish this. I think even the enemies will have to dumb if I can fit all this stuff in there ... I guess I will know more when I finish the player main ML. But at least I feel like I've made some progress. I should have used the rest of this night to start some ML but instead I loaded up the music and played with that. I have about 2.30 minutes of music in basic which will cost about 100 bytes for data (so far) the program to co-ordinate it could be big though, lots of variables.

Aug 13  2011
I have been pissing around with some stuff. Haven't touched Exploria (because I am scared). Started a new game concept I called Parapet, but already I'm starting to think it might be more than I want to bite off right now (more heavy ML programming). I needed something light. I finally went through the Vycryle .taps and got everything straighened away. Took 2 nights and now that I understand what the warp function in Xvic is for, well that helped. Did the inside artwork for the cassettes and I think that one is done! Next V2. I really have to get back to Exploria, but I am worried I won't be able to finish it in under 6K ...

Aug 18  2011
Uggg! I loaded Exploria and just looked at where I was, this is going to be difficult to get back into .... Started transferring Vycryle 2. Got all the title screen loaders, but the character loader saves the character in the tape buffer ... I knew this wasn't going to be easy ...And most of the memory locations are access directly (not by a variable). YAAA. I  imagine all the programs are like this ... 
 
Apr 12 2012 
I didn't actually do any vic work at all. I beleive I started to finish my Jedi Knight 2 project after that last entry. It took months but I finished the Jedi Knight project in Jan I think. I almost want to tear back into this, but I'm not sure if this is the right time, meaning I don't know if I HAVE the time to dedicate to this project. Maybe there will be another entry in here soon. Maybe not ...
 
18 Sep 2012 
I'm just making an entry. No work has been done since last year and nothing has been done to Exploria since April of 2011. Right at this very moment I do have some extra time, but I wonder if dedicating it to this almost dead project is wise. I know I have given up on the 2 star wars projects. I'll just leave it like the last entry, we'll see what happens.
 

Working on Parapet

20 Nov 2012 
I have been extremely reluctant to make an entry, because Number one I haven't actually done anything productive and two, I'm afriad that I will start something and long before it is finished I will lose interest and forget about it. I have been purusing the aj web pages and I WANT to do something, but I also know what kind of commitment I would have to have and I'm just not sure that I can. I have for the time being given up on Exploria. I think without extreme changes this game will not fit into the 3k format I had wanted. So I started something that would be simple and something I should be able to finish. I looked at Parapet and thought it was something I could do. The first thing I needed was to find the RND spin generator. I knew I used it in planetoid and went in search of notes. There were none. So I opened the game and started looking through the ML. It was thank goodness near the beginning. So I tried to figure out what the heck I was doing then I used the first 30 mnemonics almost verbatim. I checked to see if it was working and after a quick typing error fix, it was. But now I started to realize the game mechanic was awkward and possibly not something easy to do. Dammit this was supposed to be easy. I will think on this a bit. I am still slowly transferring games back to tape. I have stopped at Vycryle 2 because I know it will take alot of re-writing. But a quick playthrough makes me wonder if there isn't problems with the disk version. My spells were all turning to lightning! Not good. I have stupidly decided to change the covers yet again, but I could still change my mind back I guess. I just thought it might be fancier if they were cardboard O cards instead of plastic cassette cases. But it is starting to look like more work I really don't want to do. At some point I know I will have to tackle Vycryle 2. (and NM 156 is going to be difficult too!)
 

21 Nov 2012 
I came up with an idea that would simplify the programming aspect greatly, will it affect gameplay? probably. But this could still work. So I spent most of the afternoon writing ML to make an enemy move up the screen until it hits the wall. Surprizingly it was fairly easy to debug. It ended up being about 250 bytes. Then I went to program the part that makes the wall crumble and crash crash crash. I've tried debugging it and it just seems to work worse with each iteration, starting to get frustrated. This was supposed to be easy.

26 Nov 2012 
I have been super sick and just let the old problem sit. Today I thought I would tackle debgging my ML. It was so puzzling, I would BRK at points and everything looked exactly the way it should, but when I ran the whole thing together it would crash. I just couldn't find fault with any of my coding, which is where I left it. So today I started from scratch hoping to find something I had missed, but I just couldn't. As usual it was something stupid. I had to insert a quick fix in my ML (I had to initalize one more variable before moving the blocks) and I didn't have enough space between the Top of Memory and the screen, so I did a quick jump just below the space character initialized my variable and jumped back to the move block routine. EXCEPT it wasn't a jump I had a JSR!!!! I had thought I had to do some other things so it would return, subract 120 from ACC, JSR back to the move block routine, and when it returned this time, it would hit a BRK for the space character! I changed the 32 to a 76 and my problem was solved. I also tried to limit the enemy to 20 horizontal positions, but it looks like that was only a partial success. I quickly made a main loop in basic and now the true problem is realized: this game will be boring as shit. More pondering ...

27 Nov 2012 
After a great deal of thought,as being sick you have alot of time to think, I have decided 2 things. One: Parapet will work as it is (I think) especially when there are 4 enemies (I now wish I has left room for a couple more, oh well). I will create a make rnd block routine in ML and I think I will handle the rest in basic. I had a few cute ideas, but I may have to curtail them to actually finish. God I hope this game doesn't suck. Then Two: I will pick up the old burden of Exploria. This is my idea. I will just try to finish it, if it goes over 6K, fuck it, so be it. When it is finished I will look at how far over I am and if it possible to make as a 6 K game and if not, then it's just not. I kinda want to work on the music as it seems interesting and will be quite separate from most of the game, but the deal breaker will be the player main. I will have to look at my notes and plot from there. Now to write some ML. That went well. I wrote the new block ML typed it in and just tried it and it worked out of the box. I have a few concerns as to how I am going to make the player routines work, but the ML looks quite nice. Now I must rest.

28 Nov 2012 
As I start to re-enter Real Life, I did very little today. Changed one byte and added 2 to teh ML. I did start the Basic for the players movement, but I am still working out how everything will work. Plus I am starting to see the slow down already, and I haven't actually added much. I may have to make part of this stuff in ML as well. We'll see. There is one pesky thing in the enemy. It won't select the 2nd last column, but it will the last and third last. I will have to figure this out.

29 Nov 2012 
I pissed around with the BASIC and have an almost complete version. But it has slowed and it doesn't seem like it would be very challenging. My worst fears were realized game = boring. By playing a little bit I see it would be quite challenging if you had to start in the middle. I may look into that. But I also kinda want to see if I can regain some of the speed we lost. More ML programming. Still haven't tried to debug the problem with the enemy. I did start to look at where Exploria was. I was disappointed to see that there was lots of ML sheets that were never typed in. I guess I will have to try to decode the basic version of the Explorer to start a player main. If I finish that I will have a pretty good idea where I stand with the game. I went back and played with Parapet for the rest of the afternoon. I eventually separated the ML into a loader. I managed to fix the ML problem. And with about 20 more ML bytes I managed to make the game kinda fun. Tested it for a bit. I am happy with it. Now I need sounds. I think I will write a little song for this in ML and add some cheezy level up and dead sounds and I will be done. Then it will just be a matter of making loaders and and title screens and shit. But first sleep.

30 Nov 2012 
It is a strange anti-climactic feeling. It took most of the day but I wrote a quick little melody hashed out some basic for it then hashed out some ML for it tested it and then tried to squeeze it into the remaining 100 bytes I had left. Well it just didn't fit. I thought hey why not try and stick it in a basic line (I had seen something about this before). I guess you have to be finished your basic program first, so that didn't work. The only option was the cassette buffer. and then I have to figure out how I can put it there. Finally I stuck it in the cassette buffer and got it to work, then I figured (to make it work for tape) make a short routine to copy it and put the whole thing on the screen. Then I have to reset the Top of Memory in basic ... it was just a small nightmare. I finally got it all to work together though. And the game is complete. So I started the boring task of making a Disk for it. Found out my Sector Editor didn't work on the new version of Xvic. Got that working made the boot, transferred the logo and the logo graphics. Then I realized I still had to make a splash screen. sigh. I think that is where I will stop tonight, but hopefully a disk version tomorrow and a casette version shortly after. Still have to write instructions ...

