[Coco] The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 408, April 12, 2025

Sun Apr 13 09:10:27 EDT 2025

The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 408, April 12, 2025
===============================================================
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle

Special Guests today:
---------------------
Terry Steen - to give a sneak preview of his MicroWorks assembler project
that he will be presenting in 2 parts at CocoFest!

Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people:
------------------------------------------------------------
This weekend is the Indy Classic Computer & Video Game Expo is going on today
& tomorrow at the Crowne Plaza Indianapolis-Airport Hotel in Indianapolis,
Indiana. This is the show that has Randy Kindig (of the Floppy Days podcast
fame, amongst others) as one of the organizers, who we interviewed on our
show some time ago. Entry is $5/person or $10/family. Jim Brain, president
of Glenside, is there this weekend.
  https://indyclassic.org/

Saturday April 26 is the Spring Dalls/Fort Worth Retrcomputing meetup,
from noon until 4 pm, at Bingo Bingo in Grand Prairie, Texas:

https://www.meetup.com/dfw-retrocomputing/events/306965157/?utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=share-btn_savedevents_share_modal&utm_source=link

Later that same day (Saturday April 26) is the next Amigos hosted
"International Computer Club", which has people talking about a variety of
hardware, software, collecting, etc. retro computer & gaming projects. Both
Nick and I have been on this show multiple times, and Nick will be on it
to show his Pinball project.
  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaD3XRYu1lQTWrMYYPmaOa4AIj4xArroD

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 14 (a
week later than previous). Bookings for tables will be going up in January.
  https://www.glensideccc.com/cocofest/

Retrofest 2025, organized by Tony Jewell, is a retro computer festival
happening in Swindon, England May 31-June 1, 2025. Some Dragon people (like
Richard Harding and Chris Poacher) have already committed to attending
the show, being held at STEAM (the Great Western Railway museum):
Retrofest website:
  https://retrofest.uk/
They even have a promo video:
  https://youtu.be/UCZ-BtFW9Ok?si=B441wLvpDI2iekLN

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/

BoatFest (now International Retro Computer Expo) will be July 11-13 in
Hurricane, WV. There is now a promo video for it:
  https://www.ticketsource.us/ircexpo2025/t-eanjyje

VCF-Midwest (the largest retro show in North America, I believe) is September
13-14 at the Schaumburg Convention Center in Schaumburg, Illinois. This year
is the 20th anniversary of this show, and there is a lot of collaboration
between CocoFest and VCF-MW, so expect a large number of Coco and Glenside
people at the show! Still free admission, and hotel booking is open already.
  https://www.vcfmw.org/

That same weekend, Retro World Expo will be held September 12-14 at the
Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford, Connecticut. Tickets and vendor
applications aren't quite ready yet but will be soon. This is a gaming
oriented retro show (including tournaments) but also includes things
like wrestling:
  https://retroworldexpo.com/

Tandy Assembly for 2025 is Sept 26 to Sep 28 at the Courtyard by Marriott
Springfield Downtown in Springfield, Ohio:
  https://www.tandyassembly.com/
And they have some exhibitors already (click Exhibitors link)

This year's Portland Retro Gaming Expo runs from October 17-19 in 2025
(they just had this years Sept 27-29). Oregon Convention Center.
  https://www.retrogamingexpo.com/

Canada is getting it's own official VCF - Montreal, January 25-26 of
2026. It will be held at the Royal Military College outside of Montreal,
but I don't have any more details (the venue, for example) yet:
  https://vcfed.org/vcf-montreal/

Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
-------------------------------
1) Craig Allsop has released The Graphics Zapper utility on the Color
Computer Archive, including a full PDF manual. This utility will allow you
to view graphics pictures from within other programs from disks (either
real or images). It will even work on DOS disks from a PC (360K only),
and works on Coco 1/2 or 3 (the latter supports full double speed for
drawing). It even lets you edit these images and save them back out (it
should be noted that it is designed for 2 color modes only, although it
looks like one should be able to recognize shapes in 4 or 16 colors):
Manual link to show (the last page shows an example plucked out of Shock
Trooper's binary):

https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Documents/Manuals/Applications/Graphics%20Zapper%20v1.01%20%28Craig%20Allsop%29.pdf
General search link for both manual and program download:
  https://colorcomputerarchive.com/search?q=Graphics+Zapper

