Defence-Force: Project X News

So that all parties in the Newsgroup get this newsletter, I have given an issue number to it. If anyone refuses to believe they have received it, then they need only to check with me, the issue number, OK?!

Now, when I thought everything had gone all quiet on the Project, Fabrice comes back with his Parabolic Code. Excellent Fabrice, This will be very useful. Remember though, that if you lot want to get this game out, you MUST ALL contact me over memory management and assigning memory to you. I do not want you lot to conflict each others allocated memory space!

I dealt with Messages in the last Newsletter, but many either didn't read it or didn't understand it. I will clarify it here.

DBUG wants to prompt the user to set Angle of trajectory and Velocity. So, he sends David Goodrum the following request...

Message "Set Angle and Velocity"

David then checks whether the message is in his list of messages already. This is the first message, so, no its not. So David then places the message within his list. David will then contact DBUG, with something like the following response...

Message acknowledged... Your message number is zero.

DBUG will then place in his code something like...

LDA #00 (Message Zero)

JSR #B800 (Message Plot Routine)

David will then notify Symoon and Dominic, who will translate the message into French. To Oguzhan, who will translate the message into Turkish and to Matt, who will compose a suitable message in English. David might send the request as follows...

Message "Set Angle and Velocity", this is Message number zero

The Message request was sent by DBUG.

It is Down to Dominic and Symoon to decide amongst themselves the most suitable translation (in french) of the required message and if neccesary, contact DBUG concerning any ambiquity in the messages meaning.

The same applies to Oguzhan and Matt.

Dominic and Symoon have finalised the translation. It is 30 Characters long.

Oguzhan has also translated it... and it is 26 Characters long.

Matt has decided upon using the original.. that is 22 character long.

OK, so Matt, Oguzhan and Symoon/Dominic now place there translated message in their own table. Something like the following..

0 0-21 "Set Angle and Velocity"

Where the first column represents the message number, the second represents the offsets of the message in memory and the third contains the message itself.

Finally, Matt, Oguzhan and Symoon or Dominic will send confirmation back to David, who will now know that the message has been settled on.

If David is sent a request and that the message is in his list, then he will simply send the relative message number back to the person.

If Any of the members decide that they can handle it, they might also compile the messages in memory. This will cut down alot of work

The messages do not require an "End" byte, Bit 7 of the last byte of the message will simply be set to one.

I hope that the message system is now clear in everyones mind.

If there are any other members of the Oric Project that come from another country, such as Germany or Finland or Sweden and would like to translate messages, please contact David, All Contact addresses are at the end of this Newsletter.

The Level mapping was going to be done by several different members of the group. Well, the format has changed, and there is no requirement anymore for level designing!

I Apologise to anyone who has done anything so far in this area.

We welcome Geoff Phillips to the group.

Geoff, who recently sent me a small routine that can simply generate a level from two random seeds, has decided to join the project.

As such, I have decided to put him in charge of Level generation and screen management.

Existing Members

I forgot to mention the additional members of the group in the last Newsletter. These are as follows..

Reponsible within the group for any cassette version of the Worms game.

As yet, I have put Rob down for ideas towards the game. He could be a very valuable member of the group, being a competant Machine code programmer. Unfortunately, as yet, he is not on the NET, so I will leave it to him to suggest an area of the project he might find confortable with.

IRC on Friday Night

For anyone wanting to get involved with the project, this is a must. A New meeting area will be set up every Friday night at 21:00 GMT to discuss the many areas of the Worms Project.

The IRC chat module can be downloaded from Oguzhan's site or elsewhere.

The existing members may decide, however, to use ICQ instead, because of its better facilities. What do you lot think?

Contact Addresses...

Alexios Chouchoulas (Alexios)

Title Menu Code & Screen

Bernhard Groene (Bernhard)

Ideas and Games Testing

(Symoon)

Ideas, French Messages

David Goodrum (David)

Ideas, Message Manager

Mike Pointier (DBUG)

Player Control Sub-System

Dominic Pessan (Dominic)

Ideas, French Messages

Fabrice Frances (Fabrice)

Disk Access Routines & Missile Trajectory Code

Hans Kraus (Hans)

Ideas

Kamel (Elrond)

Ideas, Animation's & Games Tester

Laurent Chiacchierini (Laurent)

Ideas

Jim Groom (Lothlin)

Ideas & Games Tester

Matthew Coates (Matt)

Ideas & English Messages

Oguzhan Yamez (Oguz)

Ideas & Turkish Messages

Raul Hakli (Raul)

Ideas

Jede (Jede)

Ideas & Animations

Jonathan Bristow (Twilight)

Newsletter Author, Music Code & Animations

Geoff Phillips (Geffers)

Screen & Level Manager

DBUG's DEFENCE FORCE SITE

Part of the site will be dedicated to the Oric Project. Any additional information, Logs from IRC meetings, Screenshots and Code already done will be found on this site.

It will be regularly updated and the section will be completed over the weekend (14-11-1998).

Animation's

I or through the group, am still waiting for Worm Animation's as described in the previous Newsletter as sent to all of you on the 5th November, 1998.

I will do the animation's myself, if I have no response soon.

Also, DBUGS site will hold some useful Oric utilities/tools for designing such sprites. Ched90 if a character Editor (6*8 Pixels), whilst OBED91 is a block editor (12*16).

Thats all for this newsletter, let the project develop onwards..