adamantyr

I saw them on your site! I think you have 42 at the moment?

Yeah, most of those are "not working or not tested" disks. I got an offer though for a store of used disks from someone. That at least means I could offer the option to someone who REALLY wanted them that way.

Dev section. Technically still in development! I actually may have found a neat solution... I can bulk buy micro SD cards that come with an adapter, are 512mb (small sizes are hard to find), and also include a USB 2.0 interface/storage. I ordered some to test with the FinalGROM. If that works, it could store both the cartridge binary AND all the files.

As I work towards the final release candidate for digital, the tangible version of the game is also in the works. I got most everything worked out, except how to distribute the game to 99'ers on an actual media. Things like floppy disk stickers will be a given! And every game box comes with a digital version as well. A cartridge holding the game binary is a nice bonus because it will load faster than it does from disk but you still need the disk system to play the game.

Making stickers for floppy disks is totally doable! And a good idea. I should do a poll here on the forums for the media questions... It's the 99'ers who would have the most vested interest. Any retro CRPG enthusiasts on other platforms (and there's more than a few on my Twitter) will probably be cool with the digital version and a box of stuff without media unless they WANT to run it on hardware. I originally was going to just distribute the game for free, actually. But after spending all this time and realizing there is a sizable retro CRPG community out there that is actually trying to make some money, I realized it would be bad of me to do that. It would marginalize all the hard work everyone does.

So I finally received the prototype of my game box today... and it is good! I was very concerned that using an image alone (generated in MS Publisher) would not have the resolution to work, and I'd be forced to use an Adobe product to edit a PDF template, but the results are very good. I also discovered my initial sizes were a BIT small. The finished product will look different, I made a lot of changes with adding colored text, better overlaid text on the front image, and other tweaks. But I am happy to see the company delivered! Only real issue is it's REALLY expensive to print. You get a price break on quantity but it's still an investment to even get a few made. I need to find out just how many people would actually want and not commit myself to making too many at a time. How much? Well, I'm thinking a "game box with manual, cloth map, reference card and signed certificate" would be around $60 U.S. I still need to calculate shipping too. If that seems like a lot, don't forget you'll just be able to get digital only for a lot less! As for media, this is a weird one. I'll probably offer the box of stuff without media, as anyone who isn't a 99'er probably won't care to have physical media. Floppy disks are probably out; they're expensive to find these days, unreliable, and kind of an indulgence. I had originally planned on a CD-ROM. And that may still be the best way to go, but the CD-ROM readers are fast becoming uncommon to rare these days; many laptops no longer include one. A cartridge with the game binary (so that you don't need Extended BASIC, TI Writer or an E/A cart) is in the future, but I would want a digital version to be out first for awhile so I can burn one confident that there's no game-breaking issues.

Yeah, I suspected as much. What would probably have to happen is I'd have to sacrifice the lower-case character set for accent mark room. I should also add that most of the text in the game is compressed. I'd have to completely recalculate it for non-English, which will have different common ngrams.

I had considered doing some different language versions. Most of the game's text are in external files that can be updated easily. Some, however, are internal to the program and would require a specific code branch. There is also whether or not the game can be adequately translated with the regular character set; if accent marks are needed there is limited to no space for them. I would definitely consider it after the general release is done, though. For fun, I've added the raw text for one of the world disks, if you want to see what you'd be signing up for. raw-text-output.txt

I own this book, typed several of them in myself in the old days. They definitely aren't fast. On another interesting note, the author Seth McAvoy also wrote a junior fiction series called "Not Quite Human" about an android Chip who is built by his creator and sent to school as his "son" to test him out. Disney turned out a couple TV movies based upon it as well in the late 80s / early 90s.

Yeah, I noticed the application has every path hard-coded. Not a good design. Unfortunately none of the configuration utilities work either. It just crashes for me. I seriously doubt ANYONE would use PC99 over Classic99 to run the game but I'll make an effort just so I can say "I don't advise using this."

