News stories for Episode 257, April 9, 2022

News stories for Episode 257, April 9, 2022

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

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1) Brendan Donahe has released the first public beta version of his CocoVGA BASIC Extensions, including documentation. This adds new commands to BASIC to support some of the new CocoVGA functionality, and requires a 64K Coco 1 or 2 (not sure about the Dragon 64, but I assume it should work there as well, or wouldn't be too hard to patch to do so). Full documentation is on the website, but a brief summary of the 8 new commands added to BASIC: VRESET - resets the CocoVGA to its power on defaults VPALETTE - Change palette register (based on RGB values). This also has an option to delay actively setting a palette, so that you can change multiple palettes on screen at once (rather than 1 every 1/30th of second (2 VSYNC's) maximum. VFONT - Lets you change the font character set between original 6847, 6847-T1 (with true lowercase), or a custom font that you have loaded. It also has options for true lowercase on the original 6847 character set, and inverse video on either. VARTIFACT - This lets you turn artifact colors off, or on (in 3 different ways - pure 4 color, and 8 or 16 colors using a 6 tap filter, which allows the "Extra" artifact colors like purples, yellows, etc. as well, more closely matching the old color TV's) VBORDER - Allows you to change the border color. Also allows you turn on/off displaying the current video mode on screen when it changes. VLOADCHARS - Load a custom font VSCANLINES - Lets you turn scanlines on/off VWIDTH - Lets you switch between 32x16 and 64x32 text modes. Full documentation here:

 http://cocovga.com/documentation/cocovga-basic-extension/

Download here:

 http://www.cocovga.com/resources/downloads/SW/2022_04_06/CCVBASIC.DSK

2) Fabian Rodriguez has started a new Coco Facebook group for Canadians:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159837803732641/

3) Robert Sieg keeps going on his composite Coco 3 color experiments, and is getting closer, as he mentions on his latest Facebook post:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159834250172641/

4) Sheldon MacDonald has released the DSK image for his Coco PSG diagnostics program. This allows you to test the MIDI and game controllers on the Zippster Zone's PSG cartridge. You can get it from the Coco Facebook group:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159829827717641/

5) Pedro Pena (Rocky Hill on YouTube) release a video on his channel about the Coco 3 RGB Pin 10 mystery (also discussed in the Coco Discord this week):

 https://youtu.be/iu01IfSgNBU

6) Alan at AC's 8-bit Zone released a new video on how to make and install a CPU cooler into a Coco:

 https://youtu.be/yUpMoYRl0nk

MC-10

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1) The Taylor and Amy Show released a new episode, this time featuring their new (to them) MC-10 & MCX-32 SD, and try some programs and games on it:

 https://youtu.be/3uNIgIPt_8s

Dragon 32/64

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1) John Whitworth posted a video from his cloning of the Dragon Beta - which now includes a graphics demo (in 640x512x8 colors no less!) using a library that was never completely finished (so it has some glitches, and isn't the quickest thing), but it was very advanced for the 1984 time frame it was done in:

 https://youtu.be/8wDMewD4FpQ

2) The 40th Birthday Retro Festival at the The Center of Computing History Museum in Cambridge is happening on May 21-22. It's theme is covering computers that came out in 1982 - which includes the Dragon 32:

 https://youtu.be/T0NfKlJ3III

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

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1) Guillaume Alemanni has put up his latest game review on "The Wargaming Scribe" website, a site about war games. Episode #55 is review of the Coco game Across the Rubicon by Ark Royal games:

 https://zeitgame.net/archives/5120

2) Todd Wallace (Lord Dragon on our Discord) has released his first Coco 3 game - a clone of "Clickomania", a block removal style game from the 1990's:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10159833865257641/

Download link:

 https://tektodd.com/download/clickomania10.zip

3) Fabrizio Caruso has finished his MC-10 port of his cross platform Cross-Lib Framework - which means he now has 5 games out for the MC-10 using this format (currently ASCII graphics only, although he plans to add 128x96 4 color mode support later and will update the games). These are: Cross Snake, Cross Horde, Cross Bomber, Cross Shoot & Cross Chase:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/4898737176919732/

4) Jim Gerrie was very busy this past week: He released an updated WAV file version of "Demon's Defiance" for the MC-10 that now supports using with a joystick on the MC-10 Facebook group:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/4896502083809908/

Original article by Greg Taylor:

 https://chazbeenhad.tripod.com/files/joystick.pdf

Mark Dusko's implementation from January 22 on Facebook:

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/permalink/4674765715983547/

And Demon's Defiance II (original by Fred Scerbo)

 https://youtu.be/5WFeZeRlGxc

He also released an MC-10 version of the Coco game "Color Computer Race" (originally by Phil Stroffolino"):

 https://youtu.be/tZizq2ieReg

And Turing Tumult, originally by David Lewis from Enter Magazine, May 1984 issue:

 https://youtu.be/6sxLHGeqJTk

And Slug originally by John Holstrom & J. Ramore, from K-Power Magazine:

 https://youtu.be/5OSHxGFf0mg

And "Ecstatic Eagle" by Ruth Nebbia for K-Power Magazine (this is themed graphics & sound demo, not a game):

 https://youtu.be/zPQLLKAgbUY

And Hjaball (originally a ZX-81 game):

 https://youtu.be/nkBIDif9K0w

And "Cursor, Foiled Again" - a text adventure game from Enter magazine, April 1985:

 https://youtu.be/ZmuUXjYS-J8

5) Tim and AJ return with another Coco game this week - Microbes. This game requires two joysticks at once so two people *should* make it much easier...

 https://youtu.be/jaVfu8kskpk

(They also just released one for a "new brew" Atari 2600 game, Falldown, which is what Fahrfall and Waterfall are based on, although it has a simultaneous 2 player mode as well. Check their channel to watch that one!)

6) Cuthbert Dragon released a video showing gameplay on Michtron's Pinball Factory - a game for up to 4 players where you can design your own pinball tables and save them to disk:

 https://youtu.be/ltsBGmvsRSc