The FlashApp Port

[Madskillz]

Alright Digi sounds great...get ready for that brutally cold winter that will surely come!

[elfprince13]

nice to see progress on the 83/84+ version of this :)

i'm quite happy to have the 84+ so I can have Zelda and this at the same time!!!

[DigiTan]

Yep, definitely. This app is going to take up only 3 flash pages (not including postcards), so there's plenty of room for both and then some. Next week I move into a newer apartment with a cable connection. So the dial-up from this summer and this week's touch-and-go wireless will be in the past.

[DigiTan]

Well...cable's hooked up. Lights are on. Everything's survived the move so far. Most of the work being done in the past week or so has been in the new Jet Fortress stage. This week (starting tomorrow) I want to take another cracks at the grayscale titlescreen. Tr1plea donated a GS library that will solve the flicker problem.

All I have to do now is get InsertMem working to set it up as a temporary RAM buffer. But hopfully, I'll be handing out another grayscale test 8xk with a flicker-free title on it before Friday.

[DigiTan]

Here's another executable hot off the press. It display three test strings and then the improved titlescreen for about 3 seconds.

The app leaves an appvar called []PsychoRW that can be deleted at any time. And if there's less than 2kB, the program will just jump back into TI-OS without showing the title or creating the AppVar. My debugging says everything's stable, but as usual I recommend backing up everything.

Also, for those who tested the last version, let me know how the grayscale compares to October's build.

[Bronco]

I think it looks really good.

[DigiTan]

Okay. It looks like I have enough working now to start merging all this with the TI-82 source files.

The next part is getting the File Select screen up and ready. So naturally, that will involve creating and modifying outside files. (Deleting will be left to TI-OS). Unlike the 82 version where games are named G1, G2, and G3, I want to have these filenames customizable. I also need to find out whether saved games are best suited as progs or appvars. My guess would be progs so you can manage them in MirageOS.

Also, I'll be porting the sprite drawer this week.

[TheStorm]

Actually I'd say appvars would be better. That way they don't clog up the program menu for people like me who use Calcutil, and I doubt people who use MOS want one more program in the the list of games on their calc.

[Bronco]

Plus, you can't (easily) jack with AppVars.

[DigiTan]

Hmmm...good points. AppVars it is then.

[elfprince13]

saving things from an app, is, by definition, what AppVars are for.

just make sure that your loading menu allows the ability to delete the vars, and make sure also that the save files will automatically be archived-unarchived if they archived to start with.

[DigiTan]

Well, I guess an in-game delete function wouldn't hurt too much with all the extra memory space. I'm still flying by the seat of my pants here though, do I need this DelVar thing to do that?

[calc84maniac]

[DigiTan]

Okay, I'm gonna use those then. I'll maybe just say in the readme that it's recommended to leave savegames unarchived to prevent Flash aging.

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*Whew!* Well it got ugly for a while, but I merged the 83+ work done so far into the 82 source with help from Spencer. In the process, the main source file had to be completely restructured. The good news is it can switch between generating TI-82 progs and TI-83+ apps with just one assembler flag change.

I'm in the process of adding the window-drawing and sprite-drawing routines. I could use a definitive list of the common safe RAM areas and their sizes. So far, I've taken

PlotSScreen - 768 bytes
AppBackUpScreen - 768 bytes
TextShadow - 128 bytes
SavesScreen - ??? (is this seperate from AppBackUpscreen?)
??? - 128 bytes

[bananaman]

Savesscreen is indeed separate from AppBackUpScreen.

Savescreen is also 768 bytes, but you need to disable APD before you use savesscreen or you will risk destroying all your data if the calc is left inactive.

[DigiTan]

Okay, how do I disable that? Savescreen will shave 25% off my current AppVar size if it works.

Also what other text safe ram is there besides TextShadow?

[luby]

TempSwapArea is 232 bytes (pretty sure)

You won't have to worry about APD unless you have a user input (like Input()) spot where nothing is happening. But, a res apdAble, (IY +apdFlags) will turn it off.

[TheStorm]

Just make sure to turn it back on when your done.

[DigiTan]

Is there an easy way to create random numbers besides the r register? With CrASH, it was as easy as "call RAND."

[TheStorm]

well you could always throw in the ion random number routine It isn't too big though it does require a one byte random seed.