That would be fun =) Did you ever make use of that Python sprite-generator I made for turning BMPs into asm files?

Yeah, I'm actually thinking a making a pinyin translation for China, Taiwan, etc. It might require a custom font because the TI character set doesn't include all the accented vowels.


Yeah I remember remaking part of the Green Hill areas. (For a scale remake of the Genesis original). I'm pretty sure I kept all the executable as well, but I'll have to inventory it.


More decoder screens....

Bonus indicator:

The word "DECODE" looses its highlighting if the minimum number of moves is exceeded. Doing the fewest moves is only optional, so players can ignore it or press ALPHA to retry later.

A three line version:

Wow! This program is amazing! How far are you into it? Are you using any libraries for this? Keep up the great work; I will definitely be looking into this!

Yep. Toolchain-wise, I do all the coding in DOS edit with the SpASM assembler and app-signer, plus the CrASH assembler for TI-82 builds. 99% of the testing is done on the WabbitEMU emulator.

The maps and large graphics are made in Graphics Studio (2000), compressed using apack compression (via another DOS utility) and then decompressed on-calc using a library from DWedit (who made TI Bubble Bobble among other titles). I did all the graphics in MS paint, with necro designing the level 3 boss sprites.

For code relocation, Spencer added some SpASM macros. The executable code for drawing level graphics and sprites were both done by CrASH_MAN. Milos Baze wrote the codes for integer multiply, divide, and square root. The grayscale code is from tr1p1ea. Recently, I added (Brandon W's?) getCSC alternative after the TI-OS _getCSC keyscanner caused some odd behavior.

The collision detector and physics engine "phys4.asm" was done by me with advice from CoBB (TI Acelgoyobis) on how to do sub-pixel movement.

New item: De-scrambler
In-game description: "Simplifies Puzzles"

Unlike most other combat items, the de-scrambler works in conjunction with the decoder puzzles.



In the video, Edgar encounters a difficult puzzle with solution: "SINE COSINE TANGENT," which is solved with 6 letter swaps. After that, he picks up the descrambler item and tries the same puzzle. But this time, it was solved in only 1 swap. So what the heck happened?!!?...

Basically, the puzzle difficulty depends on where the words line up on-screen. So for example:


Code:


Would be much more difficult than...


Code:


...because the puzzle generator only randomizes letters that line up vertically with other letters.

The descrambler helps out by shifting the top row left and the bottom row right, so that fewer letters are randomized. So as another example:

Code:

Reduces to...

Code:



Overall, the difficult puzzles are only intended to guard hidden treasures and other goodies. Beating the game will only involve puzzles that are relatively easy to recognize or brute-force. The descrambler is good tool for reaching that hidden loot in a short amount of time!

你也会说中文啊？ 你怎么学的？嗯，好久不见！

I've still got the modified source for the 83+ version of Robot War 1, i think everything in the first map works (including saving), once you finish the tournament and move onto the next area i think there are a couple issues, though. It's been a while since i touched the source. I must say that i wish my code were as clean as yours, it was super easy to jump right in

Here's a copy of the latest .8xp (from late 2012):
http://www.mirari.fr/oKGW

For Mandarin, I've been mostly using Meetup groups, plus a few print books. I've been meaning to see if anyone has already done a TI pinyin font to include all the accented vowels.

Yeah, luckily with both Robot Wars, there's some thorough commenting and other notes. The battle.asm portions were the most troublesome so it's good to hear that part is doing okay.

Overall I think RW2 will shoot for about the same length of gameplay: in the range of 6-8 hours.

While I'm coding some non-exciting stuff this weekend (event triggers) here some story info:



The game is set several years after the events of the Robot War. With the world still in reconstruction, battle bot technology has become forbidden, and bionic implants are nearly commonplace. Every now and then, battle bot sighting are still being reported.

A mystery begins to unfold when Atlas Bionics patients on Pearl Island begin to wind up missing or insane. The story will involve Beth--your former girlfriend, and Reed--a bitter rival ever since Edgar microwaved some fish in his lab. Dr. Noah and Gilbert will play a bigger role in the story line as well.

Cool, i'm living in China now, so...

Btw, i've still got to finish playing through the whole game but i think it's mostly ported over. I fixed a couple bugs today and made some more small optimizations to try to cut down the size a bit. I've almost got it under 24k. But if you have a bunch of programs on your calc filling up the VAT, you might not have room for the save file. There might be a couple small things here and there but since all (?) the 82-specific stuff has been changed, i think it should mostly be smooth sailing from here.



EDIT: Just beat the game on my SE, so it looks like the game is more or less finished:
-.8xp
-Source+.8xp.