1 Dec 2012 
I am sort of still revelling in the fact I actually finished something. I finished the disk with out too much trouble, I would start the tape but I have to locate the tape autoloader. Hopefully after that it shouldn't be too difficult. Just updating the miriad of pages realting to a new release, but because it wasn't on the next 10 release I am a bit sad. Well hopefully I can do some work to Exploria and/or Boogieman and that will put a huge dent in that list. For now I am just tidying up.
 

After work I located the tape autoloader : for future reference it is called : AJ&KJAUTOLOAD on work disk 1. It didn't take too long before I had a .tap version and as soon as that was done a .wav version as well. So a bit more updating my stat files and I guess I will have to finish the tape and Disk versions of the covers, then I really am done. I kinda know this is a token milestone, because getting back into Exploria will be very hard. Having said that, there is a fair amount of ML in Parapet, some interesting stuff. It all was coded fairly quickly and without too many problems, so there is something to be said about that. I mean I must be getting a better grasp of this stuff, at least a bit.

Working on Exploria



2 Dec 2012 
So today is the day I start back to work on Exploria. Being lazy though I almost feel i should just transfer a few games to .tap (now that I see it really isn't that difficult, just for Vycryle 2 and maybe NM 156). I should print out the Parapet cover, and I kinda want to do the Quiggly cover (for some strange reason). I'm also kinda getting the itch to work on Adez and the Keys of Dengar. No wonder I never get anything done.

oK SO I opened the mapmaker and after about 15 rooms the basic program got eaten. I remember a few days ago the same thing happened with the explorer. I was a bit worried that my ML was sending bits willy-nilly across the memory, when a stupid thought crossed my mind. "didn't my map ML continue off the screen a bit?" I moved the Basic up 2 pages and there was no problem. I should worry about this, but because there will be no memory above 8185 I'm not going to. Although for future ref there are about 10 bytes there I COULD use as variables. Stupid me. Anyway a bit more testing before I dive in.hmmmm. I see why I have been putting this off. It is a royal mess. I mean I'm not saying that it can't be done, but it isn't going to be easy. I also see a few things that I think I will just have to let slide. Like falling into a solid side peice is just going to have to kill you weather it was an accident or not. I kinda wish there was a way I could do a sort of half measure, you know like just make the guy move around, then start adding what blocks he can't move on. There are a few other issues can the man fall 2 spaces now? He may have to. How am I working the change map code? I am going to have answers for alot of this stuff soon....OK now I'm starting to see why I was so worried. After allocating 6530to6929 for change data and 6930 to 7009 for teleport data, that leaves about 150 bytes between that and the graphics at 7168. And the only other 2 free spaces would be from 3263 to 4096 (about 750 bytes) and about 967 to 1023 (about 80) bytes! for a grand total of 980 bytes, none contigous. So there is my problem then map takes up about 3K by itself, and the game probably is a bit too ambitious for 3K! So I will have to make the map smaller or add more memory. Oh then the headaches begin, moving all that ML from 1024 to 4096+. I guess the only thing is to start coding the player main so I can see how much more memory I actually need. Always seems to be the way, I get a grand idea get over half way done before I realize that it won't fit into the memory constrictions of a vic and end up having to pull back ideas to make it fit. Only I know this game will really suffer for it. OK much later I have started a bit of code for the player. I have also thought about reducing th number of rooms from 128 to 64 and or possibly removing one of the shapes in each room from 6 to 5. This will free up considerable space, but as of yet I have not implemented it yet. The reducing rooms is starting to make sence as I remember how tedious it was to do the first 32 I would still have 480 rooms to go. OUCH! I mean 256 is still a big number. So 4 levels of 64 rooms. I think this is probably more realistic. It's a good thing I haven't typed in the room changing stuff as that will change quite a bit. So for now I will try to stuff the player main into what room is left.

I couldn't resist and I tried making a few more interesting screens, but HAD to change the colors. I will have to push myself to make the next 32 rooms. Well typed in the first 200 bytes of player main. Didn't test it yet, too tired.

3 Dec 2012 
Grrr. Ran through the code I typed in last night and nothing was working. I couldn't figure out why and ended up going through line by line. Even then it wasn't making sence, so I had to double check my translations (Mnemonics to numbers). Oh for FUCKS SAKES! I had scribbled down 2 errors. I had a LDA absolute = 174 (actually 173) and a INC Z = 238 (actually 230). Once that was fixed I tried the other part, the first part that will become the huge mess of Player Main. I think I found an error in the emulator. When checking my LDA (z),y when y!= 0 the contents held a 36 when there was absolutely no reason to. I double checked and sometimes the right number was there and the odd time it wasn't. I wonder how this will affect the game. OK so everything so far seems to be working, now to start adding all the reasons a player can't move. I feel the wieght of an elephant on these shoulders, this is going to be long and painstaking. From the looks of the mini explorer I have to work the elevator into this as well. How fun does that sound? I guess the first step is to get the player in the screen and to bump the screen over when he reaches the edge. Just a quick check, changing the map from 128 rooms to 64 rooms saves me 1200 bytes!! Well still mashing through the code for the player main, but a good portion is there and I still have about 400 bytes left before I hit the map. I have to test what I have before I can move on but that means a new basic program. Sounds like alot of work. Bah !! Ok So I formed sort of an outer loop with all my jumps being NOPs for now. But it seems like my old player is about 2 steps behind, and then not reading the character underneath properly. I have to get this to work properly before I can move on. I may have to re-think this routine. I think I understand the problem I will try a few more things. ARRGG no I don't know. 350 bytes of code today but most of it doesn't work. I will have to sit with it tomorrow.

In other news I am going to make a very difficult move (limiting these games even more!) I have decided that all games must work on cassette. So there are a few ideas that I will either have to limit or I will have to scrap all together. Galaxy is the first one that comes to mind, possibly Doors, probably Dynasty 2. All the ones I thought I would cheat and load graphics off of the disk drive, yeah well that ain't happening. Not to say that I won't chain programs together (Exploria will be 4 programs!) but I can't expect that random access. I have noted a few changes, for example Distractions (124) will now just be a bunch of bundled games loadable from the opening screen. Not to say that some of these won't be available on Disk either because some of the longer bigger ones most certainly will. So from my parapet I decree!

4 Dec 2012 
Oh my! I re-coded the begining and ending parts of the player main loop. After playing with the old stuff for hours, I finally gave in and started from scratch. Well almost. I think the middle parts with all the JSRs are fine (at least for now). So I re-coded it and after fixing several problems I have a working shell. Whew! Added about 8 bytes. OK So I made a few new subs for the player loop. I am having problems with my x=old which should move the player back if he tries to step on something that he can't. I think I am just missing resetting a few variables. I made a set up screen routine (as it is a gosub in my BASIC program) and that works fine. I made the go screen up sub. I was having a few problems, but realized that the re-drawing of the maps messes up what ever current x/y values I have, so I fixed that and it seems to work OK. I think there are a few fixes yet, but it starting to come along. It's wierd because it sort of seems like I did this before (Mini Explorer), except my program is only 6 lines long and I have a FORE=1TO100:NEXT before entering the next player loop (and it's still way faster than the original!!!). So after some more toying with this I got the x=old routine to work. I had to shuffle everything up about 10 bytes, but I only had to change about 3 JSRs, so that's OK. Now it all SEEMS to work so far. I will try and add the screen changing things (DOWN, LEFT and RIGHT). OK my little Explorer can now go anywhere on the 64 screens. Although it is a sizable accomplishment I know the bigger task is ahead and that is the tricky 3D movement. But really happy about what I did today. Mashed out about 300 bytes of code, so about 600 new bytes since a dropped it. Pretty cool to see the Explorer zipping around. Still amazing I have that 100 count before it zipps along again!

