Sorry guys. Progress is going to have to wait. For a while.

I'm rebooting the project, this time, to have a much more sane page management system. I'm using SPASM as my assembler, so this is going to ease those cross-page woes that has plagued the original project. TASM just isn't cut out for this sort of thing.

The real reason why I'm doing this is because space was quickly running out on the page I needed everything to be and I was afraid I couldn't add in any more. It's not just the data that was killing me, but the fact that I couldn't forward-reference routines from across page boundaries. I had some nasty kludges to help overcome that, but even then, the scheme was running very close to its limit. In its current state, the project simply could not continue. Even if I had finished the battle system, I'd have no way to add in events or NPC dialog.

On another note, Athena can stay right where it is. It's practically functional, and I don't intend on messing with it, at least not until I can get E:SoR running (functionally) back to the way it was.

While I'm at it, I might as well redo the entire menu system, since I've learned a whole lot more about menus. And now that I'm able to cross-reference pages, I'm able to clean up quite a few things with it. I mean, the amount of code and data was scary. 10KB ought not to be used to simply drive the menu system. Another 16KB ought not be used to form all that textual data. I need to deal with this in a smarter way.

Also, while I'm at it, I might as well recode some things to provide myself much saner data structures. I ought not need small routines just to transform numbers to something that can be plugged into another routine when these numbers should have been "right" to begin with.

So...

What I'm trying to say is that I'm overhauling the whole thing. I've got the knowledge now to do what I needed to do in the beginning. I now know C, which helps in dealing with data that I never wanted to see or hear of again. And I can now produce something that I can truly be proud of, not only of its magnitude, but of how it was coded.

It is time to restart. It is time to renew. It is time to make sure the game that should've been done last year run to completion this upcoming year. Wish me luck.

------------
To answer a previously asked question, E:SoR was at 5 pages and quickly growing into a sixth page.

The second one was great. Lots of replay value. And very time consuming if you attempt the Ancient Cave challenge (100 floors, no way to save. Start at lv 1 with crap equipment. Can't take anything out of the cave except stuff in the blue chests. Your exit item "Providence" doesn't appear until around floor 20)

There's even a replay mode that's all about the Ancient Cave thing. Lets you pick and choose among any party member you've ever had in your journey.

Those strange files are things that don't display right. In the case of RoL3, those are your pic files. May want to fix it eventually, but I think it's fine like it is.

[...]
That reminds me of Window's uninstalling/reparing programs program. What about program compatibility? Any program(s) that don't work? Or all of them do?

They all should, since they're mostly hybrid BASIC programs that are being packaged here. Thing is, it won't install FlashAPPs, and according to some sources, installing them from file can be a major pain. Not worth it unless someone could write up some example code. I recall that the way Axe does it is rather hackish, so I wouldn't want to bloat the installer any more than it is unless I can figure out a way to keep its RAM footprint low.

On another note, adding in group support wasn't /that/ painful. I got RoL3 to package and install. It just takes forever to install due to the sheer number of programs there are. The screenshot I'll enclose will show a memory view of the archives and the testing portion, but not the actual install. No one has ten minutes to watch a screenshot.

When I get the whole thing put together, I'll be releasing the packer and installer.

EDIT: Also attached is a copy of Reign of Legends 3 (Thanks DJ). It is an example of what my program is capable of. Just run Athena as an ASM program. Like Asm(prgmATHENA) and then follow along. Controls are easy to figure out. Just try it.

Looks nice! Two questions: What's the 40803 when installing for, and can TI-Connect deal with those programs over 32KiB in size?

The 40803 is a bug. A really stupid one, but one that doesn't mess up anything. It's actually supposed to display the current file, but I guess I ought to change it anyway. Needs to say something like "File x of y"

And I believe it should. I did manage to get 60KB files to my (real) calc, but I don't quite remember what I used to do it. It was either TI-Connect or TiLP.

I've also gotta work on, of all things, the documentation. Athena won't do anyone any good if no one knows how to use it.

It's not *that* hard. The one thing in the file that you're supposed to look at (which isn't directly stated in the linkguide) is that the data section size covers the entire data section, which can contain multiple files. Most people won't look past the first file since they assume that this size is equal to the header for the packed file plus its data. When you've gone past the first file in the group, your count doesn't match up with the aforementioned size. When this happens, there's more to be read. I ought to look forward for further contents, which are the other files in the group.

Most of the .8xx files are formatted this way, but the vast majority of them just have one entry. Which is to say, if you have something that'll read grouped files, it'll also read any other file, be it a .8xv, .8xp, or whatever in a very consistent way. In fact, it may not be necessary to know the extension if one just read the contents of the file, since filetypes and all other relevant data is kept within.

And in keeping with what you said, that revelation clicked for me once it started happening to Athena as well. I feel like I understand the file format a bit more now.

Oh, and I really should get back to work on Athena. Been playing Stepmania since I last posted or something like that and ... yeah. Too many breaks

I see. Do you think there will be a release, soon? (beta-test?)

Really depends on how reliable the modified pucrunch decompressor is. If it passes with flying colors, I can have something out by this Monday or Tuesday. If not I'm not really sure.

The initial test will be decompressing blocks of 256 at $8000 and examining it against the same file on the computer opened up under a hex editor.

If that passes, I'll start with actually decompressing the files and comparing the results against the built-in checksums.

If *that* passes, I'll start writing in functions and start taking care of the various file formats that one might possibly throw into Athena. I'll be sure to exclude some formats (like window settings), but I should be able to cover the majority of the stuff that most projects contain.

Well... I sorta ran into a snag. It relates to the compression and the limits of the edits I can make with the decompressor. Basically, I'm going to have to opt for weaker compression to make the edits, so projects won't get the best possible results when using pucrunch.

I'm sorry, but I knew these great results were a little ... too promising. It just won't work for what I've gotta do with these files. (pucrunch expects all decompressed data to remain where it is in one contiguous block. I cannot have it that way)

Still... for Illusiat 13, it goes from 135KB to 55.4KB instead of the much rosier 40KB. The results will most certainly vary depending on how far apart the LZ matches are. For those who know anything about the LZ77 algorithm ( I have marginal knowledge ), I had to restrict the search range to 255. I know this isn't very optimal, but pucrunch does a good job in making it work well. There's still decent compression.