A85: Re: Programming help


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A85: Re: Programming help





-----Original Message-----
From: Justin M Bosch <justin-b@juno.com>
To: assembly-85@lists.ticalc.org <assembly-85@lists.ticalc.org>
Date: Thursday, November 05, 1998 7:59 PM
Subject: A85: Programming help


>
>I am currently working on a game for Usgard and everything is coming
>along fine, except for a few things:
>
>1) I am going to be using 8 x 9 or 8 x 8 sprites, in the frist case, the
>nine is the height.  After many attempts, I have concluded that I have no
>abilities in this area of game design whatsoever, so I would appreciate
>any character designs.  Anything is OK, as long as it is recognizable as
>a character and not an item such as a bomb or something.  I will give
>whoever helps me full credit in the program and also in the
>documentation.


You might need to be a little more specific about what sprites you want
people to draw for you.  ;-)

>
>2) I got the link port routines, but I don't understand them at all,
>especially not the break routine.  What exactly goes into a break
>routine?  To send and receive data, do both clacs have to be running the
>routines simultaneously?  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.


A break routine stops the link routines if they are not working.  It can
either "count" so they will time-out, or it can wait until the user presses
a key like enter or exit to stop, or both.  If you don't have a break
routine and there is an error (which will always, always happen) then the
calc will wait forever, essentially locked up.

I would suggest using the link routines from ZTetris, which are essentially
Pascal Bouron's link routines with a break routine added, along with a few
minor modifications for ZTetris.  I converted the one's for the 86 into
simple SendByte and ReceiveByte routines, let me know and I'll email them to
you, they should work fine on the 85.

You also might check out the source for SCaBBy's Vertigo link routines, he
may have used the ROM routines (that's what he used on the 86), but I didn't
look at the 85 code.

>
>3) I also plan to have a "vs computer" mode and have only some basic
>ideas about setting up artificial intelligence.  I suppose I could make
>the computer do the perfect sequences every time, but of course that
>would be no fun.  Would I use a random routine to decide the computer's
>moves in addition to some logic?


AI is very different, depending on what kind of game you are trying to make.
For example, the enemies in Galaxian use a "state machine" to control them.
With this method, each one has a different state they are in (i.e. attack,
run, flank, etc.).  The AI routine runs through the list, determines the
state, and acts accordingly for the different sates.  You can also have
enemies move and fire randomly.  It all depends on what you are doing.
PacMan is also a good game to look at for AI help, as the ghosts seem to be
pretty good.

>
>Thank you very much to all who can help.
>
>Justin Bosch
>justin-b@juno.com
>
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