5 Dec 2012 
Kinda relaxed today, but still mashed about 200 bytes of code. I thought that these parts would be difficult but looking at the BASIC program it actually didn't seem too bad. It took a while but I finally got the -21 routine to work. The big problem was getting the right places to check before the player moves. The -23 routine was similar enough and was mostly copying code. The +21 routine was a bit different but soon enough I had that working as well. In the meantime I did have to change some of the code for PLayer Main (reading the locations). I managed to save about 7 bytes, but there is so much code above this I will wait to fix this, because then I will have to update about 10 JMPs as well. The +23 routine should have been easy, but no. Obviously something is not working properly, because -1 location is always reading 69 and nothing makes it change. I need a break for now though. If I can get this routine to work tonight I will be down to these things : Elevators , Traps , Dead , Main , Music. I still have about 75 bytes left before I hit the map, then I now have about 1700 bytes after the map. I am pretty confident I can make this work now. If only I could just get this bit to work. Well at first this seems like I was using a couple of bytes that BASIC was using as well, but I changed the locations and even though the numbers are what they are supposed to be it still isn't working. After a scouring look at my ML I was jumping in 10 bytes too soon and it would quickly hit a RTS and nothing would happen. OK so now I fixed it, time to wreck it. I want to remove those 7 unused bytes in Player Main and this could be shitty making sure I get all the new JMPs fixed. Wow saved 11 bytes and evrything seems to be working right. So I guess this is where I will leave it for tonight. Still have 88 bytes left before the map. I guess I will tackle the elevators next.Hmm turns out that work is mostly done! Just have to add color before jumping to the sub. I will put that in the main loop. So next it will be traps. I started 3 routines for trap handling, but I think I will have to make a few changes. Still alot of the work is already done. Gotta like that! I'm actually getting the feeling that I may complete this. Hey I just realized something. Parapet is another first. It is the first game I completed on Xvic. My first Vic game finished on a Windows machine!

6 Dec 2012 
Didn't have much time today so I just coded a quick little bit to slide the player right one space. Haven't tested it yet. I got home but was too brain dead to do much. I wrote out a main routine, but it may need some work. But it helps to see what I think I need to do first. I guess the trap handling is next. Sort of added 8 more rooms. They need fixing, but no big. 16 more rooms for this quad.

8 Dec 2012 
After pondering about it for about a day, I decided I would tackle the music next because it would be the hardest. It took all day and I used up from 5514 to 6068! I had hoped my estimate of 500 bytes for music would be out by a long shot, but I guess I was very close. It was never super frustrating. Annoying, especially when the melody wouldn't sync up with the bass, but I did figure out ways to make it all work together. Lucky me I planned to do a song for each level! Anyway it has taken the day, but it is done. Then when I tried to incorporate it into the other ML code, I accidentally erased my 8 new rooms. Crap! I still haven't tested my slide right routine, then next will be the change room and teleport stuff.Still a ways to go but this huge chunk is done for now. So 1024-4079 is code 4096-5746 is room data, music data then from 5747-6068 is code and 7168-7679 is graphics and variables. So there is just 4080-4095,6069-7167,& 820-1023 left unoccupied! But I just have a few things left. The Change rooms, Teleport, Enemy movement, Jump space, Main loop, and Startup. I think I can squeeze it into 1300 bytes. I have to!

OK I just went through the slide right sub and it's not working at all. Very disappointing. Music is working pretty good. Looks like I will have to jump to it twice for every time I jump to the rest of the game (player, elevator). I think I will work on something that requires less brain power, as I think I am almost done. Ahhh crap. I took some time to fix the now badly outdated mapmaker remade the 8 screens, and then saved them before I realized I hadn't saved my new mapmaker. I had already reset the start of BASIC and Top of BASIC pointers but I still tried to save it. In the end the screen went black and the machine crashed. Anyway I have 8 new rooms, and I think they are fairly close. Here's the last one.


10 Dec 2012 
As usual it has been tough to get back into it. But slowly I started to puzzle over the slide right stuff (there were at least 3 problems) and work through each problem one by one. First I got it to replace the right old character. Then it took a bit to get the player to on the screen where he belonged. Then finally to make the screen right stuff work. At the end I had over written the map by one byte. By one FUCKING BYTE!! So I went through the code to see if there was anything I could change to get my one byte back. As it turns out there was alot of redundancy to check if the player is moving onto something it shouldn't, and I managed to save 4 bytes. So I THINK the slide right is working, I will have to test it more but first I must head out into the cold for a while.

Although I have been at it for a while, I can't say I feel I have done much that is productive. I have re-fixed the mapmaker (although I have yet to add the Teleport and Change room functions) and SAVEd it. I fixed (I think) the rooms up to 48 and have added rooms up to the last one, room 63. I just checked and there are a few fixes, but I am too lazy to document them now. I will probably do that later, and start working on the Change and Teleport code. Baby steps, but each one is getting me closer to the end. I really thing the hump was me changing the number of rooms per level to 64. I mean that freed up 1200 bytes or so!! Having just finished the music I would have been out of room already! Crap found a new mistake! If the player drops down on the edge of the screen you disappear into neverland! Not sure what I can do there.

I coded a whole crapload of BASIC for the map maker to try and incorporate the new functions of creating teleport and Change room subs. I think I have the teleport thing working, but the Change rooms looks like it isn't quite working. I am starting to get too tired to figure out what is wrong, I will try and tackle it after work tomorrow. I do have one more thing I have to decide. I have all the change room and teleport ML in the cassette buffer (The ML I wrote out before (last year?)). Should I keep it there? I don't think I will need that much space, but then maybe I will.One more Pic, this is the final screen from the first quad.Pretty isn't it? I was also thinking I should start then next ML @ 6144; Just to leave some space for some of the other music. That way if the progam for the music for any of the other quads is longer it will hopefully still fit. I was also trying out some colors for the other quads. I'm pretty sure I want one to be a snowie looking color scheme and the very last one to be like a night color scheme. I was looking at yellow and green, not sure if I like it.

11 Dec 2012 
After work I played with the map some more and realized I really needed to figure out how the player would go through the mazes to finish. So I catured all 64 screens and made a map and quickly figured out the route to success. I was too tired at that point for anything more.

12 Dec 2012 
Have to work again so there isn't much time. I was working on entering the change rrom and teleport data. Also making sure that the new map maker was working properly as well. I found out my teleport data was in the wrong place and was getting over written. Bah!!!!!!!!!!OK that was a close one! Luckily it turns out I just hadn't updated my list and had used the wrong number to start where the teleport data was stored. So hopefully this should work now. Yaa! So it looks like everything is working now. Tomorrow I will look over the room stuff and start typing it in. Wait I think I can still do that now, I should have enough steam for that. But I will definately be doing any troubleshooting tomorrow. Alright typed that in, now I am pooped. Here is the (already outdated) map for quad 1.

