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Gernot66

Posted Wed Nov 09, 2022 4:17 pm

As one can see by my scripts it isn't very hard to check a filetype even without a program like "filetype" especially if an icon is attached to the file and i personally wonder why many programs warn you:
"This progrm won't check the filetype if it's used on any other filetype as *** the file will be corrupted!"
Is that really a hard thing to check the identifier?
Sure raw data won't contain such but most other data will contain a identifier of some sort either an ascii string (like the CITYMCRP in a simcity city file) or a hex value at a given address.
And as you can see it isn't really complicated to check i.e. if the selected file is really a SimCity city file, if the identifier CITMCRP is present at it's address then it must be a SimCity city file.

Hey i'm only an interested gamer - only ;)

It isn't even hard for the eye to differ a raw picture file from a raw sound stream since they have some differences on which you can depend. If you are a little experienced with all the gibberish in a file you can peep into a file like "Classic Graphics.SimData" and you will immediately notice "this here must be sound". That is you know a sample for the Amiga will be mostly an 8bit signed stream this stream will contain a lot of 0x00 and 0xFF which is the zero line of the waveform, this already tells me "sound" because any else won't contain this heavy appearance of 0x00 0xFF especially at start and at end of the stream. A picture on the other hand will have a complete different structure and 0x00, 0xFF will be mostly absent in it. At least sound i can recognize immediately in between all the gibberish in a raw data file (as long as it is uncompressed of course). Certain sound streams you can already indentify just by how this appears to you especially if that is noise or a fade out because this will be shown in a sort of pattern which is unique for sound streams and for this it won't matter signed or unsigned this pattern stays only the values change.

A slight advantage of a blurred view because you won't see the numbers you only see a grey pattern (without glasses).

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Gernot66

Posted Thu Dec 01, 2022 10:16 am

Immerhin ein "Herzli" so hat es doch midestens einer angeguckt ;)

---
013.png
Same turd just in OS3.1
I started here my (second) savestate statistic because it's a bit easier under the OS3 conditions (use of variables instead to concatenate all)
It has bee through a major revision and is much shorter as before, that is also because i learned a couple of new things from
https://wiki.amigaos.net/wiki/

Mainly that i can use EVAL for most conversions from and to hex (or any base) in a quite simple manner which saved me about 50% of the script.
Further (but i noticed this before) one can use SETENV to get rid of non ascii characters especially of the LF (0x0A) for which i used my FILTER hack, it makes it obsolete and that is good.

To describe this
EVAL accepts 0x as prefix for hexadecimal and you can mix decimal and hexadecimal in one single calculation (great!)
You can use LFORMAT to output to any base in a similar manner it is then "EVAL ... LFORMAT %X for a hexadecimal output.
"O" as a prefix marks octagonal values while lformat accepts %O, %N would output to decimal but this is the default, more even you can feed ascii characters (prefix C) and output the result as character (lformat %C). You can use all bases mixed in one single calculation.
Further on EVAL can shift bits, do comparisons and logical operations there isn't much missing in EVAL.
This makes about a dozend commandline tools obsolete if proper used.

SETENV i've read that it will strip the linefeed but it also strips other non printable characters as long as you use SETENV, echo to, type to or copy to obviousely wont while if you redirect to SETENV obviousely it will work.
If you stored data with type, copy or echo in an ENV variable you can get rid of the non ascii characters with GETENV because it works the same just for output.
That is also good to know and makes like i said my filter hack obsolete.
Need t remove non printable characters?
Use SETENV (GETENV)
or SET (GET) for process variables (OS2 upwards of course)

To the STATISTIC script
The final reason for this is to show a map of the city and the statistic to it, not very useful but neat to have.
At start i had the idea to compose the image from the data in the savestate but even if possible this would take aeons for a script to complete it. It's easier to make a screenshot of the TerrainEditors preview, this is at all only of interest for the cities handed out as extras to SimCity or for my Terrains but latter won't show much in the statistic wherefore the imgae gives you at least an idea of the map.

