Pipe Frenzy and Tunnel Jumper by Jim Gerrie

[zephyr]

Two new games, "Pipe Frenzy" and "Tunnel Jumper" from Jim Gerrie. These games were written as entries for the 2013 CoCo Coding Contest. The games are saved in Dragon 32/64 compatible .CAS and .WAV format.

http://cococoding.com/contest/

http://jimgerrie.blogspot.ca/

A bonus "Ghostbusters" game (G. Rowe, Jim Gerrie) is also included.

[jgerrie]

I've sent a zip to the Retrospectiva organizers with a bunch of .cas files containing slightly tweaked versions of my programs for the Dragon. Programs of mine that used the keyboard rollover table had a small routine for later versions of the Coco2 that needed the keyboard rollover table to re-poked back to 255s. I have taken this routine out for the Dragon, as it seemed to interfere (at least in Xroar) with the smooth input of keystrokes. Games like Tunnel Jumper and Ghost Busters should run, although I have noticed that sometimes the key being held has to be fully released before a new one is pressed, if the change is to register. This doesn't seem to be the case on the Coco or MC-10. Hopefully the Retrospectiva site will post them shortly. Thanks to all of you for converting them to .cas and .wav dragon files for me. Sorry for the bugs. If you like a program, please don't forget to vote next month on the Retrospectiva site for your favorite in the contest.

Ta

[Rink]

please don't forget to vote next month on the Retrospectiva site for your favorite in the contest.

Next month? Ah crap - I was going to submit a game but might not have time to pull this off.

[zephyr]

I've sent a zip to the Retrospectiva organizers with a bunch of .cas files containing slightly tweaked versions of my programs for the Dragon. Programs of mine that used the keyboard rollover table had a small routine for later versions of the Coco2 that needed the keyboard rollover table to re-poked back to 255s. I have taken this routine out for the Dragon, as it seemed to interfere (at least in Xroar) with the smooth input of keystrokes. Games like Tunnel Jumper and Ghost Busters should run, although I have noticed that sometimes the key being held has to be fully released before a new one is pressed, if the change is to register. This doesn't seem to be the case on the Coco or MC-10.

I dont know why you didn't use the excellent workaround posted by Arthur Flexser (CoCo mailing list) rather than the extra code which pokes the rollover locations with 255s. It would have been a much better solution, and saved you the hassle of having to alter the game code for use on the Dragon 32/64.

[jgerrie]

Calling INKEY doesn't reset PEEK(135). In fact it prevents that peek location (last key pressed) from containing anything. So it doesn't work for my ONGOSUB key input routine based on key lookup table stored in an array. It does reset the rollover table locations, but then you would have to use separate IF statements for every different key pressed, which would make your animation speed go waaaaay down. Also, adding the pokes along with a speedup poke actually only brings the speed back to the level of an MC-10, which means the game plays as I originally programmed it, which is good for consistency of game play testing across platforms. So I went with the poke option to get playability across all Cocos (I tested it on the coco3 emulator, coco 2 JAVA emulator, and a real 16k Coco 1 and they all worked). Didn't know about the Dragon till you guys transferred the files to Dragon format from the Coco .DSK format. How do you do that? If I can find that out, then maybe I can begin porting all my software to Dragon. I probably have a couple of dozen original Basic programs for the MC-10.

[zephyr]

How do you do that?

Load the games from the .DSK file and save each one to .CAS in ASCII format under Xroar - CoCo 2 emulation. Cload and Csave under Xroar - Dragon 32 emulation (I always use Steve Woolham's enhanced D32 ROMs v3.0 for this).

[jgerrie]

Ah yes. Forgot XRoar emulates the Coco too. I'll track down the roms and get it up and running as a Coco. Thanks. I also noticed somewhere that someone has a DSi version of Xroar. Any idea how to get that one running? I have a DSi but don't know how you can get executables to run on it. Anyway, here's the place to get the fixed versions of my programs from the Retrospectiva site:
http://rsp.retrocomputacion.com/games-i ... im-gerrie/

[zephyr]

I'll track down the roms and get it up and running as a Coco.

The ROMs are here.

[Rink]

I also noticed somewhere that someone has a DSi version of Xroar. Any idea how to get that one running? I have a DSi but don't know how you can get executables to run on it.

You need something like this: http://www.r4i-sdhc.com/aboute.asp and a micro-SD card - can't remember if my R4 3DS came with one or not.

[jgerrie]

I'll track down the roms and get it up and running as a Coco.

The ROMs are here.

Thanks very much.