13 Dec 2012 
Had hoped to accomplish lots today, but life certainly got in the way. I tried the code and it crashed. I quickly looked and had missed some fairly important jumps. I fixed it and it still crashed. Now I knew this wasn't going to be easy to debug. I went through my code and started to see flaws in my logic. So I have been fixing the code as I go along hoping that it will start to work soon. So far no avail. Wow that was rather painful! But it is now working (I think, definately more testing). I just have to create part of the loop so I can test it more. I made a short silence routine and a delay I started to add a noise but I ran out of room. So I have 2 noise routines coded and they work but I'm not sure where to put them. I guess I will just have to start at 6144 anbd continue from there. I quickly translated then typed in the rough code I had for the main loop. Leaving lots of NOPs in for the JSRs the will eventually be there. Although the code is quite simple, I was still very surprized to see it working almost immediately (I had the jump to the music wrong, but it was a simple fix). I think I should add a safety about player Y>24 so that they won't get lost in la la land. I should be able to just tag it onto the end. Now the only BASIC in Mini Explorer are a few pokes to initialize things! It's funny because it still does the same thing, except it's ALL ML now! I popped in the Change room routine, but there is something not quite right as it displays the screen you are changing no matter what, then returns you to the proper spot when you leave the screen. But still pretty cool to see the change screen almost work. So I have to fix that (add a jump to the noize) find a permenant place for the noizes, then finish the teleport code (and test). After that there are a few smaller handling routines for the jump, save, dead, scoring, visited map. Then just an Enemy movement routine, and the start and end (game over or load new level). So I guess it has been a good day after all. I went back and fixed the change screen and updated the main loop. I left a few more spots in there for scoring and stuff. I wrote out a quick teleport bit and was hoping I could squeeze it into the spot just below 1024, but it is about 35 bytes and that spot is less than 20 bytes. Oh well, I think the main loop is solid enough I can start coding above it now. Down to about 880 bytes now I will have to be careful! Just a quick look back over the last 2 weeks, and I have to say I have made alot of progress. About 1400 bytes of code as well for a grand total of about 3600 bytes. A good chunk is also map data, music data (about 1650 bytes!) and graphics (512 bytes). So I have used (so far) about 5750 bytes. With just over 800 bytes remaining (remember I am using almost everything available from 820 to 7630!). So when I am done (If I use everything, and I think it will be close) the program will be about 6800 bytes! My biggest ML projext so far. Although I when I check my notes for Dynasty I will have to see how far along I was.

14 Dec 2012 
Again not much time before work, but I did manage to fix the pesky player X>23 problem. It wasn't easy but I got a solution.I called the main loop done and added Noize 1 and 2 and later tonight I will probably add the teleport sub as well.Yep I did that. It wasn't working right to start but I left out a number. I'm surprized it worked at all. Once I did that I saw I had to add a few more things, but it works fine now. And add alot of functionality to the game. Plus this and the change room things are truly new, something never done in any of the mini explorers. I'm feeling pretty good, I can almost see the end of this. I am down to Jump space, Save, Dead, Score, Visited, Game Over, Quad mapped, Startup and what I will try to start coding; Enemy movement.Ouch enemy movement looks like its going to be about 200 bytes! I guess I will have to look at it tomorrow.

15 Dec 2012 
Surprize Surprize! I typed in the E1 sub and it doesn't work. There were a few typos but once I fixed those I see there are many difficult problems. My logic was a cascading if/then series to get a random movement, but there is a flaw in my logic and I have a splitting headache, so I can't wrap my brain around it yet. Also it's not reading the current char under properly, and I think there's more, again I can't think about it now. And it is a whopping 200 bytes, plus I will have to add another 50 to work for E2. Where is the Tylenol? I quickly identified the problem, the random number would be greater than most and would then do several operations instead of one. So after some thought I will try a differnt approach. I will AND with each byte and end up with 8 separate operations. This will add extra instructions to this behemoth sub, but any other way would add way more.No that isn't going to work either! I have to add a JMP after every operation, 21 more bytes! So that fixed it but at what a cost! I am now up to 6750, so less than 250 bytes to finish. I may have to cut something else to make this work, I guess I will keep slogging it out till I run out of room. Anyway the enemy sub is done! It looks pretty good, them little wierd aliens running around. They don't look as good static, but heres a pic anyway. <sigh> Off to work.

I got back and felt ambitious so I coded Jump Space, Dead, Get jump, and Save. I am getting worried I am down to about 200 bytes and have alot to do yet. The biggest of which is Start. Score may be large too. Anyway I tested Jump space and seems to be working, Dead on the other hand ... Crap it was another stupid typo. I was loading the Y co-ord from literally nowhere. So that seems to work. I will try to start adding it into the main loop. Hmm still some things to work out. Player isn't dying when he should be. The char behind isn't updating. All this I will have to figure out tomorrow or Monday. Worked out 2 bits for the visited and half of the score subs. I think I can make it fit but I am going to have be cheap on what ever coding is left.

16 Dec 2012 
So I opened it all up and tried to fix a few things, which meant more code which meant updating JSRs and JMPs. So I think I got it all but I didn't have time to test it and I had to go to work. So a quick runthrough and everything seems to be working except for dying when you are on a space. Or a monster. I wasn't able to test the save function yet. Moar testing. Slowly nailing down the little mistakes and I made a quick fix that doesn't seem to be working. I think! Everything else is. YAAA! I almost have a game. I think I have everything working so far. There are only 2 things left to add to the main loop. Score and Game over. But I have a little fix I have to add to the Setup Screen routine. I have to add the visited and a jump out for quad mapped. I have it coded and now I just typed it in. I think that its probably as far as I will go tonight.Didn't sleep well last night and can't think too well.Just 2 quick notes. One I have migrated to Xvic 2.2 you can see the difference in the pictures as the red is much darker. Two I am most of the way through Disk 3 of Exploria saves and it looks like I will have to make one more working disk yet as I am down to about 57 sectors. Oy Vey I couldn't resist and started slogging through some of the easier stuff (Print Score) and realized it should only print once (It would slow everything down unnessessarily) which meant I had to nail down the visited sub (and the score sub). I think I got the first two to work. Score I'm not entirely sure is right and I am too tired now to figure this out. Lights out.

17 Dec 2012 
Another full day of work so all I did was type in the score sub and tie everything together. Almost a complete game except when you run out of men. I made a gam eover bit but it needs some work. I may have to tack it into the dead routine. And I am almost out of room. @ 7158 so Start and Quad Mapped will have to go in the area between the graphics and the variables. I hope I can make this fit! I am SO close.

18 Dec 2012 
I have an aweful headache. Today I realized I had to put the Game Over JMP into the Dead routine. At this point it is a pretty serious oversight. So what I have to do is alot of changing things. I had left spaces in the main loop that I found out later that I didn't need ( 3 NOPs to jump to Score which is now handled in Set Up Screen for example). Beacuse at first all I was thinking of moving were the 7 instructions that made the JMP to Game Over from Main to Dead so I would only have to change a few JMP locations. But really I should free up all the space in Main that I can. And that means finding the JMP locations, finding where they are JMPing to, and updating them. Like I have said before I don't use an assembler or anything. I am old school so this will be quite painful and will be an all day affair. I am not looking forward to it but it must be done. I think I will try to plan something to make this as painless as possible. Also I was debating wheather I should put the data for GAME OVER in the area @ 1007 and in the end decided against it, well I changed my mind again and will have more updating to do. It's big job today! And the worst thing is the functionallity will only change for the Game Over Sub (it will work now) everything SHOULD be the same. Alright enough of the ordinary annoyances (read RL) and to work. Let's see how much I can get done before RL work. I printed out from 6144 to 7167 then moved everything down, and started to get then new addresses for all the routines. That was as far as I got so everything had to wait till I got home. So then next step was to find all the JMP and JSR instructions and update them. This was a long a tedious process as I was POKEing and PEEKing. Then I realized the E Main changed a bunch of stuff to use E1 for E2. OMG that was about 40 extra changes! I think I have them all done except 2 that are not in this block one is @ 3623 area and one is @ 918 area. I will find them and then save. God I hope I did everything right, it will be unpossible to find something wrong in this now. Well here I go and try it. Well FUCK! Ok so it was 2 numbers that buggered everything up, plus I wasn't sure the cassette buffer was comprimised so I went back and got an old version of it and stuck it into the newest ML. So that was an extremely horrible experience, but everything seems to be going again. Except the jump space doesn't stay when you go to the next screen and I should test the chnage screen and teleport bits again just because I want to make sure they work with then new ML. In the end I saved 6 bytes! Not really worth it, next time I may just leave it alone. So the Change room works, but I suck at my own game and couldn't get far enough to test the teleporter. I see there are a few issues though. I saw then enemies go off the screen and I'm not sure whats happening with the jump space thing. Oh yeah and something is happening in the dead routine where is is erasing half of the screen. So more testing and fixing tomorrow. The game is fun but frustrating. I wish I could work on new stuff tomorrow, but I have to fix this stuff first, I don't want to do another massive move. It is just too painful. But as soon as I get this stuff working there will only be 2 things left. The Startup/Initialize and the Quad Mapped/Load subs. I should see what I have for memory, I had an Idea for a fancy splash screen but that probably isn't possible. I also wanted to do some cool stuff for the ending but again I may have to cheap out. WOW I have about 10 bytes just below 7168 and about 60 bytes above the graphics. That's what I have to finish the game with. And there might be a few bytes just below 1024 if I need them (and I think I will!). WAIT I forgot I have to program 3 new songs that will be loaded in with the new levels. So I was thinking I might be done for Christmas, but I doubt it.

