What relatively underserved game genre would you like to see new development for on the TI-99?

[pixelpedant]

Needless to say, I can't name every video game genre that is, has been, or ever shall be.  But these are a few genres which were represented on 80s hardware, which feel like they could want for more representation on TI-99. 

 

For my pick, I'd love to see a good rail shooter (see: various 8-bit Space Harrier ports, including MSX1). 

[TheDevil'sCompass]

I'd like to see more rail shooters too. The only semi-rail shooter that I can recall playing on the TI back in the 80's was Devastator from Compute! magazine.

[TheMole]

I chose Beat'm up, but am actually thinking fighting game, something like Karateka, IK+ or Yie Ar Kung-Fu...

[+OLD CS1]

SimCity, Populous, Dune, Little Computer People.  Something like that.

[ti99iuc]

I chose Beat'em up too but there are a lot of unfinished titles out there that I would like to see finished, and I would prefer for the most without F18A use or at least for something that works with both systems like it is happened for the TI-Scramble game.

I would love to see a finished version of Formula99+ for example, I really loved it. and as Shoot'em up I dreamed with Power strike (it is using the F18A of course I know 😛).
Also Nebulus was a very neat Idea for a TI99 game and we haven't nothing similar at the moment. Also Dungeon od Asgard was one of my hope to see it finished.
 

H.E.R.O. and Time Pilot also are unfinished games and it is a pity to not have them completed instead.

Ah, I have a dream to see also a nice version in assembler of a Biliard game  please 😜

abandoned games old links:

 

 

 

[+Vorticon]

I'm a big fan of tactical and strategic computer wargames, and I've programmed my share of them over the years (Close Action, Panzer Strike, Stratego) but it seems that I am the only one with such an interest as far as I can tell. I would love to see more of that genre being developed.

Regarding my old project Ultimate Planet Sci-Fi  wargame pictured above, this was a pure assembly language endeavor, and I got as far as having the entire game mechanics and UI programmed, but it stalled because of poor initial design choices. Fixing this would have required a complete re-write which I simply did not have the stamina to do. Besides, there was really no need for such a project to be done in pure assembly which added an additional layer of pain and complexity. But not all was lost! I am 99% done with a spiritual successor to Ultimate Planet called Kroll & Prumni, a recreation of the classic board wargame of the same name (http://zargosl.free.fr/kroll-UK.html) written in a combination of XB and assembly with a mouse-based interface and will be officially released at the Chicago TI Faire in October. Here's a teaser screenshot:

 

 

[digdugnate]

arcade racing-type or rail shooters, i think.

[jrhodes]

I love platformers, can't help it.

[Serafini Lapo]

as soon as I read about a sort of "project" of the conversion of Elite, I jumped from the chair !! I hope so.. having said that, another game comes to mind, which for me marked a beautiful moment .. it is Gollop's "lords of chaos" (if I remember correctly ..). This too would be a dream !! (in my opinion achievable .. it was also converted to Spectrum ..).

[SkyPilot]

SimCity for F18A in FinalGROM.

[+arcadeshopper]

1 hour ago, SkyPilot said:

SimCity for F18A in FinalGROM.

with sams

[+OLD CS1]

1 hour ago, SkyPilot said:

SimCity for F18A in FinalGROM.

 

3 minutes ago, arcadeshopper said:

with sams

Anything else we can require to make it more niche?

[pixelpedant]

I do feel like SimCity could be done just fine with conventional 9918A (or even 9918) graphics.  The Spectrum version is pretty much proof of that. 

 

I suppose I see a stronger argument for SAMS than F18A, given any game like this involving a large, complex, dynamic map is going to be mighty memory-hungry. 

[SkyPilot]

48 minutes ago, OLD CS1 said:

 

Anything else we can require to make it more niche?

 

Wasn't there a poll a couple of years ago showing more using F18A's than not?  Same for FinalGROM, expected since the users here are the worlds die hard TI users.

[+save2600]

I chose 'other', and that would be a quality arcade-style (not a sim like Strike Three!) baseball game playable on a 16k or 32k machine with stock video. Something along the lines of Championship Baseball for the MBX or RealSports Baseball for the 5200. 1 or 2 player option with challenging, but not impossible computer AI a must.

 

Other than that, enjoy most arcade conversions (ie: Flying Shark, etc.) of all genres. Shooters, beat 'em ups, platformers, etc. 🙂

[+OLD CS1]

1 hour ago, SkyPilot said:

Wasn't there a poll a couple of years ago showing more using F18A's than not?  Same for FinalGROM, expected since the users here are the worlds die hard TI users.

Of people who answered the polls?  Probably.  Realistically, the FG99 is not a niche issue as pretty much anyone getting into the hobby is going to pick one up as it is easier to work with than buying carts.  The F18A comes and goes, and there are a few demos, but no games, which actually require it, IIRC.  The SAMS gets a little more esoteric, where Matt's 32k is almost a gimme of a price but a side-car SAMS is only about double.  Of course, mere opinion, while my comment was mostly tongue-in-cheek, I think games should at most require 32k, but take advantage of optional accoutrements unless the complexity of the game makes this infeasible.  That opinion is really just me being stuck in the notion that the TI is a cartridge-based game system, and disk-based productivity system.

 

In terms of SimCity, the 8-bit systems for which it was released, such as the recently discovered NES version and the severely missed opportunity which was the Commodore 64 version, show that our little gal could handle it.  I can imagine games like Dune would be quite a bit more intense and require more resources such as a disk system, extra memory, maybe even the SAMS.

 

Anyway, this is alcohol-induced babbling.