I wrote "estimated total population" because what i can retrieve from the savestate doesn't reflects exactly what the game shows as population and it took me a relatively long time to get a grip on the used maths, still i'm uncertain but what i calculate fits +/- 1% in all tested cases thus i must be very close.
The game won't use the stored population data for the recent calculated population in the game, this gets obvious when you alter the population values it has no effect, as soon as the game is loaded the population will be calculated based on ??? but not on these numbers - or not only. I assume they are stored for a use while the game is running i.e. to calculate the score (together with other stuff).
However this is most probably the reason for the difference the stored data is not exact or formatted for something else as to show the total population in the game
Funny is that the city size VILLAGE to MEGALOPOLIS is stored because the population values for this would be present
(oh i see i forgot to implement this to my statistic - no problem)

The next best thing in the file is the "R,C,I" growth ratio which are displayed as bar graphic in the game.
Even this i haven't used here yet and i'm not sure if i should because this changes rapidly and even this will be new calculated when the game is loaded and it is rarely twice the same thus to show this would make little sense but it is neither a problem to do so. However it often won't show something relevant because for a village this fluctuates much and if it's a grown well working city all bars are always on maximum growth.
(you won't believe it but for a while i thought these could be multiplicators for the population values, the naming "R,C,I Value" in EditCity has misleaded me somewhat to assume this, "growth ratio" describes better what it is).

Game year and monh is a quite complicated calculation. It is based on 48 weeks per year and 12 months a year.

Code: Select all

D:SPLIT >NIL: T:ST<$$>DATA ENV:ST<$$>A 73 8
EVAL >NIL: (0x$ST<$$>A / 48) + 1900 TO T:ST<$$>YEAR
EVAL >NIL: ((0x$ST<$$>A - ((0x$ST<$$>A / 48) * 48)) / 4) + 1 TO ENV:ST<$$>
.
ECHO >T:ST<$$>COM "M$ST<$$> T1"
EDIT >T:ST<$$>MONTH S:months.e.list WITH T:ST<$$>COM NIL:
A good example for EVAL and that you easy can mix decimal and hexadecimal values.
"months.e.list" is nothing else as a simple llisting of the months, i first echoed this to a temp file but i see already that i will use it more often thus i stored this in S:months.e.list (e is english).

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Gernot66

Posted Thu Dec 01, 2022 10:57 am

There are substitutes for SPLIT(Q) but in the end it's exactly the same as to split to a temp file because any else will do the same it's just named different. Perhaps other will output to stdout but anyway you need this in a variable or tempfile and thus it won't matter how it's output (except yes if you use backtabbing, this won't work with this split proggy).

Of course to display the city name is not really needed since you selected this city either with shift click to it or by use of the filerequester, but well it needs a title and this is the cities name.

Cash, what you see here is the maximum (0x7FFFFFFF), from on 0x8000000 the numbers are negative values as usual even if that is irrelevant for this game.

Market size, i already wrote about that and it is NOT what i assumed.
Since this value never changes and is titled "external market size" it could be the amount of neighbor cities, this makes also sense since the Amiga releases store a "4" here (only DOS a "6" and the DOS Tered a "0" which makes obvious why cities created with the DOS TerEd work so bad, they have a market size of zero.

In all the DOS release of TerEd is buggy, writes data to wrong addresses and other turd, it starts already at byte 2 with the string length for the city name, DOS only accepts 8 characters but TerEd as well as SimCity blatantly write here a 0xD as strlen, yeah ok that works and reflects the length of the requester but it is unorganized, i would have understood a fixed length of 8 because more you can't have no matter how much you can fill in the file requester). However Amiga SimCity properly writes here the strlen and it also depends on this, means if that doesn't fits the city can't be loaded. This is most probably the reason why you can't directly load a DOS city to Amiga SimCity since it refuses the strlen of 13 for a name with a strlen of maximal 8, after you loaded and saved the city using TerEd this is fixed to the real strlen. Thus fixing this (probably i implement this to my DOS fix script) will alllow to load the city directly to Amiga SimCity.

For the Amiga release the maximum is 16, this is given by SimCity (even if the requester accepts 32 characters) but 16 is fairly enough. I assumed this already respectively i assumed the leftover 14 of the first 16 bytes (byte one is zero byte two strlen of name).

