[Aquarius] Adventure

[nitrofurano]

My first attempt on porting Adventure to Aquarius using Boriel’s ZX-Basic Compiler

It is only a humble and initial code sketch, without collisions, the sprite motion is not smooth yet, and it erases the background, etc.

It is mostly for anyone here figuring out what could be possible to do using this cross-compiler, and perhaps having better ideas about how to improve it, and perhaps having it as a truly playable game

adventure_aquarius_01.zip

[nitrofurano]

btw, the keys i used for this were "wsad"

[jaybird3rd]

I'm happy to see your progress! I'll give this a try once I'm back at home with access to my Aquarius setup.

[GroovyBee]

Any screenshots for those without an Aquarius .

[nitrofurano]

with a screenshot:

i would ask: Mess (GNU/Linux version) and VirtualAquarius (running on Wine) are displaying 25 text lines on display, but i though that was 24 - i guess both are wrong? and which is the line must not be used (above or below?), which character and attribute address are used for the border?

and which emulator you reccomend (native on GNU/Linux, or runs fine on Wine or Java runtime)

[jaybird3rd]

i would ask: Mess (GNU/Linux version) and VirtualAquarius (running on Wine) are displaying 25 text lines on display, but i though that was 24 - i guess both are wrong? and which is the line must not be used (above or below?), which character and attribute address are used for the border?

and which emulator you reccomend (native on GNU/Linux, or runs fine on Wine or Java runtime)

There are 25 lines on the Aquarius display. The first (top) line is like any other line, except that the leftmost cell on this line ($3000 in the character matrix and $3400 in the color matrix) determines the character and color displayed in the screen border. So, if you don't want any characters to appear in the border, just put a space in the upper-left corner of the screen.

[nitrofurano]

thanks! btw, from the Wikipedia page about Aquarius ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattel_Aquarius#Technical_specifications ) , i guess that the information there is wrong/incomplete/inaccurate, or it is simply ignoring the first line because this border issue? (i guess that would be like "Display: 40x25 text, 80x75 graphics, 16 colors" instead, with a note related to this upper-leftmost cell?)

 

btw, besides Wikipedia, both http://oldcomputers.net/aquarius.html and http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=73&st=1 seems to share inaccurate information as well

Edited July 7, 2014 by nitrofurano

[nitrofurano]

another thing i’m seeing: it seems that, by default, the lower 24 text lines are centered on the tv display, and, "in theory", the first line would be considered as "part of the border"? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmAleMQIqeg

[Aquaman]

another thing i’m seeing: it seems that, by default, the lower 24 text lines are centered on the tv display, and, "in theory", the first line would be considered as "part of the border"? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmAleMQIqeg

You are probably not far from the truth! On the first line the characters will actually stay put on the screen when you are scrolling the other characters of the visible screen area. Therefore this screen section is best used for headings like scores, lives left etc.

[Pset]

Wow that's really neat. Wish you were my neighbor in 1983.

Edited July 12, 2014 by Pset

[nitrofurano]

Wow that's really neat. Wish you were my neighbor in 1983.

yes, would be amazing! that were a lot that we learnt from neighbours and cousins in our childhood back in the 80's! amazing times, indeed!

[vprette]

do you think this can be (easily) ported to intybasic to run on intellivision?

I would try to test on intv, if you can provide the basic source..