19 Dec 2012 
I was thinking about the problem for the dead routine. Because I suck so much I had given myself six lives or more. Stupid me I hadn't set it up for more than 3. I think I should give at least 4 or 5. This will require a bit of tinkering but nothing serious. The Game Over is loading the letters GAME OVER from the same place as before so that is a small fix, plus I want to move it to 1007 to use up some of the room there. The only one that I think I will have problems with is the enemy routine, as it does not seem to recognize the edge of the screen and I can't figure out why. Again I don't have much time today so I should capitalize on the time I have. Oh boy! So I have made the fixes I need and am ready to move on. But the problem is I need more room. I am thinking about moving the monster 2 graphic so I can stuff the splash screen there. Because there are 4 unused characters after it and it would be one of teh easier graphics to change (just main, dead fix, and e main). But I am out of time as well. I have written out what could be the start routine, but I have no time to do anything more. I'm hoping it will fit in 7456-7615. And with any luck I can make the Quad mapped fit 7158 to 7167 (?)!! So I went ahead and coded the 2 routines wth most of the things I wanted and I think I can make this fit. I also found out that moving the enemy 2 graphic was not possible without wasting more bytes, so I think I have something that will work now. I'm going to see if I can make this fit now. HOLY FUCK! I need 11 fucking consecutive bytes! I will have to cut into the little bit of memory that I reserved for music. UNBELEIVEABLE!!! I managed to stick it all in there without going into the reserved memory (there would have been a problem with that anyway) BUT I used every single last bit. The last routine jumps a bunch of times becuase there was nothing left that was continuous. Anyway I tried the start routine and it doesn't work. I am WAY too tired to do any debugging tonight. I just hope I don't have to make any major changes becasue there literally is NO room. Hopefully I can get the bugs out of the last few bits, then 3 songs and 194 screens.

20 Dec 2012 
As I was heading to bed I was pretty sure I had solved the first problem. The splash page was saved in 2 non-continuous places and to make it easier I thought I would just leave the Y index continue counting. I forgot that the new A location was no longer indexing from 0 but from 16. So simple subtract 16 from my STA absolute,y and that was fixed. Another problem I later found out (through exhastive testing) was that many of teh variables I want to load with the levels (screen color, start screen ect.) just simply weren't there. And what a mess that made. But as I found out there was a much more serious problem. I had mistakenly LDA # 192 instead of LDY #192 and although this neede to be fixed that was not really the problem. I was going to use Y to index the variables from 7616 to 7679 and zero all of them, except I had changed a couple instructions to save space and the Accumulator would no longer be zero! There was no room to insert the extra 2 bytes, so a bad fix was to raise the STA ,y location by 192 and let Y wrap around. This meant the top of the screen was filled with zeros temorarily but It would do the job, and the screen would be cleared momentarily. Then I could get it to start, BUT my screen, and Player save locations weren't loaded. ARRRG! This would mean when the player died he would start at 0,0,0 (totally off the screen!). There was absolutley no room to store the 3 variables from 4093 to 7679. I realized though the end of the Dead routine would update the player from the save locations so if the Start just updated the save locations I could Jack into the end of the dead routine and everything SHOULD work. I looked at it and found this would actually save alot of bytes as it does alot other initializing as well. This is very good because there is something very wrong with the music as well and I have an idea more varaibles need to be reset.Ok so the start is now working except for reseting the music. I managed to make it that far and teleport did not work. SO I guess fix the music and see what's wrong with teleport now. After a bit of looking Main was jumping to the old location. But I have found yet another problem and this one is big. I have to reset all the rooms from "visited" to not visited when the game starts! I think I will think on this a while. Because a routine for that would be at least 40 bytes long and I just don't know where I could put it. I coded it and it is exactly 37 bytes long. The only plae to put it is into the Music expansion spot. I hate to do it but the game won't work without it. So I put it in and saved the ML block. Everything SEEMS to be working and the only thing I really haven't tested is the end when you map the whole quad. But definately more testing. I think I have everything working OH except the JPM to finish the quad. But I have been documenting the things that need changing just in case of a crash but so far so good. It's pretty cool the game is playable, I just have to do a bit more testing to make sure everything is going right. Like I did have a small fix to the teleport function, and a few other things. Even though the game is not finished all that is left is the 3 songs, 194 rooms and a whole lot of testing. I may even take the rest of the night off. OK maybe just a few hours. So I will leave with 2 things 1. the rundown of the ML subs 2. more pics.

820 – 833 Set up room pointer
834 – 873 Set up change pointer
874 – 897 Set up teleport pointer
898 – 978 Change room
979 – 993 Silence!
994 – 1006 Delay
1007 - 1015 data
1016 – 1023 Load pt2
1024 – 1036 Basic
1037 – 1087 Print
1088 – 1140 Calc from X/Y
1141 – 1314 Top
1315 – 1576 Middle
1577 – 1729 Bottom
1730 – 1929 Map Main
1930 – 2035 Side
2036 – 2089 Move Scr Lft
2090 – 2144 Move Scr Rgt
2145 – 2204 Move Scr Up
2205 – 2290 Move Scr Dwn
2291 – 2304 Color Screen
2305 – 2411 Animate Elevator
2412 – 2562 Elevator counter
2565 – 2698 Elevator Calc
2699 – 2754 Save Elev BG
2756 – 2806 Print Elev BG
2807 – 2832 Animate Fix
2833 – 2885 Elevator Main
2886 – 3076 Trap Set-up Nibble 1
3077 – 3210 Trap Set-up Nibble 2
3211 – 3263 Trap Set-up Main
3264 – 3340 Joystick read
3348 – 3595 Player Main
3596 – 3622 X=old
3623 – 3640 Set up Screen
3641 – 3699 Screen Up
3700 – 3756 Screen Down
3757 – 3815 Screen Right
3816 – 3872 Screen Left
3873 – 3905 -21
3906 – 3938 -23
3939 – 3973 +21
3974 – 4008 +23
4009 – 4092 Slide Right
4093 – 4095 Variables
4096 – 5311 Room Data
5312 – 5313 Color data
5314 – 5481 Change Data (8 rms)
5482 – 5513 Teleport Data (8 rms)
5514 – 5746 Music Data
5747 – 5794 Music Reset
5800 – 5956 Music Main
5957 – 6068 Music sub
6069 – 6140 Music expansion
6141 – 6143 variables
6144 – 6274 Main Loop
6275 – 6331 Noize 1
6332 – 6398 Noize 2
6385 – 6438 Teleport
6439 – 6642 E1
6643 – 6735 E Main
6736 – 6772 Jump Space
6762 – 6864 Dead
6865 – 6881 Get Jump
6882 – 6905 Save
6906 – 6947 Dead fix
6942 – 6977 Visited
6978 – 7009 data
7004 – 7065 Print Score
7066 – 7121 Score
7116 – 7146 Game Over
7158 – 7167 Load pt3
7168 – 7455 Grphx
7456 – 7563 Start
7564 – 7615 Quad Mapped
7616 – 7679 Var

So I spent several hours testing and everything works pretty good. I fixed the map so everything joins as well as it's going to. I saved the whole thing and realized I left one byte in main in a test mode (I made it so I didn't die as much) So I had to save it again. Then I changed the colors and saved to get ready for quad 2.

