zephyr wrote:There's still a significant memory saving of 319 bytes after renumbering the modified BASIC code. Should help to prevent those "?OM " issues you were having problems with.
But 319 bytes is really big, stack-wise. So, yes, this could solve such an issue. Though, as previously stated, I only faced this memory error a couple of times. I remember setting all the arrays used by the program to the minimal size (and using mono-dimensional arrays only, even for those related to the GET/PUT function implementation ; I think that trick had also been published in some issue of "Dragon User" - and a most useful one it was), as you may have noticed.
zephyr wrote:Your program is far superior to some of the so-called games that have been published over the years. IMO, You were treated unfairly by Harris Micro Software. Thanks for sharing it with us all here at the forum.
Regards,
Steve
Well, thank you very much, Steve. It's really heart-warming to read such a comment, even (... or
particularly) after such a long time.
Once again, this software had only begun as a personal project. I would never have considered it worthy of offering it to anyone else, if it had not been for my friends coaxing me into contacting some software publisher. As to Mr Harris not providing much help with the marketing, well, "Pixie!" was not his own work after all, and he already had quite a comprehensive range of "serious" software of his own to manage, so I can understand that he showed some interest in adding it to his range, but not that much.
As to sharing this with everyone here, well, I'm the one who actually gets the honour from doing so. Knowing that someone, somewhere, might actually use this, be it for a very few minutes, and find any interest in doing so, is much of a reward already...
Moreover, it was only intended as a simple tool designed to help people sketch out a few pictures on an overlooked machine - which I still owe so much to.
The reason why I did not take the time to clean up my archives and upload this much earlier is that I think the old forum was not so much active,
personal software-wise. Here and now, I see some nice people who really demonstrate a genuine love for the Dragon computer - which I find immensely pleasant. I haven't turned my Dragon on in ages now, but I still have it, and I've been using "XRoar" quite regularly since we received that gift from Ciaran. Then getting help from a colleague to have my old 5.25" Dragon disks converted to ".vdk" files was the next step to keeping the fire alive.
... And that is a great thing - for sure!
But the funniest thing has to be the following: I was not (... never have been, never will be!) a great programmer. I remember my first steps with Dragon's Basic, in July 1983. And I also remember my first steps with 6809 m/c, a couple of years later (... Zaks & Labiaks: I will never be able to thank you enough for everything you did for me!). A self-taught programmer. Really involved, but far from brilliant! So designing, then writing, "Pixie!" was an actual challenge I tackled!
By the way, my next project was going to be a graphical adventure (I might still have a few rough sketches on another disk), but it sure would have been lacking on the GFX side! And I had a friend who was already far ahead of me with m/c programming, and who came up with no less than
three adventure games within only a few months, so there was no actual point in trying to achieve any such thing myself, for I knew the result would have been much, much inferior to what he had done (you may check his two-part "Fernando Poo" adventure and also "The Jewel of Time" on my collection of disks).
... And now for something completely different...
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