Extracting the name is an example how to use GETENV as filter for non printable characters:

Code: Select all

D:SPLIT >NIL: $ST<$$>P ENV:ST<$$> 2 16
GETENV >T:ST<$$>NAME ST<$$> ;strip trailing 0x00

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Gernot66

Posted Thu Dec 01, 2022 1:44 pm

For OS1.3 this would look somewhat different because you can't use variables except to compare them using IF thus you need to concatenate a string to execute for SPLIT (since it doesn't accepts std in/out) while for GETENV you can use redirection.
Because of the leak of SPLIT to support std in/out it is perhaps a good idea to try the other program out which i found to retrieve data from a given address, this would at least mean you won't have to concatenate a string to execute.

Before i will show off the OS3.1 script i like to complete the scripts for OS1.3 based on my new experiences.

Sure one could combine all of them and put a requester in front what is to do with the selected file but in my opinon this is exactly the same as to have a set of scripts each for a specific job.

For difficulty and score it's the same procedure as for market size, a simple conversion to decimal using EVAL.

Editing save states

The other bunch of scripts you see i the screenshot do the reverse of Statistic, means they hack new data in a savestate, now one might guess it hasn't much sense to change the amount of cash but well this allows it to give you 2 billions (und ein paar zerquetschte) without provoking an earthquake or using up the eight tries - if you like though.

Eight tries heck, i wondered what the data in front of the score is it is in 90% of cases 0 and sometimes one or two, obviousely this is the counter for the cash cheat, i have to try it out. Resetting this to zero would allow you to use the cheat over and over again and this could be automated done after ever session of SimCity. As useless as the money hack but it's possible thus it has to be tried out.

What "assign" does is pretty obvious i guess, it sets up a SIMCITY: device, sure this isn't needed, all you need (is love) to start SimCity in it's home directory else it won't find the data it needs to run, but it is allowed to move the graphics to anm own directory it just needs to be entered once to SimCity.config after that it will find it and use the specified directory for all graphic files.
So why this SIMCITY: device?
simply to have the cities in an own folder instead of floating around in the the home directory of SimCity, this alone won't work to start a city from a different directory you also need to store a copy of SimCity.config and basesimdata in SYS: this because the game if it won't find these files will look in the root for it (as it would be started from the floppy).
After that you can start any city from any directory as ong as the project icon has SIMCITY:SimCity as default tool.
To reach this and to alter the in OS3 ugly looking icons i use ICONMISER which is something i use since i got aware of it and that is long ago (PD collection for the CD32, CD32 connected via communicator to my old A2000 - ach was man nicht alles braucht wenn man in einem abgelegenen Tal lebt).
Apart from the use for the SimCity city files i use it to change certain preferences setting icons which do not fit to OS3
(or my own one) and to get rid of the icons OS3 IconEd stores for IFF brushes - yes you can disable that as usual....
...but it didn't works.
ICONMISER helps and as i stated already it even works fine in OS1.3 which is "Sahne" (a topping cream).

The purpose of "ClearChannel" i explained already it simply erases all channel data from a city, handy if you like to draw a new channel to a generated map. For the interested ones SimCity map data is written in columns (not lines!) from top left to bottom right if you look at the map.

Difficulty is a new addition and it's pretty obvious what it does, to alter the difficulty of a city. That even might look like it would make little sense but let's say you like to change the difficulty of a city if you use TerrainEditor for this all SimCity data will be reset to start not only the amount of cash and the difficulty, using this script leaves all other data untouched.

Exchange i described already and it's the main part of this SimCity script-opus, it allows you to make churches or hospitals to hi-value hi-density residentials, while don't expect that the value will stay for long as well as the boosted population, but it can be an ass kicker for a sleeping village (as soon as you have one hi-density resididential building other will follow).
It is to see as a sort of cosmetic hack. I even added the possibility to make instant hi-density residentials from an empty residential, while be warned this only works on absolutely fresh zoned zones it won't take long and SimCity will calculate the value for this new zone and then the data isn't to find anymore or only partwisely which results in a partwisely changed building, looks quite funny to have only a third of a condo.