21 Dec 2012 
So this is the day is all ends. It's a shame, I was so close to finishing ... Seriously I haven't gotten much done this morning. I opened it up and that is about as far as I have gotten. I made and printed out a grid to start designing Quad 2. I should update the mapmaker to save the new varaibles (screen color and start locations). We'll see. I have some devious puzzles but some are too difficult for this quad, I will have to remember them for later. So I worked out about 75% of the map and started putting it in with the mapmaker. It is pretty slow going. I remember reading how much I hated making the first 32 screens. It doesn't seem as bad but I guess I only did 4 rooms. Now I'm back from work I will try and get as many rooms done as I can. OH I am just too tired. I got up to room 14 and I have to call it a night.

22 Dec 2012 
Slow going, finsihed up to room 31 using a slightly fixed mapmaker, but I checked and there are quite a few issues with the map. I finished my very rough drawing of the map for quad 2. I still have to finish testing the end of Quad 1. This is difficult because I suck and I will have to cheat. Then I will have to test the actual loading of map2. Here's some more pics.

23 Dec 2012 
With Christmas just around the corner I have a huge list of things to do. Not sure if I'll be able to do anything too much today. I am anxious to test the last quarter of Quad 1 but so far I am not good enough to last that long. I came close, so I will post me record sprint of 72%. The good thing is although frustrating, the game seems interesting and fun. I have played it off and on this morning trying to get to the end. If I have time I have a list of things that need to be done. Obviously I need to test Quad 1 to the end, just to make sure that it is possible. Also to see how the loading process goes (if it works). 2 small fixes find 11 bytes to replace the character underneath the enemies, the other to change the color of the words game over. I want to fix my mapmaker to include a way to enter the player start stuff, fix the screen color stuff. Show where the player teleports and see if there is a way to make it easier to match up the screens edges. Also go through and document what fixes I need to do to the Quad 2 map then fix them in map maker (this will be time consuming). AND if I have time write a new song for Quad 2. Lots of stuff to do, it all depends on what kind of time I have.

Darn! I was so close! @ 75% and went to take the teleport to the last quarter when I ended up in space and died. As it is the game is not solvable, but 2 quick fixes and I should be back on track. Almost there.I finished it but nothing happened. Oh the JMP for the end/load wasn't resolved. Crap!! I figured I would save over the last ML block with the new stuff and there was something seriously wrong, but I didn't know it until I saved yet another version. So I have to go back a step. I think all I have changed is the map somewhat and some very little things. Well I think I have everythingback to where it should be but I am having trouble making the program load then next map. It is puzzling, I'm sure that I have everything setup right and yet it says "file not found". The file is there. I guess I will have to think on it. I do beleive that I have map/Quad 1 finished. Took alot of time and a whole lot of cheating to find out. I also "wrote" the next song, I'm definately not in the mood to start trying to code it out. I guess we'll see. I had hoped that this last stuff would get finished quickly, but maps take a long time to program. And I am having difficulty with the loading thing. Don't know why. Ha! As usual it was one number the MSB for the load name was in zero page somewhere. Seems to load fine, not terribly friendly though, but there is no room to change much. Tried to fix some of map 2 and entered another 8 rooms.Tired Now.

24 Dec 2012 
Although I finished the tape and disk covers for Exploria, I doubt much more will get done today.

25 Dec 2012 
Tried to fix what I had for map2 added 8 more rooms. 16 rooms left to go in this quad.

26 Dec 2012 
Worked out the music for map 2. It's still in BASIC, but it will help immencely. I hope the music data will fit into the small space that I have allocated for it, becuase I just remembered the locations for Music Main and Music Reset have to be the same. I am starting to think I may trade map 2 for map 1. Map 2 actually seems a bit easier. I will think more on this as I add the last 16 rooms. Then I will be about halfway done on that front. I didn't realize how time consuming entering the maps can be, but it is. If I get ambitious today I will try and code some of the new music. Finally made the quick fix so the enemies stopped putting character 11 after you die. 2 quick saves. Worked all day on the music ML. Music is so difficult to debug. I almost had most of it working when it crashed about note 250 something. I have an idea it is my shitty greater than CMPs. I have a hard time making them work. I really wish I could finish it tonight but I have run out of thinking juice. I am making mistakes, I removed an instruction that almost made me lose the whole thing tonight. I made good progress though, I went from no song to an almost song. When I am rested I should be able to sort the rest of this out. Maybe I will have time to complete the last 16 rooms. Well that might be asking too much.

27 Dec 2012 
Today I puzzled over the minor problems with the song for map 2. One was many variables needed to be reset, so slowly, one by one I found then and adjusted them. Then there was a problem with all my double comparisons, so I played with those until they worked properly. At this point I was very disappointed that the harmony notes overwrote ML @ 6097. And not a little, it was up around 6150! Very quickly I realized I had to cut out most of the harmony section. The last problem was the 2 final notes where the harmony plays. I spent quite a whgile trying to figure out where it was reading the notes from because they weren't right. Then I got called into work. When I got back I found the problem in about 30 minutes. My LDA(),y (which read the note) was out by 1 byte! OK save and reload so I can incorperate it into level 2 (or is it one?). Well that was a whole lot of loading and saving. I have the map 2 in almost complete form. Now just to finish those last 16 rooms. I can barely keep my eyes open but there are only 5 room sleft. Something appears to be wrong with the new ML though. I hope it's nothing.

28 Dec 2012 
Not exactly sure what happened last night. It had done the exact same thing before. Several of the first rooms in map 1 were displaying improperly. I loaded up older versions to check and they did the same thing, except that this IS IMPOSSIBLE! All versions of the ML for map one hadn't been touched! So this morning I loaded up map1 and 2 and they both looked and played fine. I think it has something to do with working for a long period of time with out resetting. The only thing that didn't seem to be working was the enemies were still leaving character 11 behind them when they started. On the agenda today : I have one small fix for map 1, then it should be DONE! Finish the last 5 rooms for map 2 and test. Make one tiny little change for music reset by turning the volume up. And also check to see why the enemy fix isn't working. Add/fix/change the load function for map2 (for tape it will be the same, so I will only be saving the maps 4093 to 6143) and save. Just for a laugh I captured the theme songs fro each map as a WAV. Maybe I will make a disk of AJ & KJ vic 20 theme songs! Ok after alot of fooling around I think Map1 is DONE!!! There is something in change rooms that I will have to fix for map 2. I will also have to update the load function, and make a few updates to map2, but it is mostly finished. After work I updated the map, but I will still have to test some more. Oh and before that I made a added a few new functions to the mapmaker. You can copy and paste shapes now, and because it is so slow I added a function that will move your shape to the bottom left hand corner. And it also prints the start position of the player. I also added a quick fix to the music (volume is turned up all the time). And I think I fixed the load. Can you beleive there is no 51 byte in the whole program (all 14 pages! I printed it out today!) all 6860 bytes! I needed that to load then next program (51= ASCII 3) but there is one free byte @ 7615, so it isn't free anymore. I should test my fixes on the map , but I am too tired. Tomorrow, then on to map 3. Just teasing myself wih thte new colors, saved map3 colors with map1 for now. Also have to start a new disk. Disk 5! It's a good thing I didn't have to buy these.