[Asmusr]

I would just like to see more than a handful of people making new games. 🙂

[+9640News]

Vanguard!

[pixelpedant]

Well, it seems like a city Sim (whether a straight up SimCity port or otherwise) is the winner here.  Here's hoping we get this some day, or something like it:

 

 

 

[Airshack]

I'm working on a game loosely inspired by Crazy Taxi which was a favorite of mine on the original Xbox. 

 

Check out my progress on Crazy Uber here:  

 

 

 

[PeteE]

It's been a while since our last wishlist thread.  I'm always a fan of side-scrolling platformers.  When I finish Tilda, my plan is to tackle a Ghosts'n'Goblins clone.  I've got some hopes of someday seeing a Prince of Persia port, a metroid-vania, or a Street Fighter style 1-vs-1 or Final Fight 1-vs-many, and I've given some thought to how it would be possible to do rails-shooter Space Harrier.  Seeing the discussion about Elite has me thinking about line-drawing algorithms again.

 

What would it take to get more people interested in programming in assembly on the TI-99/4a?  For fast arcade action, pure assembly seems like the way to go.  PixelPedant has shown he can design obfuscated string-based command interpreters (in BASIC interpreter + GPL interpreter) and assembly isn't much more complicated, maybe we can turn him to the dark side.  I would be down to do a collaboration with someone in assembly, I like designing game engines and mocking up game graphics.  Would more assembly tutorials be helpful?  Or game frameworks?

[pixelpedant]

Looking at the responses to the videos I've done on a whole pile of different topics in BASIC and Extended BASIC programming (and the various supporting libraries), it seems to me there are actually a lot of people out there (most of whom don't post here) who are interested in programming on the TI-99.  Who find it to be an interesting topic of discussion and sandbox to play around in.  And I get lots of people responding about their own little experiments or intended experiments. 

 

It's just that there's a huge leap in work and effort involved in moving from these piecemeal experiments to designing and coding and debugging and testing a satisfying and playable game.  And I think the number of people interested in doing the latter is greatly smaller, regardless of the language in which a project is created. 

 

It is one of the great strengths of the TI-99 that you can boot it up with Extended BASIC plugged in and type CALL SPRITE and CALL SOUND and CALL SAY and make it do a bunch of cool things in BASIC with very little technical knowledge of any kind.  It's really easy to get people in at the ground floor doing some of these cool experiments.  And people seem genuinely interested in doing them.  It's just that the next step is a doozy. 

 

The XB Game Development Package definitely provides one fascinating, compelling option for a transition to larger projects which actually produce enjoyable, playable games.  But still, the move from playing around with the machine's capabilities in little ways and actually developing a game is a rather large one. 

 

As for me, I'm probably still hopelessly hitching my wagon to TI BASIC, for what comes next.  I've got too many TI BASIC development ideas which came out of Hell's Halls but which couldn't be implemented in that project for various reasons.  After that though, who knows. 

 

 

[Airshack]

10 minutes ago, PeteE said:

What would it take to get more people interested in programming in assembly on the TI-99/4a? 

I found getting started was a slow process because I didn't know what to use on the PC: Which Editor? Which Assembler? Which emulator? 

 

Just about 100% of what I've learned on the subject came from this link:  

 

 

    Perhaps some sort of summary of the lessons learned in this thread would be helpful as many of the Assembly related books from the 1980s are extremely outdated. Many if not all of the modern programming techniques which make games fast in Assembly (rolling your own VDP read/write routines, self-made keyboard access routines, avoiding slow console routines, using the CPU RAM to store your workspace registers, etc) are nowhere to be found in ancient 1980s Assembly books. In my experience these books all start off with a few very dry chapters on hexadecimal mathematics which is enough to scare most people away. 

 

    Today's potential Assembly programmer needs documentation centered around game programming specifically -- speed. They need to see some simple examples which produce results to include graphics on the screen and some sound. Something to motivate the potential programmer to continue. Something not so completely unrelated to game programming which sums up just about every TI-99/4A book I've ever read to include TI's Editor/Assembler Manual.

 

    Another giant hurdle for entry into the Assembly club is the workflow tools. Do I program on a PC or the TI-99/4A? Okay, we all know the answer is a PC. What newbs don't know is which modern editors are especially helpful with plugins designed to support TI-99/4A Assembly programming? Which modern assembler is most convenient to use on the PC? Why a PC emulator can help you speed up the process of building a game? How does one get a file from the PC to the real metal TI-99/4A for testing?

 

    My personal experience was that I had a ton of questions before I began to write a single line of Assembly code. Seems the answer to each question was quite simple which was kind of frustrating because the knowledge is out there to make this easy but it's really difficult to find it all in one convenient place. The other retro computers and game consoles are all ahead of us in this area.

 

    That's my take for what it's worth. I am far from being an IT Professional so I'm probably not far off target here. I'm still learning and continue to find the link Assembly on the 99/4A extremely useful. Everyone else programming in TI Assembly on AtariAge has been extremely helpful for which I am grateful. 

 

 

[SkyPilot]

5 hours ago, pixelpedant said:

Well, it seems like a city Sim (whether a straight up SimCity port or otherwise) is the winner here.  Here's hoping we get this some day, or something like it:

 

 

 

 

Trying to build a Texas border town with illegals causing havoc?  Put fencing in there along with roads and stuff.

[Airshack]

3 hours ago, SkyPilot said:

Trying to build a Texas border town with illegals causing havoc?  Put fencing in there along with roads and stuff.

Finally! A game idea even more politically incorrect than the beloved Butt Plug Simulator. 
 

“Just to be very clear…” 😂 

Edited September 24, 2022 by Airshack