More cosmetics but not so cosmetic at all
The MSDOS-fix, also this is i described already it fixes the differences between DOS SimCity savestates and Amiga it grows steady since the DOS release has a couple of issues and i expect to find even more as only the exchanged use of churches and hospitals which is really only cosmetic the function of churches and hospitals is identical.
But it also fixes by now the mirrored at the wrong address written cash amount by MSDOS TerEd, sets the game speed to 1 since 0 (pause) results in "fast", turns off auto-budget and auto-goto and turns on sound and auto-bulldoze. sets the market size to 5 (any specified default value) which i think is good, something between 4 and 6 (which something, there is only one). A near future addition to this will be the correction of the city names string length though that you can load a MSDOS city immediately to Amiga SimCity without to use TerrainEditor to fix this small misbehave. This script will contain all you need to correct all the differences between the two platforms (if that ever finds an end).
And for once the file requester becomes very handy to load a DOS city which has no icon attached to it.
Even this i will add in near future so that after processing the city with this patch the city will be stripped off the suffix .cty and receive an icon.

User avatar
Gernot66

Posted Thu Dec 01, 2022 2:57 pm

SimRadio?
Some "düdeldü" ;)
Nothing special just a playlist of all SimCity soundtracks up to SC4.
Randomly selected tunes while the "randlist" script (former jukebox but i had to make a script to control "jukebox" which is now the "jukebox" script itself, randlist because i use already a randline which is quite shorter and faster executed as "randlist") Randlist creates a temporary list of the feeded list and erases every selected line from this temp list as result it will never select a line twice until the list is empty. It isn't only meant for the "jukebox" it can be handy for any list you like to select a random line from but never like to select the same twice.
Both scripts (randlist and jukebox) you will find in my scripts thread but it is by now only ready for OS3.

Year
Do i really have to change the Year displayed?
Nah
But if you like....
You can do it without to alter anything else as the displayed year.

ZoneEvo is part of SimCity, nothing special here except a lead in and lead out SFX.

City2IFF is the PrintCity release of EA, for OS3 it needs a little fix, the file requester will appear by default in bright white on bright white erm sorry bright grey but it is almost like white text on white ground which is more as just hard to read (or less?).
To fix this i simply use the SETCOLOR program which i presented here several times
SETCOLOR ACTIVE 29,$333 turns the bright bright grey to dark grey (or any color of your choice)
SETCOLOR ACTIVE 29,$DDD reverses this to the original state when City2IFF has ended
register 29 is a reserved one and will never be used for backdrops because it's the pointers bright grey.
"But this will change my pointers colors!"
Yes, but choose hard to read filerequester or changed pointer colors (as long as City2IFF runs).
Why they chose register 29 which is even for OS1.3 a pointer color just the opposite dark one is not to clear to me especialy if you have a nice black which is usually used for applkications and heck not the pointer colors.
if they would have taken register one and two it simply would be inversed in OS3 (or vice versa) but not bright grey on a somewhat brighter grey, register 29 is fine for OS1.3 buit it is useless from on OS2 for this, and again pointer colors should stay reserverd for the pointer and never be use by an application except for the pointer, therefore it is reserved.
Need to know more?

Btw, palette tools for OS3 exist quite a lot but only "palette tool" (what an intelligent name it's absolutely unique ;) ) i found to be really a good one.
015.png
016.png
Never mind the name it's an intelligent tool (for intellivisionairies).
"Palette Tool" has helped me to find the absolute maximum of colors for a backdrop before the OS starts to dither the image, it also made clear why the "stupid" looking 0000FF blue, FF00FF magenta and 00FF00 green which are often reserved as alpha channel substitute are at front instead the four colours at end which would reflect the ANSI standard, the 4 colors after the basic 4 are reserved for dithering, brighten up the three other (therefore the second white which else would be obsolete) respectively colorize the white however you will look at it, they will be used if you selected lesser bitplanes as your backdrop has and of course only if one is somewhat near to them, the brighten up of the magenta happens most often as i noticed or is the easiest to notice one. The quirky thing about these four is that they are reserved thus it isn't possible to use them willingly, none of them will be used for a backdrop except the OS decides that it should be used, means you can make a backdrop in pure magenta but it wont use register 5 for this, but if it's a brighter magenta let's say 50% then this magenta will be used and dithered with the white from this palette sequence, that even can happen if there are still free registers for a backdrop if the color matches one which can be reproduced with dithering one of of them which is a bit stupid in my opinion. On the other hand that is rare else these unnatural colors wouldn't usually be reserved as alpha channel substitute, none of the three appears in nature thus "unnatural", while the most used is the magenta followed by the bright green and less i have seen used the blue except for the SCURK.
But yes i understand i even have no idea why they didn't put the dithering colors at end and the standard to front.
Because the problem is for a lot of users that you can reach only the four "stupid looking ones" from the dithering set with the escape sequences instead to reach the standard four at end of the palette.