29 Dec 2012 
Today I opened up map 2 and with my notes and fixed the map as best as I could. Did some more testing and finished Map 2! I also tested the load and it works fine. I tried to extend the delay a bit, but it is still too short for the Quad Done music, but there is no room to change this. I loaded up map 3 and made a few small changes so it would be the same as map 1 and 2 and also changed the number for loading part 4. Then I started by making the first 5 rooms for map 3! And that is about all the time I have today. This is SO time consuming. When I got home from work I finished the first 15 rooms, but then I tested it and they need some big fixes. I started getting sick of the song from map 1, so I went and quickly wrote the song for quad 3. I was hoping for something a little darker, and while it is in Am I stuck to fairly pure tones, making it not as menacing as I had hoped. I thought while I was there I should quickly work up a theme for map 4. I got a start, but not overall happy with it. This one for sure has to be menacing. I think I will actually try to program some rhythm for it so it might be difficult, but maybe I am going off half cocked again. I mean really, I have less than 500 bytes to make these in and that's including the music data and the music note table! On an entirely different subject I moved all my notes from a small binder that was ripping the pages (from being so stuffed!) to a larger binder. I usually archive the notes into a duotang, but there is no way these notes will fit into a duotang, I'm sure there are about 300 pages or more. I think the scribblings have found their new permanent home. So the game and map 1 is 6860 bytes map 2 is 2050 bytes map 3 and 4 will be the same for a total of 13013 bytes! And I am certainly counting the room data as programming because they take the longest even with my crude map maker. Absolutley certain this is my biggest project so far.

30 Dec 2012 
I had the day off and hoped to get lots done today. That just wasn't to be. I ended up stuck doing other things till 3 pm. And then I was interrupted periodically afterward. All I got done was a working version of Map 3 music in BASIC. I'm probably working on stolen time now, but I started coding the music. Then I calculated the notes for melody 1 and I'm over by 12 bytes! I'm not sure what I'm going to do for that. I really wish I had made an indirect jump to the start of the music ML, it would have been SO helpful. Live and Learn. It took the rest of the day to get the song done but I did it. Let me backtrack a bit. I figured if I separated the note length from the note I could put the note length data after the ML. I checked and the harmony data would fit with room to spare in between the melody data and the Music reset ML. SO I was off and running. Separating all the data I had generated for my BASIC program. Then I wrote out the music ML. It took a while to debug the main part thet generates the percussion and the bass notes. Yes I created a bit more than just a bang to count off 2 and 4. Because the way I access the song from the main loop it turned into a bit of a shuffle but that's OK. Anyway I finally got it to work and added the melody/harmony sub. And found I was abour 40 bytes over. I thought this might be a problem and knew there was a bit of room after the harmony data and before the music reset ML. But it wasn't enough, I still needed about 18 bytes. Sadly I truncated the song by removing one phrase and gained 21 bytes. I stuffed the Music Sub (mel/harm) partly inbetween the harmony data and the Music reset and after the Music Main ML and before the melody timing data. I was quite concerned that I would have a very difficult time debugging this, but surprizingly it went fairly easy and quickly (just a few wrong numbers, but nothing that crashed the computer). The harmony was being indexed part way through the song again and I thought I would have a tough time with that as well (as I did last time) but again after fixing a timing issue it worked great. So the song is done and I started making notes for the rooms I completed. I went about making them a bit differently this time. I just tried making cool looking things and then tried to make them go somewhere. I know I will have to map it out though because I can't keep track of 32 rooms, but I will try to be more creative with them. Today was good. Won't have much time tomorrow. Long busy day at work. I will leave with a geometrically impossible room.

31 Dec 2012 
I am absolutely baffled! I loaded up "1" the secret name for map 1 and it was corrupted. I had this problem before and checked the area just before the cassette buffer, and sure enough the first 2 numbers were wrong. Strangely they don't make anything crash, at least not right away. So I fixed them and carried on. Then I load "2" the secret name for map 2 and same thing, so I fix that but now the teleport isn't working. But I'm sure I played these games/versions before with no problems. Even the older versions are now having this problem. I don't know what to do, I certainly can't do what I had planned today until I solve or fix this mystery.Holy crap! For some reason a ton of stuff was corrupted in the cassette buffer and area. I will go through and try to reconstruct it. So there were 5 pairs of ruined code and it took the little time I had today to figure out what was wrong and how to fix it. So hopefully the code is fixed and saved at least until the next time. I would like to do more tonight, but I suppose I too, should celebrate, at least a little.Got bored tried to make a opening screen, failed, but it's started.

1 Jan 2013 
Again, not much time today. I spent the time today getting the disk together. I used the old version of sector editor to save the boot and I found out later that it crashed. I also made a short ML program within the title graphics but found out that where it was in zero page it was being overwritten, so I had to shorten it. Had to fix and re-save both Logo and E1 (loaders) numerous times. I do have maps 1 and 2 on the disk and placeholders for maps 3 & 4. At any rate I finally have the whole thing working, and it is time to get back to finalizing those maps. Sigh ...

When I got back from work I tested my Exploria disk. When everything was working fine I realized I had to move on. First I took a few pictures then I loaded up map3 and the Mapmaker and started fix the first 16 rooms and I actually managed to add another 8. I decided to test them before I saved. The old rooms seemded fine, but the new ones need alot of work. For some reason I thought I would jump on the last teleporter, when crash! I just saw this the other day too, when a teleporter is not assigned there will be trouble! I just realized I LOST 2 HOURS OF WORK!!! I hadn't tried the soft reset on the new version of xvic. So I hit it and peeked a bit. So I lost the cassette buffer (big surprize!) but it looks like everything above 1024 is there, so I saved it. I am a bit afraid to test it tonight. I thought of something else today (that is a bit disappointing). For the cassette loads I would have to refresh the cassette buffer ML after easch load (which I plan to do from screen memory), but that would mean I would have to load everything from 4096 to 7680+ !! I had just hoped to load the map and song (from 4096 to 6143), but that is not possible, making loads from the cassette a painful (at least) 4K load rather than 2K. I guess I have no choice. If only one had access to the full 5 K, but I guess there would be no challenge in that.Here's the new title page, I just have to get rid of the garbage at the bottom right hand of the screen.

2 Jan 2013 
Yep total waste of 2 hours. I checked my save this morning, and nothing seemed to be there. So I started peeking and I got 32,42,42,42,32 and it hit me. 4096 where my map starts is also the start of screen memory when you boot up with 8K. The next location would hold ASCII for c then b then m. My map was gone. After coming to terms with that, I loaded up the last good version and started re-doing all the work I had done last night. 3 hours later I had everything corrected and saved and I added 2 rooms, but I must take a break for a bit.Took a long time to get back to my project. I wanted to fix the map maker to make things a bit easier to make the maps. I added and copy and paste room function. A jump to room function. I finally made the teleport show where you are landing (so I can fix the co-odinates better). And added a wraparound function for moving the shapes around the screen (because it is SO SLOW!). I was having some problems implimenting a few of the new functions, so it took way more time than I had hoped. So I finished fixing the map maker by 6. And again had other business to attend to. I finally returned around 10.30 and back to map making. 2 hours later I am totally wiped, but I have 18 more rooms finished. I also realized I sort of have a deadline. I have to be finished before Jan 11, but I am working alot, maps are tedious, and I still have one song to write and program. I hope I can make it. Also an anniversery of sorts today, been at it hard for one month! About 2500 bytes to go. 22 rooms left in this quad. A pic of bridges.

