SteveB

Man, I've been offline for four days and missed the party... I totally trust @Albert that he acted in the best interest of the community to keep AtariAge up and running. I am convinced he has a clear vision of the foreseeable future, which seems to be aligned with Atari and @TrogdarRobusto. Atari bought a fan base and access to vivid influencer of the retro world. Savvy move. Are they in it for the milk or the beef? Successful new companies learned to maintain a long-term relationship with their customers. I think we simply do not have a short-term value to be cashed on. As happy ambassadors we are more useful. Everything is finite, things are always changing. I don't see an immediate threat, but a due change. I am taking their stated intentions serious and look forward with optimism.

"Our lectures are unresistable..." ?

... and available to XB with the T40XB library.

You have a VDP RAM address and need a row and column?

I do most of my games with a co-author, as I enjoy working together and discuss ideas. We even considered asking one of the graphics talents in this group for help in one case. But I would not be interested in coding the vision of someone else in my sparetime. I would be surprised if you find a partner with this narrow approach. Steve

If you didn't like Parsec you will most surely not enjoy Extended Parsec.

In the original game there is another source of revenue, here from the Atari 2600 manual: OUT OF CONTROL Periodically you will lose all control of your ghostbusters while on the map screen. Your vehicle (Ghostbusters symbol) will freeze up! Also you will notice that the roamers start moving considerably faster towards Zuul. This means that the menacing, monstrous Marshmallow Man is quickly approaching, Your only way out is to drop bait - if you bought any. To bait the Marshmallow Man, move the right difficulty switch. If it is on 'A' switch it to 'B'; if it is on 'B' switch it to 'A'. * If you're fast enough, you'll bait the Marshmallow Man and earn $2000. He'll appear on screen but quickly run off. * If you're not fast enough, the Marshmallow Man will stomp on one of your blocks and you'll lose $4000.

I've been to England for three weeks to learn english when I was 14 ... After half of the time my mobile cassette player broke down and instead of looking for a "Schraubenzieher" I was looking for a screwdriver ... that was the first time I was actually thinking in english, not translating. It was a giant step for me. But it is a little scary when "it" speaks english out of you as you are not actively controlling it. So you actually listen to yourself, as part of your consciousness is still locked in your native language. And those areas of your brain are slightly different, so you can be a little different person when speaking a foreign language. The more you practice, the closer you get to your foreign language self. Anyone else expirienced something like this learning a foreign language? Also switching from german to english took me some time in the beginning and when I was rarely using english. Now I use it regularly at work and with my hobbies, it became instantly and effortless. I even sometimes think in english when programming for no apparent reason ... but as the former german minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher once said: The english language is like a woman ... you may lover her, but you will never fully understand her ... 😉

I am testing the distance of each "pixel" from the center of the circle P(Px,Py). The distance would actually be R = sqr((Px-X)^2+(Py-Y)^2) . If this value is the radius R, I would draw the asterisk. The square root is an expensive operation I actually don't need, I just square the equation: R^2 = (Px-X)^2 + (Py-Y)^2 Since the circle hardly hit exactly on the top left edge of character, I introduce a "tolerance" Delta 😧 abs( (Px-X)^2+(Py-Y)^2) - R^2 ) < D abs((Px-X)*(Px-X)+(Py-Y)*(Py-Y)-R2)<D I hope this is comprehensible, I never had to explain mathematics in english, so please apologize if translated a mathematics term incorrectly to english. Steve

... and now a weird one ... based on the distance from the center call clear R=10 D=5 PX = 15 PY = 12 R2 = R * R for y=1 to 24 for x=1 to 32 if abs((Px-X)*(Px-X)+(Py-Y)*(Py-Y)-R2)<D then c=42 else c=32 call hchar(y,x,c) next x next y call waitkey When you change to "120 D=32" you get:

Yours is nicer ....

This sounds very much like a challenge for 2024 ... The Revenge of the Humiliated Tanks.

