News stories for Episode 254, March 19, 2022

News stories for Episode 254, March 19, 2022

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Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)

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1) Robert Sieg (who normally has been working with the MC-10) has been experimenting with Coco 3 artifact colors, I think in a way similar to John Kowalski (Sock Masters) experiments from a year or so ago (although I am not sure; I haven't had time to look at how Robert is doing it vs. how John did). The latest samples in the Coco Facebook group:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159802964582641/

2) Gustavo Schoenaker posted in the Coco Facebook group a link to his Github (with source) his Arduino based USB joystick converter, which will handle two said joysticks at once. One cool thing about it is that it will auto-detect if a joystick is plugged into the port (he explains how that works in the post). I _believe_ that this is meant for emulators only, but I am not sure:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159800901787641/

3) Brian Schubring uploaded an almost 30 minute demo/tutorial on how to mouse in sheet music in UltiMuse 3, to play from the Coco 3 to a MIDI synthesizer:

 https://youtu.be/tm9ajByOIdI

4) Sheldon MacDonald is working on CocoVGA utility to let one customize palettes for existing Coco 1/2 games, and has a video of his using a Pooyan as a test case in the early stages. While an earlier utility that did similar already existed, he is working his much more user friendly:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159795923147641/

5) Nik Brisevac continues to experiment with custom making keyboards for his Coco 1. This latest one, as he describes it, has "no nest of wires under this one". This one isn't quite fully done, but it is looking more like some of the alternate 3rd party keyboards look like back in the early 1980's.

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159794823087641/

6) Danielle O'Connor, who showed her Coco controlling a light chaser (with variable speed) earlier, now has added a Coco 1 controlling a road traffic hazard lamp. This is part of the grander "flux capacitor" project, which will feature multiple Coco's controlling various bits of external hardware to simulate the flux capacitor for the Back to the Future movie franchise:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159793581632641/

7) James Jones did his latest BASIC09 vs Microsoft BASIC comparison video, this time using the Sieve of Eratosthenes benchmark from back in the day. This one posed some interesting challenges due to the amount of things it needs to keep track of:

 https://youtu.be/AglxDAKdZ-k

8) Martian Tech on YouTube did a video of a first look at his Tandy Coco 2 that he just picked up - which doesn't boot correctly (plain green screen). He goes through the hardware debugging process, but by the end isn't sure what is wrong (originally thought it was a RAM), so a part 2 is planned:

 https://youtu.be/uHYv_xY65y4

9) Pedro Pena (Rocky Hill on YouTube) posted a video of his repairing his Coco 3 keyboard with the KeyFix keyboard kit from Computer CoNect (Rick Ulland):

 https://youtu.be/a3q_YKLkM8M

10) Ken of Canadian Retro Things posted a video of how (and what equipment he uses) to record video output from a variety of systems using Coax Cable output only (including Coco's and MC-10's):

 https://youtu.be/rTJj7TcV8UI

MC-10

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1) Simon Jonassen posted in the MC-10 Facebook group that he has created his first auto-executing loader for the MC-10 (this has been done before by people like James Diffendaffer), but also that he is planning on experimenting with expanding it for both a fast loader and doing things in the background while loading (including music):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/4842119542581496/

2) GalaMoon Retrogaming posted a video in French about his Alice 32 (when he starts the video, he briefly shows his Alice 90 as well). He even shows the higher text modes it supports (like 80 column mode), and how those work with Microsoft BASIC:

 https://youtu.be/DC4ZZ4EFZI0

Dragon 32/64

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1) Duncan Smeed (one of the originators of the Dragon 32, and also the author of the book "Inside the Dragon", posted on the Dragon Facebook group that he had found a copy of his book that he had given to his parent-in-law back in the day, which included a humourous dedication:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3131803757079272/

2) Ron Delvaux posted some cool pictures in the Dragon Facebook group showing screenshots from Dragon cassette magazine "Dragon Up-2-Date", which I don't remember seeing before:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3128404827419165/

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

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1) Nick Marentes released his game Zero Hour earlier this week, and I have added a page for it to my Coco games site, including a direct link to Nick's order page:

 http://www.lcurtisboyle.com/nitros9/zerohour.html
 https://nickmarentes.com/ProjectArchive/zerohour.html

2) I did some other additions to my games page as well this week including downloads, and submitted the new games to the Color Computer Archive as well. All 3 of these were either games that were previously never released to the public before, or had very limited distribution. These include: Rick Ulland's "At Risk", a Coco 3 multi-player version of the board game Risk:

 http://www.lcurtisboyle.com/nitros9/atrisk.html

James West's "Galactic Conquest", loosely based on Adventure International & Broderbunds "Galactic Saga" space war / trading game series, as well as an old Coco magazine based game called Stellar Empires:

 http://www.lcurtisboyle.com/nitros9/galacticconquest.html

James West's "Galactic Revolution", which is a more straight port to the Coco of the original Apple II version of the 3rd entry in previously mentioned Galactic Saga series (which had 4 games total):

 http://www.lcurtisboyle.com/nitros9/galacticrevolution.html

3) Pere Serrat has released an updated Miremare2, which has a new feature to let sprites walk behind objects. There is also a video that shows the effect (about 45 seconds in):

 https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=11015&p=24397#p24397
 https://youtu.be/vRh3TJu9PLI

4) Rick Adams, continuing his exploration of Coco 3 BASIC, has posted his first versions of a Rogue style / inspired game, still a work in progress (and you can see his current source on his github). Currently it uses different colored text characters to draw a randomly generated maze, and allows you to move around gather objects:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159803699932641/

5) Dan Larson uploaded to the Coco Facebook group a short text based game that he had written many years ago, based on the Freddie character from the movie franchise A Nightmare on Elm Street:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159794994327641/

6) Guillaume Major has added the PLAY NOW feature to the Games & Educational sections of the DISK part of the Color Computer Archive (previously he had cassette versions working). This uses the latest version of Ciaran Anscomb (sixxie)'s XRoar emulator, which features Coco 3 support as well. This make it very easy to both try programs out before downloading them (if you didn't already grab the master ZIP file), or to use Coco 1/2/3 program from your browser without having real hardware or having to install and set up an emulator:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159794870552641/

7) Richard Kelly uploaded the game "Monkey Shine v1.00" to the Coco Facebook group. This game is based on two Atari 2600 games: "Coconuts" and "Eggomania". He describes at as being graphically more like Coconuts, and gameplay more like Eggomania. This game originally appeared in issue #63 of the Coco tape magazine T&D (screenshots in the comments):

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159794066667641/

8) David Kroeker posted a 7 minute clip of him reaching almost 500,000 points in this weeks Game On Challenge for Skyway (notice how many many he still had left at this point):

 https://youtu.be/q2YW8uAM-eE