A rambling of sorts.

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therealdavetaylor
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A rambling of sorts.

#1 Post by therealdavetaylor » Tue Apr 28, 2015 2:13 am

I am wanting to live in a world where text adventures were number one
and arcades were where the fun is. Where a computer cost more then
a Yugo and the minimum wage was like three dollars. Boy do I wish
those times were now...though this would be on a BBS and it would
cost me fifty dollars for an hour. Well you guys know what I mean. Basic
was king, text adventures were all the rage, and a guy like me would
be having my work put on store shelves.

Since working with only qbasic and on a wonderful PC which I do love.
Well until I get my second one up and running and that'll be my main
coding computer. But wouldn't it be nice if we could quickly transfer
the .bas file and convert it run in other forms of basic? Though that
is just a pipe dream of mine to code on a C64 basic or on a rainy day
an Acorn.

Well with nine text adventures that I've coded and released, though
there are a few that I decided not to finish cause I lost interest in
them. Though the cause for me being able to write these games is
my love of the genre and the engine I made. Though the engine is
really basic and makes the games easy to play for novices everywhere.
I always found that if a game is to difficult that it would just discourage
the player. A text adventure has to be well written more than anything.
Look at the game by Angelsoft "The Mist" it's an amazing game, the
writing is amazing, though it's relatively basic in design with only a
few real time events. Now these events really do make or break the
game, if you make it that's great, if you don't you have to restart.

Games like these are a lot of fun and I'm just trying to bring back
the days of ole that we all know and miss. Ideas fueled by text on
a black screen with text that varies in color, green if you are feeling
like it's 1980, white if you are feeling as if you are playing a game
crafted by a company in the Boston area. If I were to acquire a
large sum of money, like let's say a few million, I'd quit my job
and work towards crafting a vastly large text adventure. Like my
version of War of the Worlds, but it would be larger, and for sale
on store shelves. But my greatest enemy is going over my work
again and again. I can never go over my work once the first
version is complete cause it just bores me to death.

Well that's it for now, I have to get ready for work, and well you
guys know what I mean.

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Gunness
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Re: A rambling of sorts.

#2 Post by Gunness » Tue Apr 28, 2015 1:24 pm

Nothing like a good rambling once in a while :thumb:

Yeah, it'd be great if our beloved genre got a bit more widespread recognition! But I must admit that I don't miss the days where a computer cost more than a Yugo (and Yugos were never that cheap ;)) I love the fact that using emulators, I can boot up a game in whatever format in 10 seconds. Especially if I can get the emulator to work (TRS-80, I'm looking at you). Because if I had to fill up my home with a physical copy of every machine I like to play text adventures on, my wife would get really tired really fast :)

Anyway, good to hear that you're writing classic games in the modern era - more text adventures can never be a bad thing!

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Alex
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Re: A rambling of sorts.

#3 Post by Alex » Tue Apr 28, 2015 6:56 pm

If someone mentions Yugo the first thing which enters my mind are the leather belts the Maya in Mexico wore to play their ballgame , but I suppose you mean something else because to my knowledge there is no market for selling these belts at the moment :lol: (sorry this is one of the side effects of being archaeologist I guess :) but don't worry as far as I know it is NOT contagious)

Ok on topic, until now I only had time to play one of your games, but the other titles are definitely on my list of games I want to try (only problem is the list of games I still want to play is rather long and my spare time rather short :) ). But I’m very glad there are still persons like you who write new text adventures.

I must admit I agree with Jacob I’m very glad nowadays I can play using emulators. I have sold my MSX and C64 computers without remorse. When I wanted to load for instance a Level 9 adventure on my MSX computer using a tape it took 20 minutes to load. Nowadays I just hit a button and I can play.

Keetie
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Re: A rambling of sorts.

#4 Post by Keetie » Wed Apr 29, 2015 12:55 pm

Gunness wrote:Nothing like a good rambling once in a while :thumb:
I love the fact that using emulators, I can boot up a game in whatever format in 10 seconds. Especially if I can get the emulator to work (TRS-80, I'm looking at you). !
What is the trouble with that, the TRS emulator? Which one and what game?