Btw, to get around the C000 limit i used Crabcake, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to work with the 83+. I'd appreciate any help getting it to work on the 83+, too, as well as in cutting down the size of the program (perhaps moving the tilemaps and strings into an archived variable?).

Whooooa! That was fast! Archiving the levels and text is definitely a good idea if feasible. (I didn't have much luck trying to compress the text)

China! That explains it! I had gone to Zhejiang a while ago for a couple weeks and thought it would be a good idea to keep practicing the language (currently studying for the HSK4). Are you currently working there?

Incidentally, the rules for RW2's power attacks are now based on the wu xing (五行). The latest build has fire, water, metal, wind/wood, and earth. (With blast, spark, and laser elements being used by one of the bosses)


Fire attacks on targets:

Fire: Launches a fireball on a low ballistic arc. The attack becomes stationary once grounded and can bounce off permanent fixtures--making it a great all-around attack. No effect on water and earth types. Cannot be used while swimming.

Water attacks on targets:

Water - Creates slow-moving bubbles that rise upward before bursting at peak height. Best against close-range enemies and objects that become airborne. No effect on earth or wind/wood types. Can be blown off-course by high winds.

Man those special effects are cool. I love watching the bubbles float away.

Wow. Just when you think this game can't get any cooler, you prove us wrong. :p Awesome work!

The bubbles are great! Will the fire hurt you if you step on it?

I switched over to thepenguin's Fullrene routine, but there's also a problem with the 83+. To get around it, on the 83+ it'll leave >$C000 execution open even after exiting the program. I'll look through zStart's source to see if i can find how they did it there. Moving stuff over to the archive shouldn't be too difficult, especially since the map data gets decompressed into saferam anyway. It might be worthwhile to load the savegame from archive, too. Once that's taken care of it's probably ready for Ticalc

And yeah, i'm working here. I'm probably between HSK4 and HSk5, but haven't bothered taking any exams. I'm currently pounding away at Pleco's HSK6 vocab list (or rather, it's pounding away at me).

Chickendude I can help you with that. Get your self a flash unlock exploit of your choice. Then after flash is unlocked

Code:
For a ti83+Se and better
For an 83+ you need to do something different which is here
http://wikiti.brandonw.net/index.php?title=83Plus:Ports:05

How big is the map data? It might be very easy to move this to a flash app with that knowledge? It depends on if the code will fit on 1 page with the data on a second.

It looks like the code can fit in a single page (it's around 14600). Actually, since an app won't need the Fullrene code we can knock another hundred or so bytes off that.

WE might still need some fullrene code it depends on how we handle some things. But thats good to see. Means we can attempt to convert to an app with minimal headache. The only thing that will be a pain is finding the SMC code and either removing it. Or copying those stubs to ram. But brass makes that pretty easy todo thankfully!

Nope! The fires are harmless to the original shooter. There are a few enemies and exploding objects like barrels and mines that will pose a threat though!

Hopefully the Self-Modifying Code isn't too troublesome. RW2 avoided this a bit by copying some codes to a temporary Appvar in RAM. (Other SMCs had to be removed at the cost of some speed)


The bubbles are a personal favorite projectile (based a bit on DWedit's Bubble Bobble sprites.


Metal attacks on targets:

Metal - High-speed shuriken fly out to embed themselves in any solid surface. The shuriken remain harmful to enemies even when embedded, making them useful for setting traps if you're chased by a fast opponent. Weak against fire and water types.

Wind attacks on targets:

Wind - Gusts of wind rush out in a spiral pattern, and then return back toward Edgar's position. This attack is somewhat steerable, but not very easy to predict. Weak against metal and fire types. Are those feathers or leaves? Who knows!

Haha should not be to hard honestly. They joy of assembly is there is many many ways todo it Its just putting the time aside todo so!

also.

Droooooollllll
Looking awesomeeee

Cool! Happy porting!


Two new items were added to the Garden Shop: Spare Potato, and Healing Herb. The Garden sells items that boost your longevity and help you maintain high stats while in enemy territory for extended durations.



New Item: Spare Potato
In-game description: Hunger Rate -50%
A potato has been added!

To review; each time you level up, your character gets hungry and looses 1 food item bonus. This causes your stats to gradually fall back to their base values until you eat again. The potato will cut that rate in half, causing hunger to only strike every 2 level-ups. The end result is you can fight quite bit a longer without the annoying loss of strength/speed caused by hunger.

Spare Potatoes work as long as you have at least 1 equipped--making it more like equipment than the other foods.

Carrying an Enzyme with a Spare Potato will cut your hunger rate even further to once every 3 level-ups.

Hah! I love the idea of carrying extra potatoes with you! I'm a big fan of quick potato snacks in the microwave!