Corridor 92

For the TI-92+ By Jeff Wilcox

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23 Apr 2002 Jeff Wilcox

It's ready. After an epic drama of bugs, crashes, tests labs and missed deadlines... I have finished Demo 2.0. There were a few things I may add in later, and a few bugfixes, but this will be my last major update for a while. Things I mean to add in a few days are: Cool TICT logo, and ability to restart the game after you run out of lives rather than just exiting the game, and restarting manually. Unfortunately, I may not have much time. Finals are next week, and I have a big report and a comp sci project due this week (tomorrow in fact) as well as some tests. So, this is as far as I can go for now. I leave this summer to go for a little cruise in the pacific so I'll be away from a computer then too. But after that, I'll be anxious to program again. Enjoy the game.

17 April 2002 Jeff Wilcox

And another month. Leaps and bounds! Corridor 92 has progressed by leaps and bounds. There are so many improvments now, I cannot explain them all. I will say though that I had intended to release Demo 2.0 a long time ago, but have been plagued by several bugs, engine limitations, more bugs, lack of memory and lack of time. Also, I managed to score a nice fat F on my Discrete Math class, but luckily managed a D for this reporting period. All B's one A and a stupid D :( So I had to put C92 on hold for some time. But, aside from those little setbacks, Demo 1.9 is finished and has been released to my testers. Once I debug everything, it becomes Demo 2.0 and I release it! Proud owners of the Ti89 who feel left out with the release of Demo 1.0 only for the Ti92 should feel happy that I am going to focus on the Ti89 port after Demo 2.0's release. (So an angery mob of 89 users that flood my hotmail account with messages like: "Plz port C92 into C89, D00d!" will finally be put at ease.)

The upcoming list of improvements (shortened list)
    *16 Getable items
    *Objects (posts, pillars, barells, etc.)
    *Animated HUD weapons (all six of them)
    *Five unique enemies to fight.
    *Simple, yet effective Wolfenstien-like AI.
    *Removed "Doomguy" sprite. Now all Graphics are 100% original.
    *Bullet puffs/sparks against walls
    *Flickering ceiling lights
    *Dark levels (find the light switch, or IR Goggles)
    *Plasma balls and 8-directional rocket projectiles
    *Enemy and player hitscan weapons.
    *After some loop and math optimization, and very much due to great improvements in the FAT engine (some of which I requested) great speed has been added to Demo 1.9 and will be present in 2.0. This is the last Demo for C92 unless any bugfixes are needed. The next release will be Demo 2.0 for the Ti89 and after that, Corridor 92 itself, the full game. It has taken on quite a different gamestyle than originally intended, after I realized just how far I could push the envelope.

Future features are:
    *Precaching of sprites into archive memory, thereby eliminating the RAM issue.
    *Composite sprites, that will free 70% or greater of the sprite memory currently
     consumed in the archived files.
    *Interactive/environmental Main Menu.
    *Fully scripted intermission cut scenes
    *Well developed and entertaining storyline (already written)
    *And Multiplayer
    Multiplayer will feature new weapons and new pieces of equipment to use to make a one on one game alot of fun! I'll explain more when I get there. I should also add that Tom Nussbaumer's FAT engine has evolved along side C92 and I couldn't have gotten this far without Tom's regular improvements to the FAT engine. Thanks Tom, you rule!

The Chariot Gatling Rover... one of the more unfriendly characters you get to spend your bullets on... Notice the fully functional Gatling gun of your own :)

Just in case you wanted to smash some bots during your calculus class like I do, here's the "Teacher Key" screen to press in a hurry...

17 Mar 2002 Jeff Wilcox

Yet another month later... This is becoming a trend. Corridor 92 is very alive and well. I recently began to outfit my demo maps with sprites. Three catagories exist, Furnature, Items, and Beings. I would have liked to have all of them working by now, but a major bug in my code that was introduced back in the beginning only recently showed up with the addition of sprites. (For the rest of you FAT programmers... make sure you initialize the FAT_struct structure with the right number of textures. If you're one short, the demo will work, but will randomly crash when you least expect it! Very annoying.) I still have a large todo list, but the good news is, as soon as I can devise a way to save memory on small sprites that have to be put into a 64x64 pixel texture I'll have nothing left but easy stuff. AI is coming along nicely, and my approach seems to work very fast, but has some problems that would make the game seem unfair. I'll release a demo when I get it to work right.

