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Dungeon Key


InfernalKeith

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Hello all,

 

I'm working (still) on carving out some TI 99/4A time in my insane life... programming, plus reviewing older games and resurrecting some forgotten titles I've hoarded in recent years. One game, ALA Software's Dungeon Key, seems to be one of those titles that's vanished from the face of the earth. I bought a new, sealed cassette copy of it on Ebay many moons ago, and never got around to actually trying it out until tonight.

 

I'm working on a review of it, which I will post on my website, orphantech.com, shortly. I'm basically doing a "live blog" review -- jotting down my thoughts in real time, as I try the game for the first time. I'll post scans of the cover art and some screenshots soon as well, and I will post the game file here for you all to check out.

 

DATA OK... always so nice to see that pop up when you're loading a 27-year-old cassette for the first time ever. :) See you at the other end of the dungeon!

 

Also gonna try to take advantage of a relative lull this week to finally finish the Atlantis project discussed previously, and get that game to you, and finish up some work on one of my own projects. Wish me luck!

 

Keith

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Draft of my review is up on my site. A quote:

 

"First of all... there's no goblins, glistening or otherwise. Why would you tell me there are goblins when there aren't any? There's no escaping into the cool night air, either. In fact, I don't think the person who wrote that box copy had ever seen the game in action. It's possible he'd never seen a TI 99/4A."

 

 

http://www.orphantech.com/reviews/

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Draft of my review is up on my site. A quote:

 

"First of all... there's no goblins, glistening or otherwise. Why would you tell me there are goblins when there aren't any? There's no escaping into the cool night air, either. In fact, I don't think the person who wrote that box copy had ever seen the game in action. It's possible he'd never seen a TI 99/4A."

 

 

http://www.orphantech.com/reviews/

 

Wow, sounds bad. I got some ancient TI catalog FULL of cassette games for TI BASIC that I'd never heard of anywhere else. Mind you... I expect most of them were crapware.

 

Great site, though, I look forward to more reviews. You should do a review of all the Not-Polyoptics titles, I'd love to hear more about them. Every one I've seen has been pretty darn impressive, considering the platform they were written for.

 

One of these days I do want to do a nice strategy game in assembly on the TI... No, bad designer! Finish current project first! :)

 

Adamantyr

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Hehe, nice. Thanks for taking the time etc. Nice stroll down retro lane.

 

Like with our SSGC, I guess many of us try and describe/set an atmosphere - and of things not actually found in the games. I think that's all okay.

 

It's that rare breed of game that requires Extended BASIC, but NOT 32K memory expansion or a disk drive ...

Weren't the configuration rather "common" at the time ? For instance about 10 percent is estimated to have had PEBs. Ref.: http://oldcomputers.net/ti994a.html

 

;)

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Hoooooooooooooooooly crap, this game is a piece of garbage. Yuk.

 

Yeah, we have to admit it; there were MANY crap games for the TI.

In fact most of the TI games I came accross, I played exactly 1 time and that was it.

 

We know that TI-basic is real slow compared to other home computers of that era.

Still, that shouldn't be an excuse for ugly looking games.

Even without sprites the graphic capabilities weren't all that bad.

 

So why wheren't there many good games ?

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Yeah, we have to admit it; there were MANY crap games for the TI.

In fact most of the TI games I came accross, I played exactly 1 time and that was it.

 

We know that TI-basic is real slow compared to other home computers of that era.

Still, that shouldn't be an excuse for ugly looking games.

Even without sprites the graphic capabilities weren't all that bad.

 

So why wheren't there many good games ?

Slow Basic, no bare console access to machine code, closed architecture etc. Guess any decent artist and/or programmer would quickly have seen more pissibilities outside the TI-99/4A. It is of course a completely different ballgame these days (trying to explain to myself why I hang around).

 

Other platforms may have gathered third party momentum by sales. I don't think any cassette based games for the TI sold like anything. On the other hand, there were also many platforms that didn't make it. But comparing with 2.5 to 3 million consoles sold, then yes, the cassette niche were awful on the TI, if not the worst. I bet a good deal of publishers and game makers wanted to convert titles for the TI, but soon it was realized that it was too slow and that there was nothing much to do about it.

Edited by sometimes99er
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I've really got to transcribe and post my interview with Michael Capobianco (Not-Polyoptics co-founder). It's extremely interesting to hear him talk of the software market in those times. He said that even requiring Extended BASIC cut into the sales of a title. And disk drives, they almost never bothered, until the end. All those hundreds of thousands of bare-console owners would find themselves with nothing but cartridges, and very little third-party software at their local store... Not-Polyoptics got listed in TI's official software catalog, and he said when updates to those went out, they would get a huge spike in orders.

 

Some games are at least clever or well-created, even if they are now too slow and dated to get too much enjoyment out of (Not-Polyoptics did a TI BASIC Space Invaders clone, "99-vaders," that's impressive to see in action, even though it simply crawls in speed). But Dungeon Key... it's just a badly-made game. There are none of the traits that make you want to keep playing, or master a game.

 

I'm already thinking of using the base code and idea and making a sequel that's actually playable. :)

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I've mentioned this before, too, but I think if TI had hung on for one more year, we'd have seen an explosion of new game titles. Many of the mainstream publishers (Epyx, Broderbund, etc) were finally coming around and reluctantly starting on TI projects, which got cancelled when TI pulled the plug.