2) Jeff Noyle has announced that his "Mythwalker" project has been renamed
"Mythfarer", as he has found out another project has taken the name
Mythwalker. The Coco Discord channel devoted to his upcoming has been
changed to Mythfarer as well.
  http://distantsystems.com/

3) Canadian Retro Things (Hi, Ken!) released a video about JDOS (by J&M
Systems) on the Coco:
  https://youtu.be/a06KFNB3sW8?si=gjV7BXW1g4KvmDjr

4) Jim Mullis posted 3 video update to his Super Powers game, using Sundog's
GrafExpress system, featuring some additional characters. Please excuse
the popping sounds and other audio glitches - that is a combination of
the emulator & the screen capture software:
  https://youtu.be/ERQZcizU6Uo?si=v03v-X_JdTFi2A0D
  https://youtu.be/ERQZcizU6Uo?si=v03v-X_JdTFi2A0D
  https://youtu.be/-GaWkvo74NQ?si=NOaJGR-W1TnYhsyW

5) Bob Emery (La Coco Strangiato on YouTube) released a video showing the
changes that his Artemis keyboard version 2B has:
  https://youtu.be/Oc19oZ3OWDo

6) Glenside had their last business meeting before CocoFest at the beginning
of May:
  https://www.youtube.com/live/5DHxtzaszG4?si=f4nddJEWkVhuV_72

7) Rick Adams is working on a new Rogue like game featuring scrolling. He
has his first screenshots posted to the Coco Discord:
  (show "temple of rogue (Rick Adams).png" from folder on my desktop)

8) Henry Strickland has a new release of his nekot OS (the networking OS
for gaming) out, which has a demo video, download and documentation. Note:
This is currently working with Henry's Bonobo cards only; it's currently
not working with Rick's CocoIO card:
Video:
  https://youtu.be/2_1ujL8mP60?si=W-2IEkSZv8p65cKm
Documentation:

http://pizga.net/releases/nekot-bonobo-quick-release/nebo-2025-04-12-022322/README.txt
ZIP download:

http://pizga.net/releases/nekot-bonobo-quick-release/nebo-2025-04-12-022322.zip

9) Coco Town released Game revolutions cycle 25 on his YouTube channel,
titled "6 tricks for pleasant hit detection", part of his ongoing series
on finishing up his Moon Patrol clone that he started decades ago as a
teenager, completely in assembly:
  https://youtu.be/gG04_tv_QuU?si=A2ItFvCW0oubv02k

10) Brett Gordon put up a new test DSK image for a new game/game engine
he is working on for the Coco 1/2 in the general-game-posts channel on the
Coco Discord, for those that want to try it. I think it requires a Coco 3
or Coco 3 emulator to run (or a SAM Doubler enabled Coco 1/2). It has two
different screens, and uses the left/right arrows to move left and right,
'A' to jump and 'S' to fire (he will change those later, which is good
because that is pretty awkword)
  (Show TEST (from Brett).DSK running in VCC. NOTE: has to be mounted into
  Drive 0 to work).

11) I haven't covered updates to ugBASIC in awhile (because there are so
many, almost daily), so some quick updates:
Main Branch change logs (bug fixes, more readable syntax errors):
  https://ugbasic.iwashere.eu/changelog/main
Beta Branch change logs (GET/PUT IMAGE fixes for VDG, fixed 6809
optimizations):
  https://ugbasic.iwashere.eu/changelog/beta

12) The Laird's Lair released a video called "10 Amazing TRS-80 Color
Computer Facts". I haven't had a chance to comment yet, but he has some
factual errors, and some incomplete facts as well (like not knowing why
Brazil had so many clones), and talking very briefly about the Coco 3 at
the end, but never showing any games or software that used it:
  https://youtu.be/aJm42eqf3VU?si=CM6nLGnMNCblja9e

