The post was actually constructed by Zera from an email that he sent me. He asked me on chat last "night" to post it here for him.

Gotta give a little background for the game. Still. I have to give credit where credit is due. (I feel... wrong... if I don't)

Not all of the data that can be included in the app actually *is* in the app. The data that remains is the character/NPC dialog data, treasure chest data, enemy statistical data, large character portraits, event data, and a few other goodies that needs to go in, like game ending sequences and your ubiquitous world map.

Not to mention all the code that drives all of it. But on the bright side, much of the dialog data will be compressed so many kilobytes of text will condense to something much smaller. ty, pucrunch

The robot side story (Full Metal mode) might drive it to a 96KB app, but it probably won't since it will use so many of the same assets from the main story.

EDIT: The pause menu system is finally in. The merits are now calculated and the app's really, REALLY quickly running out of space. A few bytes under 5KB remains. Gotta go ahead and expand the app.

EDIT 2: Okay. The expansion was made. A few definitions were changed. I reduced the dependency on the age-old ti83plus.inc and made a minimalistic file that retains just four lines copied from the same thousand-line include file. The app compiles far faster. Thus, developing with my compile-happy finger will be that much faster. Oh, how I could go on and on, but yeah.

EDIT 3 : Alright. The file's a fair bit more than 4 lines now, but only because I wanted to have everything I'll ever need in that one file. The app uses 11 romcalls (2 are numerically defined) and one "bjump" (JForceCmdNoChar). "contrast" is used only during initialization. "appbackupscreen" and "plotsscreen" are referenced all over the place in the app. Then there's the whole "#define equ .equ" and "#define EQU .equ". Nothing else. All romcalls are made when the app is starting up and shutting down.

Okay. Humpty Dumpty is back together again. Just making sure the pieces are securely in their places.

The save/load prompt is back in place and works properly. The character select menu is back in place. Just have to debug some of the other menus, like the inventory system and the spell select. The menu system now features full backward memory, which means it'll remember where you were when you go back (or up) one level. Makes it easier to navigate. Unfortunately, it can't remember what you did when you go forward. I don't plan on putting that feature in since menus share so many memory areas.

EDIT: A small short story on yesterday's woes: When I first put it all back together, the thing simply didn't work for whatever reason, but I knew it isn't the menu system itself since the opening screen worked but the game froze on the character select menu and the save/load menu. A little while into trying to trace the source of the problem, I found that the routine responsible for converting a binary number into ASCII for displaying was bugged. The final iteration was trapped in an infinite loop. Fun stuff. After that, I adjusted the display since writing things to the screen is based off of relative positions instead of absolute positions. That was another major change internally.

EDIT 2: Pretty soon, I'm gonna have to make myself a screenshit threat. I mean... yeah. IRC really is catching up. Thanks DJ Omnimaga

A small walkthrough of what I have in the script. These will be described as what's on the first line defining the function.

In the on START event, the script sets up a directory for keeping track of various things that go on in the channels, like who joins it, what their host masks are, and what names they've used in the past. The echo's you see there just relay information back to the user. I intended on putting more stuff there, but I just never got around to it.

In the on CONNECT event, it builds hash tables for the network you've connected to. Lists that relate addresses to nicks and nicks to addresses.

The alias "connecthashmake" just makes the file smaller on my end. I'm a freak like that. All it does is reload a previous occurance of the file if it exists (so it remembers stuff from session to session).

The on DISCONNECT event cleans up the script and stashes away the state of these hash tables to file so it can be recalled the next time you load mIRC. These files will just continue to grow as more poeple come in.

The on EXIT event cleans the script up so there's very little in the variables section when mIRC shuts down.

The on JOIN event is where things really get interesting. The first block of text is testing to determine if anyone on the channel has joined under a different nick. The second block performs checks to determine if any newcomer already has a presence in the channel under a same hostmask. This may get annoying if the person joins from some "legit" proxy, like Mibbit. So ignore it if it gets annoying. The last block of text performs actions if you're the one joining a channel. It collects information about the channel so mIRC's internal lists are filled.

The on SIGNAL:joinsect event collects from the third function of the on JOIN event. Can't do everything at once or the server might think you're flooding.

The on NICK/QUIT/PART events record to the hash tables the last thing the person did.

The on RAWMODE event ... uhm. I think I was trying to determine if you obtained a mode change or something. That part remains incomplete.

The on NOTICE is the recipient of the lag timer. It hides certain things from you so you don't get bombarded by messages to yourself. It's also where the autolag warning kicks in.

The raw commands shown next intercept replies to the /who command, which the script automatically performs each time you join a channel. If you get annoyed by the output, you can try putting a "haltdef" after the if statement underneath "raw 352".

The menu nicklist fills out the context menu if you right click on the nicklist. If you can see the options, most of it is self-explanatory.

The menu channel is similar to the nicklist, except it's what shows if you right-click on the channel window. Pretty much self-explanitory there.

The menu menubar shows up in the menubar. The two options let you start the lag timer if you're connected to a server. Each lag timer is different depending on what server window/channels you have active. The "Output Hash Tables" lets you see the contents of the hash tables that are there. Mostly for debugging purposes.

The menu query is self-explanitory. It's what happens if you right-click while in a PM.

The menu status is what happens when you right-click in the status (server/private) window. Lets you set modes on yourself.

Ooookay. The aliases section. All of these aliases are used internally, so don't try to call them yourself.

The massmode alias isn't used but the listmode alias sure is. Lets you apply modes to any you've selected in the nicklist. Supports multiple selections (by Ctrl+click or Shift+click). The modeall alias is called by the previous two aliases to perform the function.

The renderhashtables alias creates a new window and dumps the contents of the hash tables there.

The updatehashtables alieas is a fair bit of work that rebuilds the contents of the hash tables given a newcomer's nick and hostmask. Relations are created in this phase.

The clonecheck alias is used in the menu channel to output the names of any clones (people with the same hostmask) and some of their information, like who's who and what their hostmask is.

And... that's it. I guess.

Oh. I'm not changing much about how the menus will look. I've worked on it for too long to change around the layout.

I'm just redoing the code responsible from getting it from pieces of data in FlashROM to something visually pleasing on the screen. That's what I meant when I said I was redesigning them. Fiddling around with code that's about 6 months old.

A little more work has been done. Between this screenshot and the last, I've spent a total of about 16 hours working on this sucker. I don't feel like a whole lot has gotten done, but you can be the judge of that one.

Also, I intend on optimizing the menu systems after I'm done slogging through it. To do: Status menu, equipping alchemy, and item/magic actions.

Much work remains to be done before I can announce my total failure to make any progress.

No, wait. That's not the right thing to say!

Anyway, the project isn't dead. In fact, it's actively being worked on. Forgive my lack of foresight, but you wouldn't believe how hard/tedious it is to build menus in Z80 ASM. I mean, those that looks halfway decent and not crappy like the TI-OS menus.

Specifically, I got done with coding the equipment check menu (lets you view the stats of any piece of equipment you have on your person). The next thing on the plate is a customizable inventory menu base that provides options to filter through your general inventory and show only the stuff you're able to equip on the slot you've chosen.

The same system can be set to go "Nuuuuuu! U do NOT leave without taking this RARE ITEM!" if your inventory is full and ... yeah.