Recently, I've started work on a port of Sorcery of Uvutu to the monochrome z80 calculators. I'm using xLIB (monochrome) in place of xLIBC and have already started work on the black and white spritesheet and some porting of the main engine. String data, non-DCSE specific commands, and general ideas I've used can all stay, yet they'll probably all have to be changed in one way or another. Map data, some tricks using color (screen inversion, intro text fade-in, probably screen shaking, etc.) and other CSE specific things will all have to be entirely reworked for this port. I don't have any screenshots yet, as I'm still working on sprites and the like, but that will come soon.

As for my vision, I expect the monochrome version to likely run faster, due to the CSE's speed limitations being removed here. Also, as each overworld map will be colorless and the screen size will have to make each map smaller, I can only do so much in each, and battles will probably have to be more frequent per map. Think of it this way: In Sorcery CSE, battles would occur at a minimum, every 11 steps. For the CSE, 11 steps was enough to traverse half of most maps, making battles occur 1-2 times per map. This played a huge part in the balance I did for exp/money gain, HP, etc. Now, 11 steps will probably be enough to traverse 1.5 typical maps, meaning by the time you reach a boss in a world, you'd likely be underleveled without serious grinding. I'm looking to reduce that number to every 5-6 steps, which will mean technically more encounters, but encounters per map screen will likely stay the same.


Here's a tileset/overworld test. I added functionality to move diagonally, since it was available with Doors CS 7. The game figures out which tile to redraw after moving on-the-fly, as seen when I walk over the door. I have more tiles for more worlds, and I'll be testing them too, but here's just a basic map. You can also see the collision with the tree (not letting you move, no matter how you approach it) and the house window.

awesome, glad to see more monochrome-calc progs popping up! I wish you good luck on porting it.

Due to you using xlib i'm guessing that you are using hybrid basic, is that correct?

Yes, I am using xLIB. I'm excited to be writing for monochrome calcs as well!

This is looking quite awesome!

Also you should totally add a DCS icon

There is a line just below your character to tell you where the ground it, so let me know if it looks good. I've also changed most of the code so that text, sprites, etc. don't update the screen until the last one is reached. I think it looks a lot better. This means that now stuff like text, character redraw, etc. are all instantaneous (for the most part, you don't see character blinking or text drawing one line at a time). I've also done more work on the battle menu and added the ability for NPCs to say stuff, like in the original! In xLIB (vs in xLIBC), I can draw about 26 characters per line of text vs 20, but still 5 lines for each, although the xLIB text fits in the box better. Here's a screenshot of this stuff in action:

As I already said on IRC I'd try removing the corner pixels of the box in the fight screen, other than that it's looking cool IMO ^.^

Agh, I forgot to try that this build. I'll make screenshots comparing the two styles you described. Do you want both top and bottom corner pixels removed, or just one of those?


This is the newest screenshot! I finished the menu screen (except for the items screen; I don't really have the save file save file set up, so I can read from to find the items. I imagine it'd be fairly easy, though). I like the way it looks personally, and I hope everyone else does too. I tried to keep the style and layout as close to the menu screen in Sorcery CSE. I really had an itch to add some other stuff, but I don't think I will (unless I decide to add it to the CSE version, but I don't know if I even have the space for that ). The Save and Continue / Save and Quit options don't work, but once this code is imported into the main program (or more correctly, once I import the rest of the main program into this), it should work correctly.

A change concerning CSE users and soon-to-be 84+ users: I've added the ability to auto-Archive and de-Archive your save file, to protect it against RAM clears! The procedure to set this up is explained in the readme, but for anyone browsing I'll explain it here. As of V1.3, Pressing and holding the STO> button (right above ON) while the saving screen is up (aka the saving bar is filling) will bring you to a menu asking if you want to auto-archive your save file. To auto-archive, select YES in the menu. To de-activate it or to not activate it in the first place, select NO in the menu. Here is a screenshot of this:

Edit:

New screenshot! (Yes, I know the path leads into the right house's window, I will fix that )
I made some huge leaps, such as fully implementing all main menu features, adding save file support, making things not hardcoded anymore, and more changes. Most engine stuff like random battles (not shown here), NPC conversations, etc. are complete! Still not the items menu, I didn't have time to write that tonight, but I'll get to work on it soon.

Update: here's some screenshots of various things:


The item chest test. Chests display and are picked up properly. The entire thing is faster than the CSE version thanks to det(1,__).


The boss fight test. Bosses display and are handled properly, including pre-fight quip, battle trigger, and dropping the proper teleport stone. Also shown is the teleport stone functionality, which also functions as it did in the CSE version. If I had implemented World 2 maps, I could've teleported there instead of back to the World 1 town, but like I said, everything is implemented.