Old TI BASIC programs from back in the cassette days

[senior_falcon]

I was able to find my old cassettes containing TI BASIC programs from way back in the day, and after some effort, was able to transfer four of them to my "real" computer.

 

The first one I will post is called LASERBASE. You are in command of a high powered laser base defending your terrain from a pesky alien saucer that keeps lobbing bombs at you.

S and D move the laser base left and right. Space bar shoots a laser beam straight up. If a bomb gets through it blows a hole in the ground. As the bombs make craters your ability to move is reduced, and if you fall in the hole the laser explodes and you perish.

LASERBASE

 

Edited January 20, 2023 by senior_falcon

[pixelpedant]

Very nifty (and ambitious) BASIC game indeed!

[sometimes99er]

Very nice ! 👍
 

[sometimes99er]

Very nice ! 👍
 

[Retrospect]

Nice game

[+OLD CS1]

This is the kind of game I would expect to see featured in "99er."  Good stuff.

[senior_falcon]

This is not exactly a "work in progress" because there has been no progress in the past 40 years. Feel free to make any adjustments that might improve the game. For example, the saucer could move to a lower row as the game progresses. Also, the scoring is not ideal - maybe points should not be subtracted when the bombs get through. I wound up with a negative score, which doesn't seem fair.

 

Edited January 20, 2023 by senior_falcon

[senior_falcon]

Here is another one. The game is called "YACHT." It is a predecesser of the Milton-Bradley game "Yahtzee."

The rules:

You roll 5 dice. After the roll you can pick up any of the dice and roll them again. You can do this a second time.

After 3 rolls (or less if the dice are kind to you) you have to choose which of these categories you want to score in.

YACHT = 5 of a kind. It scores 50

BIG STRAIGHT = 2 3 4 5 6. It scores 30

LITTLE STRAIGHT = 1 2 3 4 5. It scores 30

(all the rest score the total of the dice)

FOUR OF A KIND

FULL HOUSE = 3 of one number and 2 of another.

CHOICE = any combination of dice

SIXES through ACES = self explanatory.

 

Controlling the game:

Press T to throw the dice.

After the throw use the S and D keys to move the pointer to a die you want to pick up. Press 0 to pick up the die.

Press T when ready to throw the dice you just picked up. After your third roll the program goes to the scoring part.

If you press T without picking up any dice then you go directly to the scoring part.

 

When scoring, press E and X to move the pointers up or down to the desired category, then press Enter

 

This game is a good match for TI BASIC, and unlike most games in console basic, the speed is plenty fast enough.

 

YACHT

 

 

Edited January 21, 2023 by senior_falcon

[senior_falcon]

And here is another one of mine. This is a touch typing tutor. This uses many of the practice techniques we used in 7th grade typing class.

The idea is that you never look at the keyboard. There is a representation of the keyboard on the screen and everything you need to know is on that screen. Your left fingers rest on  ASDF and your right fingers rest on JKL;

You are given letters to type. If you choose to use targets then a green dot appears on the key you should press. If you press the wrong key, a red X is shown. You can choose:

1 for home row drill

2 for upper row drill

3 for lower row drill

4 for whole alphabet drill

5 for number drill

6 for random letter drill

7 to practice typing words. In this option you are given a short story by Mark Twain to practice.

 

This program is large. There is room on a basic system with just a cassette without a disk system.

But there are memory issues when using a disk system.

For Classic99 you can do CALL FILES(0).

You can run it in Extended BASIC with a memory expansion if you use XB 2.9 G.E.M. or RXB. 

If you want to run it in TI BASIC with a disk system you can do CALL FILES(1) and then remove lines in the Mark Twain story which starts at line 1430 until the program will run.

 

TUTOR

 

 

[senior_falcon]

This game is called 3-D Tic-Tac-Toe. The core of the game is from "BASIC Computer Games" edited by David Ahl. I added a graphics interface so you can more easily visualize what is going on.

The goal is to get four X's or four O's in a row, either in the same plane, or vertically, or vertically/diagonally, etc.

In the game in the video, I try to get 4 in a row vertically, but the computer sees that and block it.

Controls:

ESDX move the cursor within a plane

Fctn E and Fctn X go up or down a plane

Enter moves to the square pointed to by the cursor.

This is a large program, so you will need to CALL FILES(1) if using a disk system. With Classic99, it works much better with CPU overdrive. This game would really benefit from compiling. This is not impossible, but it would be a little tricky because decimal points are used and at one point I saw 3/8.

 

TICTAC3D

 

 

Edited January 21, 2023 by senior_falcon

[chris36]

On 1/19/2023 at 11:40 PM, senior_falcon said:

I was able to find my old cassettes containing TI BASIC programs from way back in the day, and after some effort, was able to transfer four of them to my "real" computer.

If you have tapes you can't transfer, consider recording to a sound file.  Some members enjoy the challenge of extracting information from noisy data.