You might have noticed the black console window for Statistic
I know that many have asked how to change the console window colors in OS3" even i searched for an answer a couple of times. The following cool escape sequence i found will do this, i never found a proper answer except "there is no need to do this" nice lazy answer, could be from one of my pioneering "friends" and means "don't bother me i even don't know it".

I found the answer here:
https://forum.amiga.org/index.php?topic ... #msg254232

Yep that is a lot of gibberish, go to the last line of his reply and here it is hidden:

Code: Select all

ECHO "*E[>1m"
unbelievable short and effective, what he didn't stated or explained is that you can reach with

Code: Select all

ECHO "*E[>#m"
any of the colors present in your recent palette of OS3.x just enter as # the register nr. for the color.

SPREAD IT!
i know many have asked and have received no proper answer except "don't bother me i even don't know it" erm sorry i mean "there is no need to do this" by that.

Funny he is for sure experienced but the html code he used to colorize the link doesn't works :)
Nobody is perfect.
However the link to the astronomy page couldn't have attracted a better fitting one as the Phoenix dude.

So far
Last edited by Gernot66 on Thu Dec 01, 2022 3:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
McTrinsic

Posted Thu Dec 01, 2022 3:28 pm

I highly enjoy reading this. For once, it’s a trip down memory lane. I like(d) SimCity.

Reads like a nice text on how you can get to some inner workings of what once was a miracle to
me as a kid. Makes me want to try this all out. Makes me get a better instancing here and there about the Amiga.

Keep it coming!

User avatar
Gernot66

Posted Thu Dec 01, 2022 5:01 pm

Snakes...
erm thanks

Yes it i a trip down memory lane for me to,
somewhat at least, i never stopped playing SimCity and as i already pointed out the classic one is still the best one to me, just because of playability.
SC2K is as good it even won't eat up weeks to build a city and can be played on an afternoon.

