Back in 2006 I released Banchor, which was a Zelda-like grayscale RPG for the TI-86, using a modified version of an engine written by David Phillips of Assembly Coders Zenith. By the time I released it, the TI-86 was long since discontinued.


I decided to do a quick port over to the TI-84+CE, with minimal changes to the original game. Even though there are probably numerous things that could be done to improve the game, I wanted to leave it mostly untouched. And it was simply a fun exercise in porting the grayscale engine, as well as giving Banchor a little more life, because all those years ago I had plans to turn it into a trilogy, with each game having different a different play style.. plans that never really went away... Zargul was secretly going to be a sequel or prequel to Banchor, using the first-person D&D style of Eye of the Beholder (thus, Zargul will become Banchor 2 if/when I get back to working on it).


Anywho.. the port is complete. The TI-86 128x64 resolution is scaled up to 256*128 in the original 4-level grayscale. Here are a couple of screenshots.


 
 


One final note - along with Zelda, Banchor was heavily inspired by Golvellius. Nevertheless, I'm still planning on continuing my 84+CE version of this at some stage, given that Golvellius will be in full colour, and Banchor is only in grayscale..





Download here

Since 3.5 years ago when I decided to do Alien Breed 5, I've had a rough plan in my head for it to be a 3-part game, ie. the first main release, followed by two additional campaigns with new features to be added later. I've recently started working on the 3rd and (most likely) final part. It's still very early days, but I've already gotten a few cool things done.


As usual, there will be a new campaign, although it will be different in structure to Episodes I & II. There will also be new gameplay elements, some new enemies, more achievements and potentially some slight graphics tweaks in the form of more tile animations.


So far, I've reworked the level file format to allow for some of the additional gameplay elements, which will allow for more things to happen in levels. The level editor pretty much had to be rebuilt from scratch, as well as making a simple program to convert the existing Episode I & II data to the new format. I'm now halfway through implementing the calculator-side changes to all of this, so that the game correctly interprets the new level format and starts incorporating the new elements.


Additionally, whilst this will still include the standard TI-83+/84+ flash application release, over the last 36 hours I've been doing some tests to see how viable it would be to include a build for the TI-84+CE!


I've drawn inspiration from MateoConLechuga's Mono2Color project for the TI-84+CSE, and after a few experiments determined that I'll most likely have to stick with monochrome tiles & sprites so that I can run the LCD in 1bpp mode, otherwise the frame rate gets way too slow. Below you can view a demonstration showing the game in 3 different zoom levels (x1, x2 & x3). As you'll see, x1 moves super quick, x2 moves roughly the same speed as the TI-83+/84+ monochrome version (within 1fps), and x3 is a bit slower again (around 7-8fps slower). Of course this demo only includes the scrolling background, no player/enemy/gunfire sprites. However, all the tile drawing & sprite rendering is done on a 768 byte buffer, the part that slows things down is scaling this 96x64 resolution buffer up to either 192x128 (x2) or 288x192 (x3). I'm confident that drawing the sprites over the tilemap will have minimal effect with the CPU speed of the TI-84+CE (but this will be my next few experiments).


The 768 video buffer -> vram drawing/scaling routines were written fairly quickly, so I might be able to optimise them a little. I'll continue playing around and see how I can improve it. At the very least, I'd like to have a TI-84+CE version with a play screen of 192x128.

About a year ago I released Alien Breed 5. Whilst I was quite happy with it, there were a few ideas & features that I had in mind during the development process that didn't make it into the final product for various reasons. I figured I'd come back and further develop the game again at some point, and based on my track record of Alien Breed games on TI calculators, I guess it was inevitable anyway! Those that have either finished all 12 levels of AB5 (or looked through the source code) will know that I decided to subtitle the v1 release "Episode I: Rebirth".

Episode II: Evolution is a major update to Alien Breed 5. The battle against the neverending alien horde continues, and will be taken to new levels of fun!