The Doomguy is merely a temporary test sprite. Wait until my new sprites are finished! :)

19 Feb 2002 Jeff Wilcox

An entire month later... First off. Notice the total remodeling of the Corridor 92 homepage. I'm starting to get the hang of HTML programming... actually, I used the Splash! editor and did it in about 70 minutes. So, on to the NEWS.
Well, this is the moment we've all been waiting for. A long while ago I finished a DEMO of Corridor 92 and was planning on releasing it but I put it off and got buried under loads of work here at the Naval Academy, so C92 was shevled for a while.
Then a very good thing happened.
Tom Nussbaumer, of the TI CHESS TEAM pointed me to the newest version of the FAT engine as well as the source for his coveted DEMO4. So what does this mean? Well, take a look at the screen shot and see for yourself!
The sprite support comes at a hefty cost of frame rates and 20K though! But, beggers can't be choosers and you won't find me complaining. Although, in light of this new FAT library weighing in at 48K, I'll most likely have to cut out some minor 'eye candy' features.

Yes... that is a sprite. A monochome black sprite, but IT'S A SPRITE!!!

20 Jan 2002 Jeff Wilcox

An Update:
Alright. I've finished moving the wall textures to an external variable and compressed them using the same compression routines I used for the backgrounds and made somewhat of a disappointing discovery: I only gained about 1K and not the 5K+ I was hoping for! Apparently, the TIGCC compressor did a fine job with the imbedded data before I moved it, so the space saved wasn't too much. So basically, it didn't accomplish much, but it needed to be done since this new texture variable is one of what will be four texture banks that load up separately as you progress through the levels. Doors now work perfectly, and the engine now supports several classes of doors... button-activated, locked, unlocked, once-opening, timed, etc.
Also, I've received a lot of questions about a Ti-89 version and the simple answer is yes... however, not until I get working sprite support for the FAT engine. I anticipate a major slowdown with furniture, enemies and projectiles all on screen at once, so until I know how much that's going to kill the FPS I don't want to design maps that will be unplayable on an 89.

16 Jan 2002 Jeff Wilcox

Welcome to the grand opening of my Corridor 92 site!
Many thanks go out to Malcolm Smith for helping me with the HTML for this page.
Corridor 92 is my first game for a calculator, which happens to be a TI-92+. The game relies almost entirely on the FAT 3-D engine written by Tom Nussbaumer of the TI-Chess-Team (tict.ticalc.org)
It is written in TIGCC and uses the ExtGraph Library for a few graphical effects.
So what is the game all about you ask?
The future intro text:

The year is... a long time from now. Corridor 92 takes place in Isus, a military research center on the moon. The research going on there was naturally classified, but was rumored to involve something called Quantum-AI, a form of artificial intelligence far beyond human capacity.
Naturally the Quantum Mainframe known as 'CID' decides that people suck, and begins to kill every living thing there. Many advanced robotic military drones and weapons were also at the site and have been commandeered by CID. You are Master Chief Fortune, a Navy Seal and your mission couldn't be simpler... you are to penetrate into the heart of Isus all the way to Corridor 92 and destroy CID before it spreads it's influence to Earth. And you get to do it alone... just the way it should be. (I said it was simple, not easy)
At your disposal is an array of weapons from your trusty Kabar pig-sticker to your EM-187b Plasma Pistol. Rescue survivors if you find any, they might help you... But beware of CID, it's entire strategy for killing you was devised before your heart finished a beat.
At this stage, I lack sprites in the 3-D world. I have many of them drawn up, and am just awaiting some help in this department. Anyone who has come up with an awesome sprite routine for the FAT engine and are willing to give me a hand, please let me know.