Imperious

Indie retro News has put in a nice post on this upcoming Pinball game. https://www.indieretronews.com/2022/05/this-upcoming-pinball-game-for-ti-994a.html

I have no idea why, but the HEX file ends up as 438kb. The thing is I should have realised the file sizes were enormous. Avrdude didn't complain at all when programming. Just go to code and download the Zip file.

Thought I might share my experience with building and programming my own Finalgrom99. Got the boards made from PCBWay and parts ordered, soldered everything no problems. Initially I used a Pickit 2 programmer with AVRDUDE in windows, it said everything went ok and verified. No LED blinking. Next tried Raspberry PI 3 and the same deal, no blinking LED. After quite a bit of head scratching and testing with my multimeter not proving anything, well eventually I realised I had saved the HEX, AVR, and PLD files from the GITHUB page by doing "save link as" which results in a very large and incorrect file. I figured this out as accidentally I looked at the file sizes in the ZIP file which are much smaller. So I reprogrammed the correct HEX file with my Raspberry PI and all good, LED blinking once a second. The Next problem was no matter what SD card or formatting I did it would not load the UPDATE.AVR file. I just got a fast flashing LED which never stopped until the TI was turned off. No idea why even now but figuring the successfully programmed HEX file was likely already at 1.3 version I tried UPDATE.PLD and it worked perfectly. My TI99/4a with Finalgrom99 and NanoPeb is now working perfectly.

I have many retro computers now. My first computer was a Ti994a, the next an Amiga 500, then once this bug bit starting early 2010's I acquired many more including Atari 2600 and 65XE, C64's, Spectrum +2, Amstrad CPC464, VIC20, PLUS4, Apple IIe as well as lots of pc hardware. You wanna know which one gets the 1st place Award for Wars starting amongst its followers, it would have to be the Amiga. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say it can get as bad as death threats. Of course the Amiga itself is not to blame here, just some bad eggs ruining the fun for others. In comparison just about every other retro community I have been a part of is 99% very friendly and just an occasional disagreement here and there. Thanks Rasmus and all other Ti programmers for the wonderful miracles that have been performed on a computer that without You would still only have the handful of games and tools available (compared to many other systems) that were around in 1984.

I just noticed this when I got home from work and fired up the PC, it looks very good too. From Saberman's Youtube channel. https://youtu.be/rfzfy3WiOMw

Fabrice obviously means that is what He thinks it should look like? Personally I think It would be a nice idea if the shadows could be turned on or off (menu option?), it's a bit of a distraction on the incoming fighters, but I would say it wouldn't take long till You didn't really notice it. That's just my 2c. It will a great game whatever decisions are made.

This is looking and playing fantastic, really looking forward to the finished product. I'll have to hack another of my 64k Jon Guidry boards into a 512k though. A bit of a job but well worth it. One minor thing I noticed, and it could be my imagination, but it appears the gun sound pitch changes slightly at times?

the effect on the c64 version looks pretty good, also the speccy except the water's yellow of course. I think the wind effect on the trees is a bit too fast though. This is going to be a TI favourite when finished.

Absolutely incredible!! I could imagine a "tunnels of doom" type game where the dungeon looks like a dungeon instead of a hospital.

Looks good. I have some ideas. 1. Ability to speed up and slow down the scrolling, or at least the ability to slow it then it auto speeds up. Joystick down for slow down. 2. By slowing it down You could maximise score on the non blue tiles, but at the same time a higher score for completing the level faster. 3. some random (or not random) death tiles in the map in amongst the scoring tiles or elsewhere.

The car looks really good now, it's the right size too.

This Looks great. I especially like the parallax scrolling in the background when turning corners. I realise it's been ripped from a spectrum game, but the car is a bit unsightly, being shades of grey only, although it would be improved a bit without that shadow underneath it. This demo has got me wondering about something though, that's actually become a bit more common nowdays on other systems, which is to improve some of the original games. On the c64 this has been done with Scramble and Commando to name just a couple. I do wonder whether games like Jungle Hunt and Pole Position could have the jerky scrolling improved if someone with the skills had a go at them. It's Just a thought anyway, and I don't have any programming skills, so what do I know?

Sorry for being Pedantic, but it's spelt Dagobah. Looking forward to the full game release.

If only the game had looked more like this instead of a hospital. Nevertheless it still gave my imagination a good run back in the day.

The foreground clouds look unnatural moving the way they do at the same speed as the foreground level graphics. I imagine with them turned off it would look a bit more real, or at least moving a bit slower.

I would say as long as it stops scrolling when the player isn't moving, then go for it. It may look a bit odd if it scrolls the same speed when Mario is stopped, going slow, or fast. If You are just thinking of a cloud or 2 moving along, then probably doesn't matter. Enhancing a game in a way that adds to the atmosphere should never be considered Blasphemy, some Nintendo diehards may not agree though.

Looking forward to this. Have played the Vic-20 and Amstrad CPC464 (Spectrum emulated) versions on real hardware lately.

If there is one genre mostly missing from the TI Game arsenal, it would have to be vertically scrolling space shooters, very few exist. I can only think of Titanium, space invaders doesn't count as there is no scrolling. Imagine a decent port of Galaga, would be awesome!

It's not microseconds either. Nanoseconds is the correct measurement.

Very sad news. My Condolences to His Family and friends. Definitely a great loss to the TI community. I'll think of Him whenever I load up one of His gamecarts and XB 2.7. He also fixed the Qbert game in Cart 4 when I found a weird glitch there. I hope His Family are aware, or are made aware that His TI contributions have been used in far off places around the world such as Australia.

I reckon the TI needs a port of Phoenix. Parsec, Buck Rogers, Defender, Moon Patrol, Neverlander, TI Scramble, Titanium

Holy Guacamole!! That's absolutely stunning. Can't wait till this is finished.

I posted briefly about this here. http://atariage.com/forums/topic/239512-ti-sports-game/page-2?do=findComment&comment=3262967 Works perfectly with the TI, but had some serious lag when trying to capture Quake 1 from my old PC, was so bad You couldn't play the game, but I have purchased a VGA splitter cable that should fix the problem. There was no lag problem playing the TI, likely because of low resolution.

Something that really blew me away was an actual emulation of Asteroids on the C64/Plus4, a bit faster on the plus/4 due to 1.76mhz cpu. Arcade version 6502 cpu makes the emulation possible of course, but in no way would I expect this possible on the TI.

I'd suggest trying an old cassette You don't care about much first, old cassette decks can have a tendency to eat tapes if the idler wheel or pinch roller is slipping.