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Further PC Development Tools?
http://www.retrosoftware.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=60		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  DaveM [ Sat Mar 29, 2008 4:41 am ]
Post subject:  Further PC Development Tools?
Ok, so we already have the following released:
- an IDE (Swift)
- an Assembler (BeebASM)
- the "BBC Micro Image Converter"

And work is well underway on:
- a Sprite Editor (FrancisL)
- a Sound Sample converter (FrancisL)
- a Music Player (RichTW)
- a Music Converter (TomW)

But can anyone suggest any other types of tools that would benefit our community?

We have new Team Members with PC programming skills who are willing to volunteer their services *if* we can find something to occupy them with! ;)

Seeing as there are so many text adventures in production - how about a modern, PC-based equivalent of The Quill or The Adventure Creator/Graphic Adventure Creator?

And what about a tool that could capture/rip sprites, animations, backgrounds and other graphics directly from tape/disk/rom images for other platforms (Commodore, Amstrad, Sinclair, Sega, Nintendo etc) and convert/present them for immediate Acorn use? Or do Steve/Francis already have this sort of functionality in mind for SWIFT/BBC Sprite Editor?
Author:  SteveO [ Sat Mar 29, 2008 8:33 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Further PC Development Tools?
DaveM wrote:
Seeing as there are so many text adventures in production - how about a modern, PC-based equivalent of The Quill or The Adventure Creator/Graphic Adventure Creator?


Isn't there something out there already, on the STH forums it's been mentioned, but is there an engine on the BBC to play the adventures created with this software (whose name escapes me). If not then either the engine needs writing or as you say and adventure creater.

DaveM wrote:
And what about a tool that could capture/rip sprites, animations, backgrounds and other graphics directly from tape/disk/rom images for other platforms (Commodore, Amstrad, Sinclair, Sega, Nintendo etc) and convert/present them for immediate Acorn use? Or do Steve/Francis already have this sort of functionality in mind for SWIFT/BBC Sprite Editor?


There is a gap here. Francis' image converter doesn't work well for sprites, works great for photo's or large screenshots, but not so good for small sprites. But I think Francis could probably easily add in a filter type that works well with small graphics. Ripping from other games, don't think that's needed. These days with emulators it's just as easy to screenshot what you need and get them that way.

I think perhaps some sort of Music composer ? Is that really hard ? Where you can enter a score (or use an on screen piano keyboard, drums etc.) to write our own tunes or add in copyright free ones. And it's play in the Beeb sounds obviously. Saving it's data in a format that can be used in a Beeb Music tracker. It's something I was planning for SWIFT but it'll be EONS away before I write a line of code for it.
Author:  Samwise [ Sat Mar 29, 2008 5:17 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Further PC Development Tools?
SteveO wrote:
DaveM wrote:
Seeing as there are so many text adventures in production - how about a modern, PC-based equivalent of The Quill or The Adventure Creator/Graphic Adventure Creator?

Isn't there something out there already, on the STH forums it's been mentioned, but is there an engine on the BBC to play the adventures created with this software (whose name escapes me). If not then either the engine needs writing or as you say and adventure creater.

Z-Machine interpreter!!!

Legendary text adventure developer Infocom developed their games to use a virtual machine called a Z-Machine. If a Z-Machine interpreter was developed for the beeb, it would instantly allow you to run a ton of games, both commercial and freeware - including classics like Douglas Adam's The Hitch-hiker's Guide To The Galaxy and the winners of modern interactive fiction competitions.

The format was reverse-engineered in the late 80s / 90s and the development language Inform was produced. There are plenty of PC tools to allow you to develop and compile Inform games into a Z-Machine, including IDEs and lots of documentation, which can then be played on any machine with a Z-Machine interpreter - including phones, PDAs etc.

I would *love* to see this appear, but I don't think I have the assembler skills to make it happen.

Although, spoiler here, with all the excitement going on here - I am considering picking up the latest version of Inform and creating an adventure - without a Z-Machine interpreter for the machine, tho, it wouldn't be usable on the beeb. Though there are interpreters available for Risc OS ...

Sam.
Author:  JonW [ Sat Mar 29, 2008 6:28 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Further PC Development Tools?
Now, this is something I could get my teeth into.

Looking through my old collection of discs, I have one labelled Zork with lots of Basic and machine code programs called Decode, Dec2, Dec3, etc.

I haven't yet tried to work out again what they all do but I don't think I got as far as an interpreter for the game data files.

I also remember finding the source code for a z-machine interpreter years ago but it was huge and full of decompression routines etc which I didn't have time at the time to start reverse engineering into BBC Basic or 6502 code.

Perhaps I could make a start now ?

I'll try and dig out the current source code for the z-machine stuff and see what is involved in getting it working on a Beeb.

Jon.
Author:  PaulD [ Sat Mar 29, 2008 6:30 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Further PC Development Tools?
DaveM wrote:
Seeing as there are so many text adventures in production - how about a modern, PC-based equivalent of The Quill or The Adventure Creator/Graphic Adventure Creator?


