The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 323, July 29, 2023
The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 323, July 29, 2023
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle
- August 12 we have Matt Harper on (developer of Wizard’s Den sold by Tom
Mix Software). - The interview with Doug Masten (author of The Contras) with co-interviewee
Glen Dahlgren of Sundogs Systems that was originally going to happen
on August 19 is being postponed, due to a fairly major surgery. We are
shooting for around October/November depending on doctor’s orders. - September 9 we have Mark P. & Charlie from Portacoco.com. If you were
at the Fest, you would have seen them at their booth showing Coco’s (and
monitors) running wirelessly together and off batteries that do NOT require
modifications to a Coco case to attach.
Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
1) TRS-80 Retro Programming did a longer video (almost 3/4 hour) on the
law of Sines:
https://youtu.be/vl1GZn5WUlg
He also did a Tales of Suburbia update, filling out the kitchen room
(and mentioned in the title that he is almost done):
https://youtu.be/sqvrlqh1qPQ
2) Simon Jonassen put up a quick video (using XRoar, but it works on
real hardware) showing some mode change and timing tricks to get smooth
scrolling text on a regular ‘ol VDG chip:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160798037397641/
3) Ron Klein posted an update on the Coco Pi, and the fact that 32 bit
MAME may need to be dropped:
https://coco-pi.com/coco-pi-project-update-2023-07-24/
4) Brendan Donahe posted some photos from last weekend’s Classic Game Fest
in Austin Texas, where he had a both for the CocoVGA (both MC-10 and Coco
versions) amongst other things:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160801685607641/
5) Coco Town released a video on recursion, how it works with the stack,
and includes assembly sourcecode. It also shows some practical examples
at the beginning that use recursion to do something complex with very
small program code. It is one of the best visualization presentations for
recursion that I have seen.
Video:
https://youtu.be/756L40drupY
Source:
https://cocotownretro.wordpress.com/2023/07/25/recursion-to-the-lowest-level/
6) Paul Thayer released a longer video blog (1/2 an hour) about his game
development for Schmup You Up, going into the assembly language programming
behind mixing voices, how FIRQ sound routines work, and some of the issues
he has hit with things like sampling rates and volume:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160803524087641/
MC-10
1) Jim Gerrie has written a new version of the “10PRINT2” 1 line maze
drawing program… this time using the SG6 (which increases the resolution
from 64×32 to 64×48):
https://youtu.be/xQ16Av00HkI
He also did a Barbie silhouette to take advantage of the Barbie movie craze:
https://youtu.be/t_pX9X1GslA
Dragon 32/64
1) Julian Brown, fresh off of starting to sell his Dragon 32 replacement
motherboards (version 2.1), has started thinking of his version 3.0 (which
has enhancements). He is asking some technical questions on one thing he
wants to add – a programmable character set. For those who know about it
to answer, it’s in the Dragon group on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3508182956108015/
He also has some prototypes of the keyboard electronics replacement board
(similar to Rick Ulland’s KeyFix for the Coco’s):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3510176232575354/
Although, he did discover why spacers are needed to lift the keyboard:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3511046172488360/
2) Richard Harding announced that this year’s Dragon MeetUp will be October
7-8 at The Centre for Computing History in Cambridge. As Richard mentions,
all 68xx computers are welcome, so that adds things like the MC-10, the
Alice, all the Coco’s, Vectrex, etc.:
https://www.facebook.com/events/225011523831254/?ref=newsfeed
3) John Whitworth of Dragonplus Electronics posted an update to his SuperRGB
package – the final versions of the 2-4 boards each owner will need are
ordered. Mockup pictures in his post in the Dragon group on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3508362562756721/
Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
1) Jim Gerrie posted video of Tandy’s original Pong for the MC-10 (released
on cassette from Tandy in 1983), but with some enhancements for speed,
and also using a special keyboard ML routine by Greg Dionne to allow both
players to move their paddles at the same time:
https://youtu.be/2BnD-KemDoY
He also updated Breakout from the Tandy Micro Games cassete as well,
adding speedups, high score & performance ratings. Also now works with
the Joypad controller, and still in 4K:
https://youtu.be/cyJgMK18TJg
2) Jim Mullis posted a new update video to his Super Powers (based on
DC Comics characters) game using BASIC along with GrafExpress (from
Sundog). Full notes of changes in the YouTube description:
https://youtu.be/UbnXX3j4j3M
3) Nick Marentes found an interesting just released video covering the
Home Computer invasion in the early 1980’s – in the UK. It covers the full
range from the ZX80/81, the BBC Micro, Vic-20, Dragon 32/64, and more:
https://youtu.be/pdUciv2KMWg
4) Christopher Lee announced in the Dragon group on Facebook that he will
shortly be announcing a kickstarter for a new text adventure game based on
the Infocom engine, and is gauging interest for the Dragon (and I assume
Coco as well). He has a brief description of the plot included as well,
and mentions that there will be multiple ways to purchase it from digital
download to boxed collector’s editions. The game is called “The Forgotten
Pyramid”:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/628229514520648/posts/1200662100610717/
5) Spanish YouTube channel “XperTek” does a review of some games on his
Coco 2 (unfortunately he only has an amber composite monitor) (turn close
captioning on, with settings-> auto-translate to english):
Downland (Tandy):
https://youtu.be/c6QXFOtVdfc
Morocco GP (Computerware):
https://youtu.be/-01ZI_Mb3DM
Cuber (Tom Mix):
https://youtu.be/3ldHaFNiAic
6) Hikikomori Style on YouTube did a video showing Dragon 32 game cassettes
that are paired up by being related (same genre, clone of the same original
arcade game, etc.):
https://youtu.be/fML9kyjqMCU
7) I think I completely missed this game when it was released for the
Dragon and Coco. It is available on multiple platforms, and the Spectrum
version was converted to the Coco and Dragon by Pere Serrat, who also
did the port of Asteroids RX that was featured on the Game On Challenge
the past two weeks. The premise is cool, because each screen is based on
arcade style games from back in the 1980’s. It’s a free download on itch.io,
and requires 64K:
https://sloanysoft.itch.io/janky-joe-dragon-coco
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Get connected with more of the CoCo, Dragon and MC-10 community here:
https://thecoconation.com/community/
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