To me it is the game which started all for computer gaming, you fir sure noticed i'm a "Intellivisonairy" in fact i play "video games" since 1972 since my father made a Pong/Lightgun game for me. He disassembled it quite soon because of the heavy burn in on his beloved b&w tv which he kept running until it took felt 10 minutes to warm up the tube.
It's nice to have a tinkerer as father but it's a hell when he keeps a b&w tv set running for 30 years while "all the world" is already watching in color "Ach das macht die Nachrichten auch nicht besser" (colors won't make better news).
"Das geht doch noch, das kann man noch reparieren!" i'm not that extreme but well...
Likewise for my father my flat is filled with replacement parts cables plugs and whatever, but:
"Gernot do you have a .... cable,plug,socket i need this to connect ... to ..." - "i guess yes lemme see..."
"Gernot i inherited this Yamaha movie theatre amplifier but it didn't runs can u fix it?" - "dunno but let me porouse it" - "Buddy that's a nice thingy you inherited MOS-FET technology and toroidal transformers, very solid '80s high-fidelity and unbreakable... most probably... yes the speaker fuses i can replace them i have such at home"
---
It was something complete different to lean back and not be stressed by a fast shoot 'em up or jump and run.
As very first i had contact with SimCity when my father bought an IBM clone and i bought this rotten game for it (together with another unbeaten standard "Populous" even this game i still like to play for exactly the same reason, playability).
The following game was SimEarth and then i bought me a used A500, which i got a bit stressed of after a little while and bought a used A2000 with a whopping 250MB HD.
---
Yes 1990 is a little late for one born 1966, but i had a "technology pause" from 1986 to 1989 (roundabout it's long ago and something i don't like to remember often), i became a victim of a christian sect and neither computers electronics or games interested me then.
This was my first dead and second birth, you start a new life when you enter such a sect and you need again to start new when you drop out of it.
And until 1985 i used the Inty for gaming, it hasn't survived my religious trip since my dad assumed i won't need it anymore he disassembled the console, "that hurts" was Joe (Zbiciaks) comment.
cpc1610_zpsa8f76309.jpg
Before i return to the miggy this little sidenote, without the so called video game wars the Inty and the Miggy could have become siblings, the hardware developing division of Mattel Electronics had planned to use the brand new M68000....
It never came to this.
On the other hand it's the only left which annoys you with "decles" (ten bit instructions for the GI1610).
Factually this isn't a big difference to 8bit most is 8bit, coding is 8bit, but it reflects the strange ideas they had at start of the '80s, "reserved for future applications" as we know the "future" of any CPU isn't far it won't last that long.
In fact when i thought about this uttering of GI not to long ago i came to the conclusion that these was most probably kept reserved as control bits, it would allow to change a lot of things how the processor interpretes an instruction, at this time it might have been a progressive decision. Not really "future applications" but it would allow to change the instructions on the fly and while processing which is a sort of "future applicaton" seen from this ward. Because i guess instead to emulate such would allow to process foreign native code - as i assume. In other terms the reserved bits are to see as flags.
The GI1610 has depth, really, but when it was used first for "little 'bro" (Champion 2711) it was totally unexplored what it can offer for gaming, check out what is on my YT channel, "decle" not that decle this decle, he's a dev. and his task is to write scripts which convert in the best case "decles" to "decles" without to lay a hand on it.
The result is "little 'bro" and "StudioVision" the latter is a "RCA Studio II" erm emulator doesn't matches it's native GI1610 code as well just that it runs on the Inty instead of the "Champion 2711" or the "RCA Studio II".
Just for your amusement the "Champion" had a one button controller, yes you've read right a single button and nothing else (oh pardon a second reset button on each controller). No steering cross or anything to control something like a cursor or elswhat just a single frickin' button. But it had a great sounding name "Champion 2711" which even rhymes.
Of course gaming is extremely limited due to this, poker & blackjack obviousely you won't need much more even if it's a hassle to enter your bet by pressing the single button at the right time while the numbers scroll up from 0 to 9 for each digit. The rest of games works in a similar way and one game "decle" coded new for the "Champion" - "Bottom Gas" a dragster race even this needs obviousely only one button - the bottom gas, push the pedal down to the tar.
A memory game even this can be played with a single button just wait until the cards are lifted up and several arithmetic games which also can be played with a single button... if you are patient enough to wait for the proper number to appear.
It has the exact same heart which my inty uses but it feels like it would run on a quarter of its capabilities. "Zero graphics and uninspired games".
The "Studio II" i always gazed at it was a little before i earned my first own money and daddy assumed it's nothing more as a "brown box" in a different shell, he wouldn't have gifted me one and was not little surprised when i bought my first Inty and how the games appeared on this console, he started to get somewhat addicted to Golf which is a game i still like to play, it's still interesting and hard to control, the randomness of certain unseen things is major to what is called today "faith shot" you never know exactly where a shot will end.

End of time-warp ;)

User avatar
Gernot66

Posted Thu Dec 01, 2022 6:05 pm

Haaalt noch nicht ganz.
Poker & Black Jack without random number generation?
Pretty easy,
just guess of this developers joke:

Code: Select all

Rand = 4 #this number has been evaluated by fair dice rolling
Ohkeh that's static and far from "random"
yes and no
guess yourself a row of numbers from 0 to 9 let's assume 0394516827 this is your "magic number" (well a little magical at least) now perform a simple addition count 1 to each digit and you receive 1405627938 a new number you can use.
Still far from random but well used in a game you won't notice this so soon. An extreme simple but still procedural generated number. The Quiz game for the "RCA Studio" uses exactly this method i described above, after my very first play respectively in my second try it was obvious that it isn't random and i soon found the "magic number" on which the whole quiz is based and you can solve any question without to know the answer.

