z2

It's like you two are bringing a little slice of digitalmzx to z2

But I don't care. This sub-forum has always kind of been the most serious.

Phase 2 COMPLETED!!

Official Tentative Phase 3 Completion Date:
1 month

Official Tentative Project Completion Date:
1 year.

All Other Completion Dates: TBD

Good news! I finished Phase 2, and I am now simplifying the code, since in Euphoria, some things can be simplified. (That sounds a bit obvious. Oh well.)

Phase 3 is going pretty well, should be finished soon because of Spring Break. I spend all the time I can to programming this, and I am almost to the point that ZZT++ is at in the compiled version. The only thing I am really having trouble with is the ISR routine. For now, I wont worry about it, as the speed is variable anyway. I have a possible answer, but I'll add it in once EuZZT reaches Alpha stage. In Alpha stage, any known bugs will be written in a text file and sent with the program with any other neccesary files, including one on how to run the file. Time is being nice to me on this, so I changed the completion date to 1 year. Truth be told, I can see the completed project in the future. Thanks for being patient, and please forgive me for not telling you sooner. BTW, If you guys ever think I abandoned the project, just IM or E-mail me about it. I doubt I will abandon it, but if a year has passed, and I still haven't given you an update, I probably have.

PS: If any of the colors are different in the Alpha version, and it isn't documented in the Known Bugs, please tell me about it when I submit it.

EuphoriaZZTer wrote:EuZZT

European Union ZZT

:P

also no coloured text

Phase 3 nearly completed!!

Official Tentative Phase 3 Completion Date:
2 weeks.

Official Tentative Project Completion Date:
1 year.

Good news! Phase 3 is going a bit better than I planned. I found a way to time it exactly as planned, without even needing an ISR. I'm actually making two versions now, one with full comments and everything, and the other, just the necessities. Regardless, I should finish Phase 3 in 2 weeks or less, and then the adding stage begins. At least, that's what I planned. Actually I got semi-bored, and so I started a bit on Phase 4 during Phase 3. Truthfully, I am learning a lot about C code in doing this project, and actually, it is quite fun. Well, until nextime, this is Nick, signing off.

Good job, keep up the good work.
:ler:

Yeah. But it would be nice if we could see some images of the progress, you know.

Your pushing your lucky, bubby.

A quick announcement: ZZT is going as projected. This is short because it is on my laptop at wilsons, and on battery so that's all for now. Have a good summer, and I'll be back with a real update on Monday (I hope).

Well if the laptop is at wilsons!

Hey Mr. Wiiiilson! Give me back my laptop!

Well, It seems that the update comes earlier than planned. Sorry for the short message, but I was at the Wilsons resturant, where they have so many games in there, even with tickets! But I digress. There is something I forgot to mention in my short update. ZZT, for some reason, was <b>easier</b> to program at the beach than it was at home. I have already gotten the moving & pushing implemented, but the moving still has a few kinks in it. There is no sound currently, but I'll put that in later. Also, the pushers don't really work too well, as they refuse to push anything, but that is only the minor bug. I am currently fixing the pushers, and then it's on to shooting. I found that ZZT moves every object in the order that the "Characters" with stats are in. Also, I need to make the items "items". At this point, they act as walls. Furthermore, I will have to put in all the messages, including the water message, which I think is the only message that displays more than once. Anyway, the whole project is going a bit better than planned. I believe I should finish by my birthday, Feburary 29. In other words, I should finish by the end of Feburary, 2006. And now, without further ado, the UPDATE!

Phase 3 is COMPLETE!!

Phase 4-the adding stage
Tentative completion date-- End of August

Project completion date -- End of Feb.

<u>Upload Dates</u>
Alpha stage -- Early Feb. to late March
ZZT neccesities - Early Feb
ZZT cloned - Late March
Beta stage -- Early March to late April

Aside from that, all is good, but it would be a big help if somebody knew where I can find the keyboard buffer in terms of where it is in the machine code. I just need to know where
I could "peek" for it. Euphoria's get_key() function reads the character, but also removes it from the buffer. Any help on this would be appreciated. Thanks in advance! That's all for now; so untill the next update, I'll be programming.

PS: I will be in summer school classes at A&T for the PRP6 program, and I will get two more college credits. That means I will have four in all! I will also be taking a C Programming class there, so I will have a lot of fun! The credits are for Engineering, though. I guess you could call programming my second love, or "calling". Anyway, "Have A Great Summer!"

hi,

the keyboard buffer's head pointer is stored at location 40:1A and its tail pointer at 40:1C. this is bios memory.

remember that the windows or dos keyboard driver is already messing with this buffer through INT9.

also, the keyboard buffer contains scan codes (not ascii character codes). it contains codes for keypresses and releases. special keys generate up to eight bytes of information, depending on the keyboard type. writing keyboard drivers is messy work and i've decided not to do it.

if you need tips on how to reach the memory locations, have a look at the zzt++ source code. it shows how to read the keyboard status in much the same way. look at the function PlayGame() in ge.hpp. since the memory is located in the bios memory area, you will require a far pointer to it from you own code.

good luck.
wep

wow that sure is some incredible info.

love
FSFunky.

Please, please please tell me that you're not actually using BIOS functions and all that crap, and please tell me that you're not using DOS/Windows DOS emulation for this. That would be the best way to ruin it from the beginning.

Geeze, almost nothing these days should have to even worry about technicalities like that anymore. That's what libraries like SDL, OpenGL and DirectX are for.