One of the things I am working on is a text adventure in Axe by the name of Asylum. It's meant to give you the creeps, by the way, something that is aided by the fact that it runs in inverse text mode. There are two problems with it, however: There is no text parser, and, far, far, worse, The program is almost 5k compiled, and it's barely even started.

I have no Idea what's making it so big. I don't think it's the fact that each line of text has to go all the way to the edge of the screen, because when I changed the program to use the graphscreen instead of the homescreen, it got almost 2kB larger. I only have Axe 0.4.7, so there's no built in string equality check, which is what's flummoxing me on the text parser. I did figure out a way to chop up the input though: loop through the input and change every space into a null, that way Axe sees a bunch of separate strings to check instead of one long one.

I have no Idea what's making it so big. I don't think it's the fact that each line of text has to go all the way to the edge of the screen, because when I changed the program to use the graphscreen instead of the homescreen, it got almost 2kB larger. I only have Axe 0.4.7, so there's no built in string equality check, which is what's flummoxing me on the text parser. I did figure out a way to chop up the input though: loop through the input and change every space into a null, that way Axe sees a bunch of separate strings to check instead of one long one.

I'd recommend you to use a subroutine made by, IIRC, souvik, but I'm not sure, check the Axe subroutines, it's CS, Compare String, you use it like:

sub(CS,"HEY","HELLO

To check if two strings are equal:

"HEY"->Str1
If sub(CS,"HEY",Str1
.This will be executed since "HEY" == "HEY"
End

But you have to include Lbl CS (get it from Axe subroutines topic) in your code, meaning larger side.

Text tends to end up pretty large quick so that might explain it. In Illusiat 13, I think 30% of the code is just text.

Yeah, text can be really a PITA >.< though if you don't use anything past the letter 'Z' then you can compress it somewhat to 3/4 it's size

Here's the ASM of what I have of Asylum so far. It's meant to be run on a ~15Mhz calc, btw, and up/down to move the cursor (it's the one that's blinking) and Enter to select/continue. If you wind up back at the beginning screen of inverse text, that means you've fallen comatose again and have to start over. The solution? Choose a different option next time. Also, there is no way to exit the game other than to reach the current end of the story, so if you wanna quit before reaching the end of the game, you're gonna have to do a battery pull. I'm still working on that. Note: Meant to be scary, with the odd dash of humor in it.

I will eventually, because all I have to do for that is adjust the timing. What do you think of the writing?

Uhh, Grazie mille, signore!

It looks nice. Thanks for the screenshot Scout, I can't play this game, but now I can see it.