New Demo: Lsl

Include new and ported/converted games, and old games/tools. Subjects about CP/M software goes in the CP/M Forum.
under4mhz
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Re: New Demo: Lsl

Post by under4mhz »

I have tried porting code from various other platforms to MTX, including TI-84 and HP calculators as well as from DOS, even Palm Pilot. It's just not possible. These devices have so much more cpu power and memory, and have a completely different paradigm for graphics (bitmap vs tiles), all my ports ended up being a failure. It's amazing how sloppy my coding gets with 500Kb of memory and 15Mhz to play with. The code has to be all very tight to get the speed high enough for the MTX. I spend most of my time trying to get my code to work with the system limitations, than I do on actually writing code.

Even porting from similar systems such as SG-1000, MSX and Colecovision is challenging, since their memory maps, input interfaces, and interrupt methodologies are so different.

The menu system was a compromise between trying to have a limited set of commands that made sense in every situation. "Using" a door isn't proper English, but it's close enough to make sense. If you look at the Mac Plus version, it has quite a long list of commands in it's menu, but I didn't want to do that. It was also simpler to implement (all that syntax parsing), it also allows it to be run on console systems like Coleco, SG and SMS.

The other problem is that another programmer is working on LSL for ColecoVision, and it's a bit taboo to work on the same game as someone else in our little circle, which is why I was considering SQ. I wasn't really interested in ColecoVision when I started this so I wasn't worried about it, but now it's one of my supported systems. Definitely I'll need to implement save games.

The problem LSL is it's such a big game to implement, but so short to play. It doesn't give the return on investment. Something like Klondike or Pitman, it's a pretty simple engine and give hours of play. LSL is a complicated engine, and really only gives the same amount of play time, since the replay value is so low. Once the engine for LSL is done, maybe other games will be quicker, but I suspect that all the Sierra games were so unique, each game will have a lot to implement.
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