Edited January 22, 2023 by chris36
Premature Save

[senior_falcon]

Reading from the old tapes to the TI was the easiest part of the process. Then I had to save the programs to disk, but the disk system was flakey. After a bunch of time cleaning contacts and reseating cards I finally got the disk system to wake up and was able to save the files. When I tried to load TELCO the disk system decided it was time to go back to sleep again.

The next day I awakened the disk system again after some effort, but then there was another problem. I have been sending files from the TI using TELCO to windows HYPERTERMINAL. I normally run Linux, but can dual boot into Windows 7. But a few months ago we had a power outage, which may be why the grub boot loader acts strangely now at startup and will not load windows 7 at all. I run Windows XP in a virtual box, but have been unable to get hyperterminal there to recognize the RS232 port. And I cannot understand how to transfer files with any of the terminal emulators I have tried in Linux.

Long story short, with some encouragement from one of the students, I once again tried to set up virtual box so that XP could talk to the RS232, and to my amazement, this time it worked. I can't see what I am doing different, but have a feeling I may have left out a /.

Making a WAV file as you suggested was on my list of things to do, but fortunately it was not necessary.

 

[senior_falcon]

Before putting the cassettes and player back into storage, I thought I would upload some of the other games that I thought were interesting enough to key in.

These games run in console BASIC and were all listed in 2 books: BASIC Computer Games edited by David Ahl, and the sequel More BASIC Computer Games.

The books used a different dialect of BASIC, so these had to be converted to be able to run in TI BASIC.

The first two games are from the volume 1.

You can read the description and the listing here:  

https://www.atariarchives.org/basicgames/index.php

KING

LEM

All the rest are from volume 2.

You can read the description and the listing here:

https://www.atariarchives.org/morebasicgames/index.php

CHUCKALUCK

CAMEL

DRAGRACE

VANGAM

SCHMOO

FLIP

DEEPSPACE

ELIZA

TWONKY

BLACKBOX

JOUST

NOTONE

 

 

 

[SteveB]

12 hours ago, senior_falcon said:

Making a WAV file as you suggested was on my list of things to do, but fortunately it was not necessary.

I did it just like that ... recorded all tapes via soundcard on the PC and then used Tape994a to convert it to FIAD files. I have to touch up some of the programs I found, Rescuer for TI BASIC is the only one I put out yet.

 

And we developed Extended Parsec starting with a demo of an XB Parsec written in 1984. Only your compiler gave it the speed it neeeded ... Some graphics and some flight-pattern are 38+ years old. 

 

I started this whole endevour for an XB game we ran out of memory on the unexteded console. I continued the development in Classic99 and this sparked TiCodEd almost three years ago .. I might publish it on the 40th anniversary of my console later this year if I get it done by then.

[zacharyfruhling]

Yes! I love seeing these old resurrected TI BASIC programs! Keep 'em coming!

[senior_falcon]

Here is one last program. This is designed to work with MiniMemory. TI BASIC with the MiniMemory does not have sprite access. This program uses PEEKV and POKEV to access the vdp memory locations that control sprites.

It is a lunar lander program.

Left joystick thrusts to the left

Right joystick thrusts to the right

Any key on the left fires the landing booster

You have to land before you run out of fuel.

Landing must be fairly precisely centered on the platform and the vertical and horizontal velocities must be low.

It is a bit tricky to touch down safely on the platform, but I am sure there are Neil Armstrong wannabes out there willing to take up the challenge

LANDERHW

 

 

[+Torrax]

Lost those two books along with a vast collection of late 70's and early 80's computer books/magazines; Computer Shopper (near complete); and various/misc 80's & 90's media.  Everthing was stored at the farm in my old bedroom (classic archive room) on the upper floor of an older house.  Collected most of this from libraries/schools/colleges clearing out older print media for free and $2/3/5 sales at kiosks in malls.  Lack of maintenance; broken windows; weather; and the upper floor turning into a pigeon coop destroyed my media collection.  Anything that was newsprint turned into piles of mush and surviving materials torn into nesting materials (this was 18 years ago -- sigh!).

 

Just before CoVid happened the house, barn, and other structures were torn down.  I've been slowly reclaiming from memory most of the material in digital form from the internet thanks to our digital archivists out there.  Some of the 70's magazines have yet to be found.

 

Lucky I brought most of my TI and Apple II stuff to my small apartment the rest of my computer hoard had to stay behind.

 

[+Schmitzi]

 

all files in a .DSK

 

Senior_Falcon-Old-Tapes-v1.dsk

[senior_falcon]

Here are PDF docs for all the games that I posted that were from BASIC computer games and More BASIC computer games.

Even though it is compressed, this is a lot of bytes!

BASIC COMPUTER GAMES DOCS.zip

 

 

 

 

[bradhig1]

Camelot a game in which you have to joust a computer opponent by choosing a Lance, Mace, Or Sword

Camel you have to cross a dessert while being chased by pygmies 

[bradhig1]

Challenge of Camelot I meant not Camelot