INFOCOM series on CoCo-VGA for DRAGON64

A place to discuss everything Dragon related that doesn't fall into the other categories.
Post Reply
pser1
Posts: 1655
Joined: Sun Mar 25, 2012 7:32 pm
Location: Barcelona (SPAIN)

INFOCOM series on CoCo-VGA for DRAGON64

Post by pser1 »

Hi,
I have isolated this message from the previous announcement of the port of the 25 adventures games from INFOCOM, because this one implies
the use of an extra module attached to our Dragon (this one lies inside the case!), its name is CoCo-VGA and you can learn a lot about it here:
http://www.cocovga.com/

One of the advantages of having that module is that we can set it to work at 64 columns by 32 lines in mode text, enabling lowercase too!
The changes to the 'engine' I had converted have been possible thanks to Ed Snider who, very kindly, has shared with me the mods he did
on the CoCo version, thanks a lot!!

You will notice that in the extra disk "ENGINE.VDK" there are two files instead of just one.
- ENG04V32.BIN is for normal use 32 chars x 16 lines as usual
- ENG04V64.BIN is for CoCo-VGA users and will switch the module to mode 64x32 with lowercase
Keep into account that right now this works flawlessly with TANO computers (NTSC)
I know that Brendan Donahe is working hard to fine tune it for the Dragon PAL too, so it is just a question of waiting a bit to test ...

Just a proof that it works till the end, I played "The Lurking Horror" (cheating with a walkthrough) but needed to test it!
Screenshot-The Lurking Horror-END-64 columns-reduced.jpg
Screenshot-The Lurking Horror-END-64 columns-reduced.jpg (92.36 KiB) Viewed 3379 times
cheers
pere
tjewell
Posts: 346
Joined: Mon Oct 19, 2009 4:58 pm
Location: Cambridge, England

Re: INFOCOM series on CoCo-VGA for DRAGON64

Post by tjewell »

Pere,

Just to let you know, this works like a dream on my CocoVGA - playing Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy at this very minute!

Very impressive work.

Cheers, Tony
pser1
Posts: 1655
Joined: Sun Mar 25, 2012 7:32 pm
Location: Barcelona (SPAIN)

Re: INFOCOM series on CoCo-VGA for DRAGON64

Post by pser1 »

Thanks Tony,
it was about time to re-use old developments!
I did the conversion of the disk routines for the Dragon and modified the keyboard too,
but the control of the print-out for the 64 columns mode was almost as simple as a 'copy-paste' of
Ed Snider's work for the CoCo version!
I just added a way to 'return' to the 32 std mode when quitting the program

cheers
pere
Post Reply