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Re: A rambling of sorts.

#5 Post by Gunness » Wed Apr 29, 2015 1:35 pm

It's with the TRS32 emulator, and various versions of NEWDOS. Oh, the woes.... ;)
I run the emulator, put the DOS in drive 0, the game in drive 1, boot up and no woes yet.
But when I try to access the game disk, I just get endless device errors. And headaches!

Gaming After 40-maestro Dale Dobson has been very helpful, and at some point I managed to bypass some of these problems by not speeding up the (really slow) emulation. But it doesn't seem to work each time.

Anyway, we have guides for all sorts of systems. A TRS one would probably be a really good idea. There are so many games exclusive to that machine.

But if you have any general advice, I'm all ears :)

Keetie
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Re: A rambling of sorts.

#6 Post by Keetie » Wed Apr 29, 2015 8:06 pm

Gunness wrote:It's with the TRS32 emulator, and various versions of NEWDOS. Oh, the woes.... ;)
I run the emulator, put the DOS in drive 0, the game in drive 1, boot up and no woes yet.
Do you have the system roms and the dos boot disk? And what's the name of the game or is there no game involved?

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Gunness
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Re: A rambling of sorts.

#7 Post by Gunness » Thu Apr 30, 2015 2:54 pm

Yes, system ROMs are in place, and the emulator does boot up w/o problems.

The problem is with a lot of disks, not one in particular. And it's disk images I know other have used, so it's probably a matter of emulator config.
So, if you have a fool-proof method...? :)

Keetie
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Re: A rambling of sorts.

#8 Post by Keetie » Thu Apr 30, 2015 4:02 pm

Gunness wrote:Yes, system ROMs are in place, and the emulator does boot up w/o problems.
So you see this one?
trs80.gif
trs80.gif (11.27 KiB) Viewed 14852 times
Then I'll give it a try...

About the diskimages:

Go to Storage - Insert Floppy disk - choose drive 1, 2 or 3 ( only drive 2 works here) and select the diskimage.

To see what's on the virtual disk in drive 2: type DIR 2

Then type

BASIC
run"nameofthegame.bas"
when they are basic games.

Alastair
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Re: A rambling of sorts.

#9 Post by Alastair » Fri May 01, 2015 11:51 pm

Jacob, have you tried using MESS to emulate a TRS-80?

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Gunness
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Re: A rambling of sorts.

#10 Post by Gunness » Sat May 02, 2015 7:29 am

Hi both, I'm on a really limited internet connection until Sunday evening. Will reply then :)

Keetie
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Re: A rambling of sorts.

#11 Post by Keetie » Thu May 07, 2015 8:11 pm

Alastair wrote:Jacob, have you tried using MESS to emulate a TRS-80?
That depends of the software you use, which emulator you choose, I think.

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Gunness
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Re: A rambling of sorts.

#12 Post by Gunness » Sun May 10, 2015 2:10 pm

Time has been limited lately, so the Sunday in question ended up being a week late :?

Anyway, I think I tested the MESS emulator at some point, but it's my impression that TRS32 is the better option. Anyway, booting up in NEWDOS/80 I keep getting DIRECTORY READ ERROR when using the DIR command, even though the disk image is firmly in place. I tried various images, and they all give the same result.

What model should I use for best compability, and are there any special settings I need to be extra careful with?

Keetie
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Re: A rambling of sorts.

#13 Post by Keetie » Sun May 10, 2015 2:32 pm

Gunness wrote: Anyway, booting up in NEWDOS/80 I keep getting DIRECTORY READ ERROR when using the DIR command, even though the disk image is firmly in place.
Jacob, what did you type after DIR?

edit - I mean: can you see the contents of the NEWDOS/80 disc?

Keetie
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Re: A rambling of sorts.

#14 Post by Keetie » Sun Jun 14, 2015 5:11 pm

@ Jacob: Did you solve your problem ?

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