A secret is in the making... ;) Watch this space in 8 months time... :twisted: Santa is going to bring something special in his sack this year.... :shock:
Author:  Samwise [ Sat Mar 29, 2008 6:52 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Further PC Development Tools?
JonW wrote:
Now, this is something I could get my teeth into.


Jon,

That would be frickin' awesome!!!!

I have virtually all the original Infocom games, and plenty of the free ones from the IF-archive, along with a good dose of willingness to beta-test. :)

There's plenty of documentation online and, if it helps, I'd be happy to go trawling for anything that seems relevant. For a start, I can tell you that most of the original Infocom games were released as Version 3 Z-Machines but the Inform compiler typically generates in Version 5 (for these smaller, older machines - later Z-Machine versions are intended to include more complex gfx/sound etc).

JonW wrote:
I also remember finding the source code for a z-machine interpreter years ago but it was huge and full of decompression routines etc which I didn't have time at the time to start reverse engineering into BBC Basic or 6502 code.


There are plenty of modern Z-machine interpreter implementations as well. For example, as I know you're an experienced Mac guy, Zoom is a native Mac OS X (there's also a version for Unix, which I use) application with source code. Perhaps that would help you?

JonW wrote:
Perhaps I could make a start now ?

I'll try and dig out the current source code for the z-machine stuff and see what is involved in getting it working on a Beeb.

Jon.


Wicked-cool! 8-)

Rather than take over this thread, would you like me to create you a forum somewhere else on the site? Or perhaps just start a new thread/chat by email?

Sam.
Author:  JonW [ Sat Mar 29, 2008 6:56 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Further PC Development Tools?
Samwise wrote:
Rather than take over this thread, would you like me to create you a forum somewhere else on the site? Or perhaps just start a new thread/chat by email?


A new forum would be nice.

I have just dug out a copy of Frotz which I had tucked away on a disc, compiled it on my Mac and I am currently standing in an open field west of a white house with a small mailbox here.

Only problem is the code compiles to 99K so I might struggle to get it to fit into a Beeb but I am willing to give it a go !

Jon.
Author:  Samwise [ Sat Mar 29, 2008 7:11 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Further PC Development Tools?
JonW wrote:
A new forum would be nice.


Your wish is my command! :)

JonW wrote:
I have just dug out a copy of Frotz which I had tucked away on a disc, compiled it on my Mac and I am currently standing in an open field west of a white house with a small mailbox here.


That sounds familiar!

JonW wrote:
Only problem is the code compiles to 99K so I might struggle to get it to fit into a Beeb but I am willing to give it a go !


Well, Frotz is obviously designed for a bigger machine - PC. But interpreters have been run for C64 and Zork I even ran on a TRS-80, which didn't ship with more than 16K ... !

I suggest we give this thread back to Dave and take further discussion to the new home for it here. :)

Sam.
Author:  FrancisL [ Mon Mar 31, 2008 9:15 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Further PC Development Tools?
SteveO wrote:
There is a gap here. Francis' image converter doesn't work well for sprites, works great for photo's or large screenshots, but not so good for small sprites. But I think Francis could probably easily add in a filter type that works well with small graphics. Ripping from other games, don't think that's needed. These days with emulators it's just as easy to screenshot what you need and get them that way.

I did do a quick hack of my BBC Image Converter for Dave that allowed conversion of small sprites. In time BBC Image Converter will support smaller custom image sizes properly.

For sprites specifically the Sprite Editor will be better plus there is planned support for importing external sprite formats (basically whatever format details I can get my hands on).

Kind regards,

Francis.
Author:  FrancisL [ Mon Mar 31, 2008 12:46 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Further PC Development Tools?
DaveM wrote:
But can anyone suggest any other types of tools that would benefit our community?

A music composition tool (something like the MUROM editor) would be cool. I thought about doing one myself, but I think I have got enough on my plate at the moment for all my current BBC-related projects and other projects on the go.

I'm also working on a custom graphics format for the BBC designed to store details of mode, palette, image sizes (for custom screen sizes) and allow compression of the graphics image, but this is a very low priority project so I haven't really done much with it. It was intended to eventually be a part of the BBC Micro Image Converter.

Another utility, which I was planning on doing as an expansion to the sprite designer was a map designer, i.e. taking a pile of sprites and designing game maps around them. I haven't done anything with this yet.

Kind regards,

Francis.
Author:  carlsson [ Wed Apr 09, 2008 8:15 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Further PC Development Tools?
DaveM wrote:
- a Music Player (RichTW)
- a Music Converter (TomW)

Would these work in unison, so the converter outputs a music format the player can read? From my work on other formats, I have a somewhat portable (I think!) music player and data format that possibly could be interesting to have a look at as well. I've thought for a couple of years to port it to e.g. the BBC Micro or Oric, but a combination of inexperience, lazyness and Other Things To Do (tm) has prevented me. Also, I'm not so keen on sound chips addressed through I/O ports, but I suppose that is something one has to learn to live with, as opposed to those who have memory mapped registers.

Anyway, if someone is interested in more VIC-20 source code to work from, my package can be found here (assembles with the DASM assembler) :
http://www.cbm.sfks.se/files/vplay.zip
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