June 2000 news

Lightning, Windows and more evil 8.June.2000

On tuesday 30th my modem and network card died. At first I thought it was a driver problem, and since I couldn't fix it I decided it was time for another C:\>DELTREE WINDOWS...

After many hours I got the system working again, but still no network or internet. After many more hours I found out both cards are just broken (lightning), but now I've got a new modem, so I'm back on the web. So that explains why there were no updates to my site and why I haven't got any time to update Worm. I doubt that's gonna change real much, cause there's this thing called school... :(

May 2000 9.June.2000

Another month gone by. A lot of problems last month: my host games3.net was - and still is - down, and problems with my computer and school; Worm's still not done. Besides that, this page now looks better (red) and can be reached at www.shiar.org. Less visitors because my page was down and most links to my page are broken.

Worm Editor 11.June.2000

Since everybody's bugging me I should write a level editor for Worm, cuz the file format is too hard for their puny minds to comprehend, I wrote one. It's not quite done yet, but the basic's are there. Rightnow it's a plain DOS text-based editor, but who knows what it might turn into.

Worm 92% 13.June.2000

The level editor is pretty much done (some minor things still to come like sprite editing and ctf levels.) BTW It's just 15kb :P

Worm's 92% done now: I made a new game mode called Tron in which the worms do not shrink - so survive as long as possible (both singleplayer and multiplayer). Also fixed the bug freezing the calc when several keys were pressed at the same time (when playing 3+-players-on-one-calc.)

100 Reviews 16.June.2000

I've made over 100 reviews now (103 to be exact), including 6 ti-83 games (so far...) Of course I'll keep making more when I got the time (and I don't feel like programming.)

Derek Preview 21.June.2000

another Derek screenshot Derek screenshot Good news everybody! Scabby (Matthew Shepcar) is working on a new TI-86 game called Derek. It's a platform game, but really much cooler than it looks. He just begun writing it, and it's already got a suicidal goat (or mooing cow in the old version), bungee rope, snail, rotating platforms, a bird dropping (...) on you, tramampoline, coins with neat pixel effect when you pick them up, and when you die your head blows off. All in just one (even not entirely filled) screen; just imagine what this game will turn into...

CalcWire-stuff 24.June.2000

CalcWire's doing some great stuff. They've taken over the Top-25 TI sites; hope it'll be more successful than previously. Btw please vote for me ;) Also my CalcExchange button is now fully operational. I'd advise everybody with a TIcalc website to join, it's really cool.

Nemesis resumed 26.June.2000

With Worm driving me crazy (linkplay and stuff) I decided to take a break and continue on Nemesis. Since it was my very first asm game, I had a lot to optimize and improve. This is what I've done so far: (hope you're impressed)

  • Sprites are clipped. If you don't know what it is, wait for a screenshot (soon).
  • Different enemies in one level.
  • Multiple lasers.
  • Weapons charge when you're not firing. So if you're firing at a slow rate, your bullets/beams will be more powerful: being larger and inflicting more damage.
  • Trillions of bugfixes, improvements, optimizations, etc.
Sprite routine 27.June.2000

For anyone interested, here's Nemesis' new clipped sprite routine (ASCR) I wrote. It features:

  • Variable-sized sprites 1x1 to 8x255
  • Non-aligned
  • Horizontally clipped
  • 72 bytes (104 including findpixel)
  • Compared to the generally used Sqrxz-routine it's faster and 91 bytes smaller!