Star Wars games on TI-99: there are problems

[Sightsaber2]

Hi everyone!

 

My friend and I decided to play through every Star Wars video game we could, including the unofficial ones. Today we have about 130 unofficial SW games (and several dozen more await us ahead).

We were able to find 14 Star Wars games for TI-99 platform. However, while playing 3 of them, various problems arose that did not allow us to fully enjoy these games.

 

1) STAR-RIDE (Marcolongo)
After a few seconds, the opponents disappear, and the sight frame goes off the screen.

 

2) Starwar1: Krieg der Sterne (Patrick Schmit, TI Revue)
At the first level, enemy TIEs sometimes "fall through" the Death Star superstructure level; At the second level, when actively moving, the game gives an error.

 

3) TI Wars (John Clulow, Chicago TI User Group)
Enemy sprites disappear during the game. Plus a very strange pace of the game.

 

Program images (including their listings) are available here.

 

Unfortunately, we are unable to master the BASIC dialect for TI-99 well enough to find errors.

 

We would be very grateful if any experienced TI-99 users would have the time to review the program codes (the first game we typed from a magazine listing) and suggest possible bug fixes.

All games run on Classic99 (v.399.061) emulator. We also have MAME installed, but we haven’t figured out how to add program program code both from text file and from DSK image.

 

[+mizapf]

To use such code in MAME, you can use TIImageTool and paste the text as a file on an image. This image can then be read in MAME.

 

By the way, in STARWAR1 there is a syntax error (reported by TIImageTool) which I tried to spot for half an hour before I saw it. I thought there was an error in my BASIC parser, but it turned out to be right.

 

700 CALL COINC(#1,#14,8,Z2):: IF Z2 THEN 720 ELSE CALL COINC(#1,#16,8,Z2):: IF Z2 THEN 720 ELSE CALL JOYST(1,Z1,Z2):: IF Z1=4 THEN CALL LOCATE(#1,96,100):: P=1 :: GOTO 680 ELSE 700
710 CALL COINC(#1,#15,8,Z2):: IF Z2 THEN 720 ELSE CALL COINC(#1,#17,8,Z2):: IF Z2 THEN 720 ELSE CALL JOYST(1,Z1,Z2):: IF Z1=-4 THEN CALL LOCATE(#1,104,108):: P=3 :: GOT0 680 ELSE 710

 

Line 700 is correct, whereas line 710 has a syntax error.

 

Edit: In case you did not see it, the GOTO in the second line was written as GOT0 (GOT zero).

[Sightsaber]

Hi everyone!

 

My friend and I decided to play through every Star Wars video game we could, including the unofficial ones. Today we have about 130 unofficial SW games (and several dozen more await us ahead).

We were able to find 14 Star Wars games for TI-99 platform. However, while playing 3 of them, various problems arose that did not allow us to fully enjoy these games.

 

1) STAR-RIDE (Marcolongo)
After a few seconds, the opponents disappear, and the sight frame goes off the screen.

 

2) Starwar1: Krieg der Sterne (Patrick Schmit, TI Revue)
At the first level, enemy TIEs sometimes "fall through" the Death Star superstructure level; At the second level, when actively moving, the game gives an error.

 

3) TI Wars (John Clulow, Chicago TI User Group)
Enemy sprites disappear during the game. Plus a very strange pace of the game.

 

Games' ROMs (and their listings) are available here.

 

Unfortunately, we are unable to master the BASIC dialect for TI-99 well enough to find errors.

 

We would be very grateful if any experienced TI-99 users would have the time to review the program codes (the first game we typed from a magazine listing) and suggest possible bug fixes.

All games run on Classic99 (v.399.061) emulator. We also have MAME installed, but we haven’t figured out how to add program program code both from text file and from DSK image.

 

P.S. If anyone knows any other Star Wars games for TY-99, please let us know. Here is our list (gameplay videos are available via links):

1983	Star-Wars	Dieter Karbach, Torsten Karbach	Karbachsoft
1984	Star Trap (alt. Star Wars)	John Phillips	Data Biotics, Triton, Exceltec
1984-12	Star Wars	Riccardo Ginevri	TI99Newsoft
	Star Wars - Empire Strike Back
1994 и 2006	Star Wars 2.5/Star Wars 2.6	Alessandro Betori	Betori Production
1982	Strike Force 99	Mr Moon	Moonbeam Software
	Space Command (n/a)
	Dark Star
	L'Empire Contre Attaque	Christian Lucas
1990-01	Star War Quiz	Herbert T. Siley	Dallas TI Home Computer User Group
1983	Death Star		Sirovy Software
	Star Ride		Marcolongo
	TI Wars	John Clulow	Chicago TI User Group
1984-09	Starwar1: Krieg der Sterne	Patrick Schmitz	TI Revue
1984-09	Starwar2: Das Imperium Schlägt Zurück!	Patrick Schmitz	TI Revue

 

 

[Sightsaber]

On 7/12/2024 at 10:45 PM, mizapf said:

Edit: In case you did not see it, the GOTO in the second line was written as GOT0 (GOT zero).

Thank you very much for TIImageTool proposal (I'll try it) and for finding the error!

 

UPD. The problem with the game crashing on the second level has been resolved. Wow, how many dozens of times have I looked at this line, but I haven’t noticed such a simple mistake!

Edited July 16 by Sightsaber

[+mizapf]

43 minutes ago, Sightsaber said:

UPD. The problem with the game crashing on the second level has been resolved. Wow, how many dozens of times have I looked at this line, but I haven’t noticed such a simple mistake!

And I started debugging TIImageTool to find out why it rejected that line.

 

[+mizapf]

Interestingly, the error message was almost spot-on, but at first I could not make sense of it, because I did not see the GOTzero either.

 

In fact, good error reporting is sometimes a real challenge: The GOT0 is a valid variable name, so the parser could not report a typo. The syntax error is that there is a number after the variable GOT0 without an assignment (like GOT0=710). Accordingly, it reported that after the variable it found yet another variable or constant.