It actually can generate XB code, but has limited understanding of the commands. I tried some weeks ago and still have it in the logs: can you write a TI Extended Basic program that draws a square 10 by 10 characters? 1 CALL CLEAR 2 FOR I = 1 TO 10 3 FOR J = 1 TO 10 4 CALL HCHAR(I, J, 35) 5 NEXT J 6 NEXT I 7 END Let's break down the code: Line 1: CALL CLEAR clears the screen before drawing the square. Line 2: FOR I = 1 TO 10 starts a loop that iterates over the rows of the square. Line 3: FOR J = 1 TO 10 starts a nested loop that iterates over the columns of the square. Line 4: CALL HCHAR(I, J, 35) draws a character (ASCII value 35, which represents the '#' symbol) at the current row I and column J position using the HCHAR command. Line 5: NEXT J indicates the end of the nested loop for columns. Line 6: NEXT I indicates the end of the outer loop for rows. Line 7: END marks the end of the program. When you run this program, it will draw a square composed of the '#' symbol using a 10x10 grid of characters on the screen. Note: The CALL HCHAR command is used to draw characters horizontally. If you want to draw vertically, you can use the CALL VCHAR command instead. why don't you use hchar to draw 10 characters at once? Apologies for the confusion. You're right; we can optimize the code to use HCHAR to draw all 10 characters in a row at once. Here's an updated version of the program: 1 CALL CLEAR 2 FOR I = 1 TO 10 3 CALL HCHAR(I, 1, 35, 10) 4 NEXT I 5 END I also asked ChatGPT to analyse my Extended Parsec Code. it identified it correctly as a space shooter and identified the different blocks and their function in the code. In other questions it confused the function of CALL CHAR and CALL CHARPAT. But still fun to try and asking the right questions, you get quite good results ... they call it "Prompt engineering" ...

Here you go ... the complete set of files, from SXB source to MERGE, to Assembler, to EA5, to XB loader and a disk-image with auto-load. Ghostbusters4a-V1.0.zip

It is a little bit hard to go around the corner on a map, hitting the right spot. We solved this in our version by only querying the joystick in the crossroad and the middle of a block, otherwise continue. You have plenty of time change direction or stop between those points and never miss a corner.

Thank you. It is actually quite close to the Atari 2600. compared to the Atati 2600: Do you notice the "face" of the player? It is a 1-pixel sprite in CALL MAGNIFY(4). We do a CALL COINC(ALL,C) to see if you stay clear of the Marshmellow Man. Steve

I also have the FlashROM99 and it does all I actually needed so far, so I also did not replace it (yet).

I had problems with the memory-settings when updating my Classic99-config, but this works now: [usercart0] name=XB 2.9 G.E.M latest rom0=G|6000|A000|Contributors\Harry_Wilhelm\XB29GEM230707\XB29GEM_G.BIN rom1=8|0000|80000|Contributors\Harry_Wilhelm\XB29GEM230707\XB29GEM_8.BIN I read the value from the log after drag&drop was working (and I was too lazy to update the config and did not use option 4 or up for a while)

That's great! I am fighting my sound-setup at the moment, so it would have taken a moment to go through this .. Happy composing! Steve

I just ignore most of MuseScores capabilities, start with a blank piano sheet and change the soundfont to the TI soundfont supplied with MuseScore4a, disable the sound effects (both in the manual) and start composing. You get immediate TI sound when you enter or move a note on the stave. I don't think you will get it much simpler. Version 1.1 of MuseScore4a can create an XB256 soundlist with VWRITEs, easy to PLAY directly.

We learned, that we are not the only Ghostbusters fans, missing this game on the TI-99/4a. We aimed lower than @TheMole, porting the Atari 2600 version with simple graphics and adding some enhancements from the Atari XL and C64 versions. Check the included manual for the gameplay. The game requires the 32kB RAM Extension, joysticks and is optimized for 60 Hz NTSC. The music sounds terrible on 50 Hz, but otherwise the game works. The speech synthesizer is used for one sample, but the sound is very low. Any hint on getting this louder and not distorted is appreciated. Our game is not as beautiful as @TheMole's demo, but is complete and released ... we will gladly retire to second place when his amazing version is out. 😃 The program is written in Structured Extended BASIC using TiCodEd and compiled with Harry Wilhelm's BASIC Compiler. The source is available on Github: https://github.com/SteveB69/Ghostbusters4a Enjoy, @SteveB and @grammostola Ghostbusters.bin Ghostbusters (TI-99).pdf

I am a traditionalist... I like the classic Station Wagon ... just like it was comming out of the old NYFD building ...

A german TV station has a series called SchleFaZ... worst movies of all times [Schechteste Filme aller Zeiten] ... Attack of the killer tomatoes (1978) is my favorite worst film so far ... this could be a challenger. Pastalavista! Steve

We're Sorry. Tubi is the largest free movie and TV streaming service in the US. Unfortunately, we're not currently available in your area. 😡