When I tried the provided tool to convert a V9T9 disk to PC99 format, it rejected it as "not 90k". If you have tools that will convert a V9T9 360k disk into a PC99 version I can utilize, I want it!

I actually could use some help... PC99 is a pain in the neck to set up. And it appears their disk images only support 90k, which won't work with the game. That means the only way it would run there is if you used a Myarc HDFC controller and hard drive image. Does anyone have any knowledge setting up drives for PC99 use? I just need to write up a set of instructions on how to run the game there. Maybe provide an HD image with the data.

So THAT's what that was. I've been working on the website for the game, in fact, to prep for release. I still need to play the game through and find any last minute issues. I'm building with the idea that it's likely I'll end up having to do SOME fixes and revisions after the fact. No software is perfect on release.

Sorry I couldn't be there today guys! I forgot to post, I was out of town.

Maybe it's attempting to determine the last drive accessed? An old trick you can do, but it requires you to pull the value from the controller card. That may not be compatible with the TIPI.

You'll have RoA before 2021.

Been a bit since I updated the thread here... We are up to beta 34, and 35 is (so far) looking like a first release candidate. I need to sit down and probably play through myself from beginning to end before making a final determination. I'm presently working on some of the tangibles such as getting the manual printed (Lulu), maps made (Spoonflower) and a game box created (BoardgamesMaker). In all likelihood a "tangible" copy of the game will be a bit pricey, as production of anything in small scale numbers is difficult. I also need to find out how tricky it's going to be to make cartridges. Those will probably need to wait until a release candidate has been fairly well exposed in a digital form to avoid burning a broken version. I also need to write up some documentation on running the game in other emulators. One of those times I really wish Classic99 ran on a Mac or Linux.

Yeah @jedimatt42 whatever you did to try and set it up, it didn't work.

Yeah likewise.

CRGP, a computer role game playing? It's been a long project mainly because I dinked around for 12 years of it not wanting to finish because I knew it couldn't be done the way I wanted it to be with just 32k. After I got SAMS going and got serious it's been going a lot smoother. I'm actually at the stage now I'm thinking I'll need to go to release candidate and figure out how to print manuals. Before Christmas!

Other than the speech module, my command line was identical. So maybe it's fixed in latest release (which I THOUGHT I got but maybe not.) If you want, you can try creating a new game, that will really put it through the paces as it reads from and writes two nine different files to set up a new game. Also, is there a command line option to suppress the sound of the drives? I'm not all that nostalgic for it and it's DAMN loud.

The cartridge is a finalgrom compatible. I see that the likely issue is I don't have it in an RPK format. If you can point me to instructions to converting a cartridge binary to that I should be good. The Corcomp controller loads the game all right, but fails to load the SAV file, which is a 768 byte raw image file on the disk. This subsequently makes it impossible to start the game. I actually own a Corcomp FDC myself with the Miller Graphics upgrade so I know it works in hardware without issue. Disk images attached, just put the GAME disk in 1, and WORLD1 and WORLD 2 in disks 2 and 3 respectively. ROA.zip

Hi Michael, Good news, I've gotten my CRPG to work on MAME. I am not certain that the Corcomp controller works though, I ended up having to use BWG. One question, I have a custom 256k cartridge that I'm using for easier load times. How do I set up a custom cartridge in MAME?

Yeah, unit tests only make sense if you're writing libraries that are independently loaded, or using some kind of complex infrastructure that allows it. My CRPG work has made me WISH for regression tests at times, just so changes I make don't break something I forgot about.

What is the use context? Can you assume the byte count will always be a minimum size? Unrolling the copy loop with a check to see if the count is odd or even first seems the best approach. I see two options: A static option (with it doing a consecutive 8 or 9 byte push, for example, based on even/odd and a wrap up for remainders). You'll lose some time in prep-work but make up for it with large enough unrolls. Self-replicating code that will in a memory block just replicate the "movb *r0+,*r1+" for as many iterations as possible. The prep work could be much longer, so it's a balance of time to create the unrolled loop verses the speed gain of not having a status register check and decrement.