It just came to my mind because i wrote about Champion and Studio II which both use this method of procedural generated numbers in an extreme simple manner - if that is coded in the soft.
Good or advanced examples for this would be the bunch of PD games released for the RCA Studio II.
Unfortunately (but i understand why) decle did forgo this games and only converted the official released ones.
Some are really playable like the StarWars game of which all speculate how they could use this title and such a close gameplay without to be fined for it by lucas arts (dunno perhaps he had a good laugh and closed both eyes because for such an early attempt to recreate the StarWars feeling it's quite good licensed or not). It's a quite good dog fighting game for either a single or two players and it isn't easy to outrun the tie fighter in hard mode. It's very simple nonetheless it can be an addictive game - for a while at least and sure for a Elite/Frontier addicted one, since it's basically this - a dog fight in space.
Ok you can't see lasers and the imaginative gun locks itself on the target when you center the target in the crosshair but heck exactly that is the closeness to the X-Wing HUD apart from that you can tell "yes this looks somewhat like a Tie Fighter and yes this looks somewhat like an X-Wing (it is possible to play the opposite which is even StarWars like).
I assume the code is quite simple the actions of your opponent are like a reversed hunting, it didn't follows you it flees from you and as soon as the opponent left the screen it is assumed he's on your tail and you lose a life, but two modes are possible lethal which is the one i described or changing positions and you have the chance to escape your opponent it is quasi as if you would take seat in the Tie but control the X-Wing you see and you have to avoid to be catched respectively made it to the edge of the screen to change positions back. imho the best game game for the Studio II (in fact it's an MPT-02 game which is in short terms the latter color release of the Studio II, but the code is the same the game runs on a Studio II)
"Color" hmm... in fact the colors are like for the good old brown box - ohkeh you don't have to glue a colored foil on the screen but the console (it's a hardware tweak) does nothing else as to colorize certain regions of the screen different, thus it is still all black&white and the color is an overlay just a digital overlay.
One little sad thing, my PAL Inty runs on 50Hz and is due to this only 83% of the NTSC speed, often this makes no big difference but for fast games like this StarWars game it's to slow and the game becomes to easy.
Thus it's better to play it emulated as quasi native on my Inty even if the conrols of the Inty fit very well to Studio II, both use a telephone style number pad. Quite an advance from a single button for the champion to a number pad for the Studio II. There exist's even a sort of joystick you can attach to the number pad of the Studio II.

This just to underscore following uttering:
"Technically we could have made Pitfall in 1978 but even we coders had first to learn what the hardware offers".

Since i really like the StarWars game it received my "Pioneer Space Pilots Guild" seal of quality.
SVM203 StarWars (2017) (decle).jpg
(the front X-Wing is scripted geometry for Pioneer from scratch the back Tie Fighter is a blatant ripp off from SW X-Wing Alliance).

Pardon me if i mix all here but i have some beloved games and i don't mind much for which platform console they are, to me the game is relevant im no fanboy (except for the Inty).
Thus Amiga is as Good as MS-DOS and Studio II is as good as my beloved Inty it only depends on the game.
there are only two things which stand above all other, the Intellivision and Frontier for which i neither mind on what system i play it.

User avatar
Gernot66

Posted Thu Dec 01, 2022 6:49 pm

Frontier was a drem come true to me

"I had a dream..." yes but not this one.
My dream was when i played on my Inty StarStrike that it would be a great thing if...
more different elements would be combined to a space game, not only dogfighting trading, politics, economical simulation sort of this was my dream, man i was 17 lived and grew up in the "outback" Kt. Glarus (or reservates like some say) and had absolutely no idea that such was already planned (elite). But i have seen a little later the advertising for Frontier, only a spinning Imperial Courier, Braben explained the who's and hows's and it only fired my dream but i had no idea absolutely not.

This dream sticked to me and no wonder i was attracted by Pioneer, to be honest not without the help of my best promoter, because i remember i stumbled over Pioneer when it was in early stage but thought "not bad but just another Frontier clone and a bit a naked one...." i didn't took a second look at it, that wasn't quite fair and she really lifted me to it when i started to make some models for FFED3D.
"Gernot this game leaks of models..."
"Damned yes and it's pretty good i really misjudged it".

To be fair i won't call her by her name here because i don't know if it pleases her, but if you know the Elite/Frontier fans just a little you will know her name.
Let's say she's from the dozend of hard core fans who lurked around on Frontier forums and argued steady about that it's time for a sequel to First Encounters...
She's an original Atari user but knows and likes the Miggy well.
That well that her YT avatar is an A500.
she's sometimes present on Atari Age just in the Atari section and not like me in the Intellivision sub-division.
And who knows she has maybe even here an account, pretty sure on the english amiga board.
(i didn't looked up for her, but i can. She isn't faint hearted and in fact the one who convinced me to use my own name instead of a nick but a little respect is at hand. If she would reply "hello my buddy Gernot..." then i wouldn't mind)

In fact that was good times before and when we started out with Pioneer, joked a lot on frontier forums and had all in all a good time. I guess the best time is always when the things live just in your fantasy when they come alive the tension is gone.

