[Coco] The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 391, December 7, 2024

[R. Allen Murphey]

The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 391, December 7, 2024
===================================================================
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle

Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people:
------------------------------------------------------------
Virtual Coco/Tandy Fest is January 25, 2025, and now has it's own website
site up: Mark Overholser is the driving force for it, and can give updates
on speakers, etc.
  https://tandyretroshow.com/

VCF-SoCal - Feb 15-16 (Hotel Fera in Orange, California.
  https://www.vcfsocal.com/

VCF East is April 4-6, 2025 - same facility as this year. Info Age Science
Museum, Wall, NJ.
  https://vcfed.org/events/vintage-computer-festival-east/

CocoFest is May 2-3, 2025 (with takedown on the morning of May 4/Sunday) at
the Holiday Inn & Suites in Carol Stream (Wheaton), Illinois. Hotel rooms
at the special Fest rate are available now ($122/night for two queens or
1 king bed), and apply for May 2-5. You will need to use the Group Rate
code of G30 to get this rate, and getting the special rate ends April
7. Bookings for tables will be going up in January.
  https://www.glensideccc.com/cocofest/
Tables go on sale January 1 at noon, Central standard time.

VCF-SW in Texas has been booked with dates: June 20-22, 2025 at the Davidson
Gundy Alumni Center, University of Texas, Dallas, Texas.
Tables & Tickets will go on sale January 2025. $20/adult ($25 if bought
at the door), $10/student ($15 at the door). 17 and under are free (with
accompanying adult). Tables are $50.
  https://www.vcfsw.org/

Tim Lindner let me know that next year's Portland Retro Gaming Expo runs
from October 17-19 in 2025 (they just had this years Sept 27-29).
  https://www.retrogamingexpo.com/


Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
-------------------------------
1) D. Bruce Moore & David Kroeker put up another video of them working on
the CocoMP3 hardware card, this time on trying to get audio levels correct
from the Coco cassette port into a TV:
Quick blog post:
 
https://coco.gracenote.ca/trying-to-get-proper-audio-levels-through-the-coco-cassette-port-and-into-a-tv/
YouTube Video:
  https://youtu.be/oq1LsY6gTPI?si=KPuli_rkP5G6dfHf

2) ugBASIC 1.16.5 RELEASED. Release notes:
"In addition to containing strong optimizations on the generated code,
and numerous fixes and corrections for all targets (especially for the
TRS-80 Color Computer 1/2/3), 32-bit division has finally been implemented
for the 6809 processor and the code generation has been improved. The MIDI
to IMF converter has been improved, with support for volume changing and
specific percussion handling and automatic instrument calculation that
composition software takes for granted, and improvements have also been
made to multitasking interleaving capabilities.
From this release the additional data type IMAGEREF is now available, which
allows you to modify the graphic resources at run time, thus allowing you to
create games with great aesthetic variability. A whole set of instructions
has been added, to manage (automatically) the animations and movements
of graphic elements, taking advantage of the improved multitasking. In
particular, the ANIMATE command allows you to activate and drive animations
while the program is running, and so does the MOVE command, which allows
you to move objects in parallel, even synchronized with the animation.
The new PATH data type, together with the TRAVEL instruction, allows you
to calculate all the intermediate points of a path between two points, thus
allowing you to easily create "programmed paths", such as those associated
with graphic adventure animations. The PRINT RAW is now available, to print
characters without escape sequence parsing. The "retro compatible hacks" have
been updated which ensure that previously written games can run without any
issues, although there have been some small changes in the specifications."
There have been multiple hot and cold fixes to the main branch since the
1.16.5 version release this past week as well"
Main website:
  https://ugbasic.iwashere.eu/
Fixes since the main version release:
  https://ugbasic.iwashere.eu/changelog/main

3) Fedor Steedman posted a link to a hackaday article titled "The 6809
8-bit Microcomputer: A father-son odyssey" on the Coco Facebook group. The
article is written by Heidi Ulrich.
 