13) NMI released part 2 of his CP400 video series (using the later version
of the machine with a full keyboard), a Coco clone from Brazil. He has
some more minor fixes to do, and then starts showing the machine in action
(I don't believe that he has Extended BASIC)
  https://youtu.be/bNcYHGB5fOs?si=by9aPJ9omekFHEsI

MC-10
-----
1) Scottish YouTube channel Retro Krazy released a video about the Matra
Alice 32, including taking it apart:
  https://youtu.be/_Pr--TXhnX4?si=rjDFmOwxMtFOh38d

Dragon 32/64
------------
1) Julian Brown showed a picture of the SAM/CPU board for his Dragon ATX
project, which he will be testing this weekend, on the Dragon Facebook group:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3996523193940653/

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) 8 Bits in the Basement released a 6809 game called Simoco (based on
the old Simon electronic game from the late 1970's), including the heavily
commented assembly source code), which utilizes the Semigraphics-8 mode:
  https://8bitsinthebasement.itch.io/simoco

2) Erico Monteiro has also released his Ack-ack-rec 10 line BASIC programming
contest entry game on his itch.io page as a free download:
  https://bunsen.itch.io/ack-ack-rec-trs-80-coco-by-fued
He did the same with another entry, "5 Tides at the Purple Oyster Beach",
that we have shown before:

https://bunsen.itch.io/5-tides-at-the-purple-oyster-beach-trs-80-color-computer-by-fued

3) Pere Serrat announce two new AGD base game packs this week (the man
is a machine!). The first is MPAGD pack #69, which features 4 games using
the straight to assembly version of the AGD engine:
The Adventure of Bean (and this is Mr. Bean!)
Bufonada
Chispy
Dark Knight
  https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11275

He also released NP (New Palette) pack #15, which are the ones that require
the SuperSprite FM+ board in either a Dragon or Coco, and theses newest
versions feature an updated palette to more closely match the Spectrum
originals. This pack also has 4 games:
Bubble Bobble 2023
Nightmair B&B
The Adventure of Bean
The Incredible Shrinking Professor
  https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11276

4) jeo papas put a video up on YouTube showing the 9 hole Golf game from
Aardvark:
  https://youtu.be/QYXcJbAzJcY?si=AgRUazYUIRat0Z-I

5) Ellimist on YouTube did a speedrun of the Coco 1/2 graphic adventure game
"Marooned" (by Saguaro Software):
  https://youtu.be/QZRyMXMYd2c?si=sF75i0iOublgsEwy
He also did a cross platform review of The Dallas Quest (including the
Coco 1/2 version):
  https://youtu.be/B0XazsIuIlQ?si=N1IhIPsCLPpqG26G
And he did Omniverse, an animated graphical adventure game with sound by
Scott Cabit:
  https://youtu.be/Rn8_IvRnJG4?si=r1F3aUOOy9Kv5jRA
He also covered the text based Mysterious Adventure #9 - Perseus &
Andromeda - for multiple platforms, including the Dragon 32/64 version
(Dragon version link below):
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElhlKyPB9q0&t=185s

6) The spanish XperTek did a game play video of one of the earliest Coco
3rd party arcade games - Space War by Spectral Associates. Something new
on his channel - it is Auto-dubbed, so it actually reads out in english!
  https://youtu.be/_2sHibMRbck?si=ru36kzpKJA9y8pqC

7) ZXFrankie on YouTube put up a gameplay video of The King (formerly Donkey
King) for the Dragon 32 - using the "pastel" palette (remember that the PAL
based Dragon's could not do artifact colors). This is on a real Dragon 32:
  https://youtu.be/5AwHA6_xhb4?si=3IpNbBjxW8aiwxVH

8) Retroist covered Poltergeist on the Coco this past week:
  https://www.retroist.com/p/poltergeist-for-the-trs-80-color

9) Jim Jewett posted videos of his Coco BASIC game Space War to the Coco
Facebook group, including overlays explaining game play:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162497315847641/

10) And finally, a followup to the French gaming magazine Tilt's review
of the Dragon 32, roughly translated to english:
  (show text file "Tilt magazine translation of Dragon 32 review.txt")

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

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