Frontier forums was a simple forum like the english amiga board when i first subscribed to it, look to what polished forum it has grown now, it has the appearance of any game factories forum today with a lot of advertises for their games, one mustn't like it to well.
Well we all become a little nostalgic when we guess about this time.

It was a dozend or two and i knew all by the heart, if i return now to Frontier since they released Elite4 i don't know a single member and have to dig for my friends.

Well she's most probably not subscribed to this forum. :(
But i guess she would like it.

User avatar
Gernot66

Posted Thu Dec 01, 2022 7:38 pm

My next post will be related to the topic - i promise.
It seems you are interested in the scripts thus let's finish them and post both variants OS1.3 and OS3.1.

Thast measn i have to bring them in a condition that they can be used "out of the box" which i'm up to, changes from third party softs to OS commandline programs is the right approach. The goal is to use as less as possible third party software if not zero.

Yes some will optionally stay like ICONMISER, but that is really only optional to replace the SimCity created icons it has no relation to my scripts ICONMISER runs unrelated to this and i tossed the idea to use different icons for Terrains created by TerEd though i won't need to change the preset for ICONMISER even if that is easy possible but this i will leave up to those who like that.

The main topic would be to present applications for the Amiga and this will be in future a different one i stumbled over when i digged through the fish repo.
It's a sort of "authoring software" basically a text reader, but it can display images animations plays sound and is interactive and all this for OS1.3!
It's if i remember right from the same dude as "wIconify", you often will notice that the good software is from a small circle of coders.

"The SimCity Opus" i guess that is the proper title for this collection is a good reason to try it out, i peeped into it and thought "quite good but i haven't a use for it yet..." but now i have a good use for it and that is to display the map (even if that is just a screenshot and not my initial idea) and along with the map the statistics, perhaps a button or two to edit or play the selected city.

(pardon me i forgot the name of it but i know where i stuffed it on my HD)

Btw, wIconify i still think it's good but i don't run it anymore, i don't need much to iconify windows or programs it is comfortable yes but i uses it rarely, my main interest in it was that it can open a WB clone screen, but unfortunately wIconify gives me no command to close the screen when i exit the program which should run on an own screen like the simpliest use of that to get a text reader out of sight or to open a console window, yes there is a program which does both only for this task but it crashes 50% of the time when you leave the invoking shell.

I noticed it before but couldn't get it to work proper at first try
MWB another one with an "absolute unique name" it's not there is at least a second MWB mega workbench but this MWB make workbench is not to confuse with "mega" neither with any else similar named "makewb".

I will link it and go a little more in depth but not here, just that it is a good TSR it stays in backgrund and awaits your command to open a screen, you can tell almost any application to open on this screen (a few refuse to) and it closes the screen without that the machine crashes, it allows to open multiple screens even if they are all named "MWB screen" and works pretty well with OS1.3 which often isn't the case for software which reaches so deep in the OS.
Mainly this was what i expected of wIconify apart from iconifying windows and screens but exactly in this it leaks a little bit.
Everything would be fine just that i can't close the screen when i exit the program for which i opened it is what annoys me.
Yes you can by using of "R-Amiga X" but i don't like to press a button after i closed a shell in example, it should close the screen automatically, it should work a little hidden.
The strange limitation of wIconify to 70 x 30 somewhat for the virtual icons (the iconified applicatons windows and screens) is also annoying me somewhat since i like to have all in the same size and this is the recommended maximum of 80 x 40.

Ah yes because not everyone likes the 3D look of my OS1.3 icons i started a set (recently only SimCity) which has a flat appearance, not bad and the folder variant of this set replaces now the button style since the folder icon is 3D enough and doesn't profits of the bevelling. Yep folder isn't drawer, drawers are ony present in the devices window, directories use the folder icon, that makes some sense doesn't it?
"Open a drawer and select a folder in the drawer, open the folder to view the data in it" in this sense.
018.png
A bit funny how the buildings stick out

Of course the "Old NewYork" backdrops will be part of the "SimCity Opus".





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