I keep around a 2TB portable harddrive for these things.

Also dropbox

Yeah, I highly recommend getting Dropbox, so you can share your files across all computers as well as recover deleted files.

I have a dropbox... but I use it for file sharing, not for storing all my files (I only have 2 GB)

Calc files are kB. Not GB

^This. The 84+CSE is the z80 with the biggest memory and it has 3.5 MB available so really, your files are a lot smaller than the GB limit you are talking about. Not even one of your program will reach 1MB. They'll all have a size of the order of the KB.

I think the only time I threw away backups was when I switched computers in 2005 then left my old 2002-04 calc files including the defunct ROL4 project there, then eventually deleted everything on that hard drive. The only other copy was on Earthforge, which died a year later. I kinda regreted it later, even though the project was dead, because it could have been useful to show people how the game looked like or to start new projects. The other time I lost backups was when I had to use floppy disks because flash drives still costed $300 for a 128 MB stick. For some reasons, the entire content on the floppy disk containing some unreleased 2002 games vanished entirely.

Anyway it's best when you do calc programming to create a copy of the game everyday, then every two or three day send another copy on your computer or another calc. An online copy is a big plus too, in case some natural disaster occurs or something.

I'm working on recreating the tilemap. I had a backup of it, actually, but on graph paper, not on the computer.

Well, I guess this is lesson learned!

Now is the time to back up all of those floppies. I have a lot of blank diskettes here, but I only use one for transferring files from my pc to my dos computer.

HOLY NECROPOST BATMAN UPDATE OF DEATH!!!!!!!!!

So, after all that trouble, I decided to restart the maps from scratch and change a few lines of my code to work with the more traditional tilemap format that I'm using. These are not the same maps as before, and you MUST replace all files, delete PIMAP.8xv and delete VVVSAV.8xv from your calculator before you play.

Without further ado: the screenies:



I plan on implementing Keoni's sprites later, but for now, these are the sprites being used. Also: as you see, not all of the map has been redone. I'm going to change the maps from this point forward from the old ones.

Planned features/levels (in no particular order):

A menu
Multiple saves (maybe)
Shiny trinkets
Veni Vidi Vici
Some non-linear gameplay, but no overworld (sorry).
And most importantly: Custom Maps!

(I also have an idea for a multiplayer gameplay mechanic, but I'll need some time before I can guarantee that this may indeed happen)

Zip attached! Enjoy!