3 Jan 2013 
Didn't sleep last night. Woke up with a headache then had a stupid nightmare again. So very tired. I still tried to get the row of rooms done. Not sure how well they'll work and I will still have to add the change rooms stuff but I finished up to room 47. Tomorrow testing and a few more rooms, if I sleep.

4 Jan 2013 
Not sure if I'm going to meet my deadline this way. Too many things going on, and didn't get much work done. Tested and mostly fixed what I had, and added the change rooms stuff before work. After work only squeeked out another 8 rooms but didn't test anything. Had to fix a few naggining problems with the map maker. Started disk 6. Tomorrow doesn't look much better.

5 Jan 2013 
Wasn't able to do much today, but I did finish quad 3. I was getting lazy and just modifying some of the existing screens, but for the last 8 or so I think I came up with some interesting cool rooms. Testing was kinda a pain because I kept getting killed. But it's done. So music for quad 4, 64 rooms and some tidying up. I have about 6 days, I hope I can make it. So I go to check the main disk and now E1 (the main loader) is fucked! I guess I have to stop using save@. OK 2 hours later and I have a new disk that is finished up to quad 3. I also remade E1, it now has a secret where you can load any quad. I also cleaned up the title picture and fixed a tiny smidgeon of ML so each title screen will show the proper color for the level. 8 bytes that I reclaimed is what I used and a bit of Ml in the loader. I will leave the disk for now (all that goes on there after this is 4, instructions, about and catalogue anyway). I also started quad 4 by making the first 8 rooms, if I get ambitious I may do more. Did another 4 rooms but too tired to continue. Also added the 8 bytes for the color thing. Here's a pic with the new color scheme.

6 Jan 2013 
Pretty drunk. Made to room 15.

7 Jan 2013 
Was pretty hung over today so I got a late start. I am running out of time so I thought I had better get the music for this map done. It took all day but I did the basic, the ML, everything today. Coded and de-bugged. So I think, I am done programming. Maybe I will have to do some stuff for the cassette loaders, but that is pretty minor. Unfortunately I think this map is corrupted. I have to stop using save@, I lost my music ML data program, luckily this was after I saved it with the rest as a unabridged map4. I also tested the 16 rooms I have so far. But I am wiped, hopefully tomorrow I can get a whole shwack of rooms done, because counting tomorrow (which I work) I only have 4 days left and I'm sure none of them will be totally dedicated to this. 48 rooms left.

8 Jan 2013 
Got up late then found out it had snowed about a foot, so finally after all that was done I returned to Exploria. I knew something was wrong because one of the enemies was displaying a garbage character. So I spent an hour hunting down the problem. My guess is I was testing and BRK out of the game just before the contents of the modified E2 was changed back to E1. So now it was starting at E2 and trying to display then next character which is actually 8 bytes of code. As always foiled by one number. I now have less than 15 minutes to work on maps. I guess it will have to wait till after work. The new song sounds pretty ominous, and because it is the slowest it is also the longest @ 2.12. Had to modify many of the suggested notes because I was working in the key B flat which I don't think the Vic was set up to handle very well. I will try to stick to more pure (to the vic) keys like C, Am and F. At any rate I am pretty happy with the songs and the levels so far. Wish I could have gotten to the maps a little earlier today. I got home from work and just started plotting out the general paths and then I made rooms. I finished up to room 39 leaving 24 rooms left to make. I am beat, but managed to get alot done in the end.

9 Jan 2013 
Time just seems like it is slipping away. Had things to do this morning and finally got to Exploria in the afternoon. First thing, was I was bothered that it seemed the start variables were being corrupted, and after testing a bit I realized it probably was the E1 routine with more un-reset variables. Sure enough that was the problem. 3 locations were one number too high. I hope the amount of these kind of problems are kept to a minimum in the next few days as I don't have time to track them down. I tested the rooms and the new rooms and surprizingly there were very few problems. I think I enjoy this part too much and it takes longer than it should. So the map is fixed up to room 39. I had things I wanted to get done this after noon but I think I will try and get them done tomorrow so I can get more work done here. Pathetic, I know, but I really want to meet my deadline. I think I also may have found a solution for the enemies leaving behind old characters when a new screen loads, I just have to find 11 bytes, this may or may not happen. I also wonder if I can fix the elevator thing, when the player is riding it down the wrong color is left behind. If I have time I will look into it. Back to maps! In a gigantic push I finished the map and tested it. I quickly checked to see if I had 11 bytes in the music expansion area and there was enough room so I hand POKEd the ML in and saved. I loaded up map and and it was fine so I did the same thing and saved. I loaded up map 2, and this was the one I was kinda worried about because I thought it had the most music, but there was room here too. So I hand POKEd the ML in and saved. I loaded up map 3 and checked and there were numbers there. I was worried because the music data was upto 6089. My little fix needed to start @ 6086. I remember I stumbed across the fact I had one graphics character that was unused, this would give me 8 more bytes. Even though I would have to add an extra JMP instruction (3 bytes) I would have 1 byte left over. So I recalcualted the JMPs and hand typed teh code in and saved. I think for map 3 6096 is the only free byte between 820 and 7679!!! I also looked into seeing if I can fix my problem with the elevator, but this one just isn't possible without a huge pile of code, so I have to leave it. So I am just finishing the disk now. So I am down to a bit of continuity testing, a few short programs for the disk (My about, Instructions and Catalogue programs) and then a workable version for the cassette. I know what I am going to try, that I will load the section from 820 to 1023 to the screen and copy it to the proper location when it loads. A bit tricky and time consuming but I'm pretty sure it will work. 2 of 3 programs done. I'm debating on weather I should have a graphical representation of some fo the instructions or not. It looks better but takes much longer. I decided in the end to do the long thing,and it took forever, but it's done now and it looks good. I finished the disk!!! I started the cassette, but it is tedious work. I think I may have to do this when I return from my holiday. As usual it is quite anti climactical. But really the program was done on the 20th, it was just the maps and a whole bunch of pissing around. I am a bit disappointed that the cassette versions won't be done till much later. But this was a bigger project than I had imagined. I guess if I had known how huge it was, I may not have even started. Anyway really happy with this. So the next entry will hopefully be when I get this on cassette. But for the disk version it is DONE!!

10 Jan 2013 
I wasn't going to but I started working on the tape version today. There were some problems, and the interface for the tape is almost as awkward as the real thing so loading chained programs multiple times is a huge pain. So when I fixed the wrong numbers I typed (for some reason I translated 820 to 20, 3. which is 788 which is the vector for the interrupt. Gee I wonder why it crashed! 820 is 52, 3 which I should know I typed it in every time I had to save!) and again it crashed. It was something I was worried about and that was that it wasn't moving the very last (first) instruction, so again I modified the little program ( I mean it was only 13 instructions, how hard would it be to debug?) and finally almost success. I had the 8K thing on and it crashed. SO I tested it again and then saved the stuff that was sitting @ 7680+. And then saved cassette versions of map 2,3 & 4. I was testing map 1 and something was wrong it was missing a change screen, so I went back to the disk version and resaved the cassette version. God I hope there aren't any more things like that. So With a whimper instead of a bang it is finished. I usually put my old notes into a duotang, but there is no way they will fit , so guess the binder I have them in will be their permenant home. Definately the most notes I have generated for a game. I updated all of the aj & kj web files and my personal records last night. Most gratifying was putting a big black marker through the master list made (and never updated) in the early ninties. It was nice to block out the old name for a game that never had a good concept. Also good was to shorten my next ten list it now only holds thirteen games instead of the fourteen it has held for over a decade. I think I will open up Boogieman just for shits and giggles.

I opened Boogieman up, and it looks like things are moving, but there are so few notes, I'm afraid I will have to reverse engineer the game before I start. That seems like alot fo work. Certainly not something I will start with only one day before I go on holidays.



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