There will be a number of improvements and additions to the game. For this reason, it will be available only on the TI-83+/84+ calculators, as a flash application. The game has now outgrown it's previous "RAM program" life due to memory constraints. In terms of how the game will be changed, think of it like an "expansion pack", ie. all the previous levels and gameplay features of AB5 v1 will be there, but there will now be additional content and things to do in-game.

Features:
- 12 brand new levels which form Episode II: Evolution. This brings the level total to 24 across 2 campaigns.
- 2-player co-operative play.
- "Retreat" firing.
- Intex Entertainment "Space Pong".
- Achievements.
- In-game tips for new players.
- Smooth walls/soft corners for easier navigation into tighter corridors.
- Increased tileset, animations & interactive objects.
- Improved interface.
- Boss AI re-written.
- Game balancing adjusted.
- Cut scene type segments and improved epilogue when finishing a campaign.
- A bunch of minor bug fixes.

After finally getting my 84+C last night, I decided to try and display a (small) splash screen. Here's the first working version. Currently it's an uncompressed 16-bit BGR image. The image is 82x42 pixels, thus 6888 bytes.

http://youtu.be/8vDO5Zvj6Ik

The next step I plan to take is compressing the image and then having the program decompress and display it.

It's just over 10 years since I released Alien Breed IV, but there were a few things that I wasn't really happy with about it.

So, I'm now in the middle of making ALIEN BREED 5, which if all goes to plan, will finally be an AB game that I can be satisfied with

AB5 will be for the TI-83 / TI-83+ calculators.

Here is a list of planned improvements that AB5 will feature over previous installments. Not all are definite yet, but I'm determined to fulfil as many of them as possible:

• Mission objectives/text displayed before each level (already implemented)
• Better weapon variation, both functionally & graphically. AB5 has a flamethrower! (already implemented)
• Bigger levels. Currently planned at up to 60x48 tiles, as opposed to 32x32 in previous version (implemented but may need to be reduced if memory issues arise)
• Dynamic passcodes that will store your progress including ammo supplies, weapons, etc. In the previous version if you used a passcode, it only saved your level number, so you would start on a later level with basic weapons, which made it hard (still to be programmed, but will be definite)
• At least two difficulty levels, "normal" & "tough" for more of a challenge (still to be programmed, but will be definite)
• Enemy triggers will work more similar to how they did in the Team 17 Amiga versions, ie. triggers don't deactivate after spawning an enemy, they trigger each time the screen edge scrolls over the trigger point (still to be programmed, but I can't see it being a problem)
• A couple of extra enemy types. The initial release will most likely have the same enemies from the previous installment, but other types will be ready for additional levels down the track - this is a story thing (not programmed yet)
• Intex consoles (computers) have been reprogrammed to work more similar to the original Team 17 game, printing text the old terminal way (like the text in the teaser program, albeit printing the lines much faster) (already implemented)
• Graphics touched up in various ways. I found AB4 had too many random wall & floor variations that just made the screen look cluttered, so this time I've gone for the "less is more" approach to make things clearer. Also things such as power domes, intex consoles & alien eggs have been redrawn: power domes are now 16x16 as opposed to 8x8; intex consoles are 16x8; alien eggs are 16x16 (already implemented)
• Fire doors have been reprogrammed so that they don't automatically close when you walk through them. This was one of my biggest pet peeves in the past installments, which was really just lazy programming on my part. They are now activated to close by pressing [ALPHA] when facing them (already implemented)
• During boss fights, the screen will scroll so that the player is towards the bottom of the screen at all times so that it's easier to see the boss coming at you (not yet programmed, but shouldn't be a problem)
• When the player is hurt or picks up first aid kits, a health bar will temporarily appear at the left of the screen (not yet programmed but should be fine)

There are also a couple of other ideas from the original Team 17 games that I'm hoping to implement, although they're only concepts in my head at this point, so I won't bother bringing them up as I'm yet to attempt coding them whilst jugging with limited RAM.

I'll post a demo video soon showing some stuff that's already programmed I'll also be posting updates on my web site, http://www.jvti.org.