Notices by Colin McMillen (colin_mcmillen@piaille.fr)

@peertube Hi! I see captionPath is deprecated from the VideoCaption API object, replaced by fileUrl.
I cannot find since when does fileUrl exist? Thanks!

Look at these pants my partner made me 🤩 These are #RETROCOMPUTING selvedge jeans!! With floppies on the pockets!

This new release of #Mastodon for #AppleII mostly brings you the ability to view pictures and send pictures in DHGR - Double High Graphics Resolution! 560x192 in monochrome, or 140x192 in 16 colors.
You can find it via https://www.colino.net/wordpress/en/mastodon-for-apple-ii/

Attached are two examples, courtesy of @GLaG_38 and @8ctobre

@benjamin Y'a pas ultra-besoin d'une appli, le site est pratique sur mobile je trouve ?
@jeanbaptistemarie

#appleII people, would anyone be able to dump the ROM of their MouseCard? We're having doubts about the existing one in MAME. (https://github.com/mamedev/mame/issues/13598)

#RetroComputing

"I'm just debugging, officer"

#RetroComputing

Previously, but I forgot to post, I have, as you've seen from the previous video, implemented a interstitial screen between levels, showing your score and the next level.
It required completing my font, and a little bit of code: https://github.com/colinleroy/a2tools/commit/4f227989ad474025d5a041ca61556b6cd665354d

By the way, @circfruit, the game is now keyboard-controllable.
Not only that, but it can also run without a MouseCard installed!

I have prepared, very laboriously, a start screen. (Yes I did place every letter one by one haha). I'll install it in the game later because my eyes are tired.

#RetroComputing #Apple2 #PixelArt

The start screen, integrated. Also just committed a reorganisation/cleanup of the code, splitting it into more functions rather than the previous enormous loop. This allows me to get nice call graphs with KCachegrind, in which I confirm that my whole screen drawing is just under 4000 cycles on average.
It makes it faster than it takes the ray to reach the top-left of the screen during vertical blanking (4550 cycles) and leads to no tearing or flickering!

#RetroComputing #Apple2 #MARCHintosh

New side quest unlocked, extending cc65 in a satisfying way to include the original 48kB Apple ][

I've added a "you win" message at the end of the game, a a going back to the start screen, instead of just quitting.

We know the game is won when loading the next level from floppy fails, so I wanted the victory message to acknowledge that, a bit tongue-in-cheek.

Commit: https://github.com/colinleroy/a2tools/commit/acf87dadbc0582866ccd30734d550292eb12242d

#RetroComputing #Apple2

Added the start of a high score table. There are four steps in a high score table:
- load it
- figure if player has a spot in it
- ask them their name
- save it.

I've started with step three because I felt like it and also because it's easier to do steps 3 and 4 so I have data for step 1 and 2.

Commit: https://github.com/colinleroy/a2tools/commit/9f0897c276dcae0c7a3c4d0142261a110288a2dd

#RetroComputing #Apple2 #MARCHintosh

It even helps with loading times! The floppy is slower to read 11-13 more blocks than the decompressor takes!
Double win.

(sorry for the flicker in the video)

#RetroComputing #Apple2 #MARCHintosh

The only annoyance is that it requires 4kB of memory to store the compressed data before decompressing it in one go.
I should look into making it work with a 1kB buffer and decompressing in multiple reads. That's probably not obvious.

So, with the possibility to ship 30 levels, tonight's work is cut out for me : I'll replace the "go to next level when the plane X reaches the right of the screen" with configurable level exits, as in the original game

I implemented dynamic exits (commit: https://github.com/colinleroy/a2tools/commit/ff28f3b1ce923d93dd93836dd933a74f54e4a545) so I added exits on the left of levels too, allowing to revisit levels (commit: https://github.com/colinleroy/a2tools/commit/f8be708eb1426c1d21b94530b17d5b42a6c0c1db).
Time bonus is only counted once otherwise it's too easy!
Level state resets when we come back to one, but that's fine by me.
(Edit: and this demo showed me a wrong hitbox on level 3's table hitbox, so commit: https://github.com/colinleroy/a2tools/commit/291e624951a68c296018c6e6b6f755b91d300bde)

#RetroComputing #Apple2 #GameDev #MARCHintosh

Working on levels. I'll have you know that I steal most of my level elements from Shutterstock, scale them down, and use them to draw my things. Here, have a hot bath!

#RetroComputing #Apple2 #GameDev

Let's start the weekend with a little animation on crash. It's a mix of hacky and clean and I like how I did it, so there's that!

Commit: https://github.com/colinleroy/a2tools/commit/c51ff3f98a23c2734fd25dd1dad229d178508fa9

#RetroComputing #Apple2

I've started working on a "house map" because it's getting confusing to remember which level is which when I define them in the assembler sources.

Maybe I'll get super-wild and make a house map generator?

#RetroComputing #Apple2 #gameDev