 

I wonder if TI had released a low-cost bundle, with the XB cart and a standalone 32K expansion, if some of these companies would have been able to make some decent cassette-based games for people without PEB's? Pure speculation now, of course, but people bought Commodore games on cassette well into the 80's.

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It's too bad there was this divide of "casual" TI-99/4A users who never bothered to invest in the pricey & bulkey PEB. Like casual & hardcore gamers. I didn't go "hardcore" until '86!

 

I remember Wizard's Dominion being a terrible attempt at an RPG for the TI. The mazes were dirt-simple. It had nowhere near the depth of Tunnels of Doom.

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Another year and TI would have maybe released the 99/8. I think it could have been the game changer for TI. They really addressed every short coming of the 99/4a with the 99/8. A 10mhz 16bit computer when everything else was 8bit and slow, or 16bit IBM and expensive and slow.

 

I know if it had been release I would have probably went the 99/8 route instead of the PC compatible route I went.

 

The main shortcomings of the TI99/4a I see were,

 

No sprite support in basic,

even though the basic was slow the real game stopper for it was no sprite support. But I think when TI designed the 99/4 and then upgraded to 4a the idea of people wanting to play games on a serious home computer was never reasoned out. therefor why would basic need smooth animation.

 

As important as sprites would have been inline assembly code, or machine code in basic. Anyone who programmed on the PC back then at 4.77Mhz knows the basic was terribly slow too, but progammers could imbed machine code directly into the basic program. Other computers has POKE commands, some you couldn't do anything without the poke commands like the Commadores.

 

these next 2 arn't show stoppers but would have made a big difference.

 

No stand alone diskdrive,

All other mainstream computers at the time has a easy way to add a disk drive, commadore, atari, apple all had a self enclosed, plug in drive and the PC's had slots built into the PC case. Expecting people to buy the PEB and then 32k and then the drive was just to much. Too expensive, but that may have been the idea, "People will want to add these items to the computer and we will make alot of revenue from them."

 

16k memory,

While alot when the 99/4 came out, the 4a should have been upgraded to atleast 32k, but I don't think TI ever though it wasn't enough because of there business model. "We have a home computer that can do everything 'WE' think people will want to do with it." This model often seemed to be based on internal reports and they really didn't know what people would want to do, nor did they care.

 

 

I really believe the biggest disadvantage the TI had was no sprite support in basic. With just this one item people would have turn out so many more games and you could have done some basic games on par with what was released on other systems at the time. It would have allowed people to show off a computer visually that looked faster then it was in basic too. The built in basic was the showcase software for the TI, And unfortunately if you was like me and was unexpanded, you couldn't show off what the machine could do.

 

Commadore and Atari embrace the entertainment side of the home computer, but It seemed TI didn't want there machines thought of as game machines. They wanted a serious computer to do serious stuff.

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Another year and TI would have maybe released the 99/8. I think it could have been the game changer for TI. They really addressed every short coming of the 99/4a with the 99/8. A 10mhz 16bit computer when everything else was 8bit and slow, or 16bit IBM and expensive and slow.

 

I'd like to think so, but at the time, the home computer market was crashing... The TRS-80 Color Computer 3 was a similar design, a fast 8-bit machine, that came out too late and with too little support. I have a feeling the TI-99/8 would have gone the same route. Also, TI still wasn't catering to independents and 3rd party developers, and given their chip architecture was completely different from the 6502, it would have been difficult to court them.

 

The main shortcomings of the TI99/4a I see were,

 

No sprite support in basic,

...

As important as sprites would have been inline assembly code, or machine code in basic. Anyone who programmed on the PC back then at 4.77Mhz knows the basic was terribly slow too, but progammers could imbed machine code directly into the basic program. Other computers has POKE commands, some you couldn't do anything without the poke commands like the Commadores.

...

No stand alone diskdrive,

...

16k memory,

 

The lack of machine language support in BASIC was part of their drive, I think, for a more user-friendly language. I'd definitely argue that TI BASIC was one of the easiest to learn... Look at any other computer manual, and behind the cute illustrations was a mess of technical jargon and architecture that would be completely incomprehensible to the layman.

 

The 16K VRAM was entirely a cost-cutting decision... The TI design was done in the late 70's when static RAM was still extremely expensive. A lot of people forget that the Commodore 64 came out several years later, and could take advantage. The real pain was that the TI engineers failed to include upgrade paths to circumvent the TI shortcomings. I guess they thought they'd fix all that in the TI-99/8.

 

Commadore and Atari embrace the entertainment side of the home computer, but It seemed TI didn't want there machines thought of as game machines. They wanted a serious computer to do serious stuff.

 

I'd say that was TI's greatest mistake, a lack of focus on what customers they wanted. They had aspirations as a business and professional machine, and yet they failed to provide the necessary elements (disk drive, memory) that would be necessary to succeed against Apple. They really wanted an "everything" computer when most of the market didn't really care, they just wanted pretty graphics and sound. (Most adults at the time who didn't work with computers at work thought of them as expensive toys.)

 

Adamantyr

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