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/06/the-6809-8-bit-microcomputer-a-father-son-odyssey/
The project page by Eric Lind and his son (they posted about the upcoming
"Stage 3" on December 2):
  https://hackaday.io/project/199060-lind-micro-lind

4) Logiker's Vintage Computing Christmas Challenge has been announced
(for all retro computers). This is their contest (running from Dec. 12
until Dec. 25) where you try and re-create their Christmas related shape
in as small of code as possible, in any language. They released a video
showing the shapes from previous Christmas challenges, and explains the
rules. There are prizes:
  https://youtu.be/3q5ZWJmMhgQ?si=aR6tFMNDQAKlWEKq

5) Spanish YouTube channel RetroComputo did a video about how to create
real disks from DSK files using a Multipack and the CocoSDC:
  https://youtu.be/hKrcteMcs6w?si=N92ICL5cc7uZ-Hfl

6) The Boston Diaries (Sean) did a 3 part blog post about how to call
assembly routines from BASIC.
Part 1 is about how his own 6809 assembler makes BASIC code (data statements,
POKE loop, etc. to make it easier to write the code in assembly and then
not have to manually translate it to BASIC yourself:
  https://boston.conman.org/2024/11/26.1
Part 2 covers how to call these routines from regular Color BASIC using
the single USR command, and some steps needed to pass strings using it:
  https://boston.conman.org/2024/11/26.2
Part 3 covers how to do it from Extended BASIC, which adds up to 10
USR's and the DEFUSER command used to set them up, which makes sending
and retrieving values & strings easier and takes less steps than regular
Color BASIC required.
  https://boston.conman.org/2024/11/26.3


MC-10
-----
1) Jim Gerrie ported (and translated) and educational program for the
Metra Alice called The Combustion Engine, originally by Infogrames in 1984:
  https://youtu.be/oKxwjlFrDQs?si=AzYXFXxXJvZ_yGUP
He also posted a link to a french site with screenshots and photos of the
original packaging:
  http://alice32.free.fr/programmes/le-moteur-a-explosion/index.html

2) Simon Jonassen is working on a Christmas demo for the MC-10, and put up
a video in the MC-10 Facebook group showing the 2 voice/square wave music,
and will be adding graphics shortly:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/8652829471510465/


Dragon 32/64
------------
1)


Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) Pere Serrat has released 2 more game packs with the updated palettes
for the Supersprite FM+ board (for the Dragon 32/64 and Coco 1/2):
Game pack #8 has 6 games:
Diamond Geezer
Magic Able
Meteormania
The Hair-raising adventures of Mr. Hair
Nixy the Glad Sprite
Papyrus
  https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11214
Game pack #9 has 6 games:
Page's Castle Quest
Robot, the Impossible Mission
Springbot - Mars Attack
Sprouty
Stars 2
UFO
Yokai Monk
  https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11215
This puts the number of games that support the Supersprite FM+ board to
over 50 games now.

2) The Wargaming Scribe has released his review of Battle for Tunis for
the Coco in 1984 from Ark Royal games. As usual, he does his very detailed,
full review of the game:
  https://zeitgame.net/archives/16184

3) Gregg Steffensen has officially released "The Caverns of Narzod" on the
Color Computer Archive, a game that is now fully working and patched for
disk. This was originally published in Australian Coco magazine, October
1985, and is a BASIC/ML hybrid (the original listing needed some patching
for disk). He also posted a link to Jim Gerrie's original video we showed
a few weeks ago of the cassette version, although I think that still had
a few bugs from typing it in that are now fixed:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162139419842641/

4) Paul Shoemaker released a new Coco 3 Christmas themed game called
Christmas Match. It was a memory match game where one flips over two tiles
at a time, and tries to find the matching tiles (which removes them from
the playfield) in as few moves as possible. It can is a free download from
his itch.io page, and requires a Coco 3 with 128K and a disk drive:
  https://pshoemaker70.itch.io/christmas-match
Some gameplay footage
  https://youtu.be/-MOODqqRaWM?si=9VpFJ2uc0mV_9BCB

5) Richard Kelly uploaded a DSK image to the Coco Facebook group that has
the Kenneth Del Signore collection, including DataFall (ironically the only
game that does not run if you use the DOS command based menu system that
Richard included). These are games that were published by T&D magnazine,
written by Ken.
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162137350892641/

6) Chronologically Gaming covered another Coco game release from November
of 1982 - a movie adaptation that was unique to the Coco - Poltergeist:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P609_OETpH8&t=1438s

7) YouTube channel WhiteHat94 did a 20 minute play video of Super Pitfall
on the Coco 3, using a MiSTer FPGA. This is a actually a speed run, and
he is very familiar with the Nintendo original one (see around 17:40 for
a sub-level most people have not seen). He wins the game in 19 minutes,
47 seconds:
  https://youtu.be/x8MwTjjPa6c?si=RxNbInp_4PGEbYhb.


==============================================================================

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-- 
R. Allen Murphey <exile at weylan-yutani.com>
Weylan-Yutani Corporation
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