Back around 1986 COMPUTE! Magazine dropped support for the Texas Instruments home computers (my particular interest was the TI-99/4A as that is what we had at home.) This meant there would be no more program listings for TI computers in the magazine, and fewer articles until all disappeared.
As a budding young programmer, I wrote COMPUTE! a letter asking for permission to create and distribute my own TI conversions of programs found in their magazines. I had four in mind at the time: "Hickory Dickory Dock", "Leaping Larry", "Laser Chess", and "Tiles", though others would follow for a total of three finished games and several unfinished. (I am particularly proud of "Block Battle", for which I began learning TMS-9900 assembly language with my brand-new MiniMemory cartridge. Prior to this point all my programs were done in TI BASIC.)
I have had my TI rig set up on-and-off for the past several years with the intention to get to know programming better, now with an Editor/Assembler cartridge and Extended BASIC. Emulation has proven to be a boon for me in this regard. To start, I took a cassette recording (I had no disk drive back then) of "Tiles" and recorded it onto my laptop. I attempted to use a program called "CS1er," but it was unable to decode the wav. It sat for several months until I came across "Tape994a" which was able to correctly decode into a TIFiles file. I have been using Classic99 to re-work the program, and I have used CS1er to convert to save TIFiles formate back to wav and load into my real TI, both with great success. This is just a start.
Anyway, below is a program screen shot, the original wav recorded of the tape from 1988, as well as the TIFiles decode and the TI BASIC listing. I will admit, the program is horrible and fairly sloppy. Hey, I was 14 at the time and had no real programming training. I am happy to note the may recent work on the program has reduced its size by 768 bytes, four file records, and 55 program lines. The program is faster, cleaner, and has a little more text to it. I am working to make it less linear and with more subroutines, fewer variables, and a few more features and options. My goal is to remain true to the original COMPUTE! program while adding some TI-specific twists. (As a side note, I never used the original listings in the magazine for my conversions, I just used the article to define the parameters of the program and started coding.)
Click here for a fairly accurate approximation of how this wouldQuick instructions: Tiles is a memory game. You will be presented with an increasing number of tiles to find in a pattern up to 30 tiles. Use the keyboard or joystick to play. Standard key scan 1 and 2 for player one and two, respectively: ESDXQ and IJKMY for up, left, right, down, "fire". Joystick 1 left answers "1" or "Y" and right answers "2" or "N" for appropriate questions. Space bar and fire are interchangeable.
You will be shown the tiles then asked to hide them. You lose points the longer you wait to hide them: 60 points if your score is 5000 or over, 40 points for 2000 and over, and 20 points for under 2000. After hiding you have to find them. You score 100 points for each find, and are penalized 100 points for each miss. The game ends if you run out of points.
When playing two players, the first player to 30 tiles is the game winner. The player with the most points is the point winner. The high score for each player is remembered during the gaming session. (I have coded in a points-tie condition, but not a tiles-tie condition, yet.)
To quit the game, press CLEAR or QUIT. After a game is over you will be asked if you want to play again.
Speech is available if you are using the Terminal Emulator II catridge and a speech synthesizer -- neither of which I actually owned at the time, so I just kinda winged it. You cannot select speech if you run the program in TI Extended BASIC as Tiles uses the TE-II "SPEECH" device. Selecting speech with no synthesizer attached will break the program.
I'm expecting to have a reworked TI BASIC version finished in a few weeks or so, with an Extended BASIC version to follow. Assembly language version may follow one day. But definitely other programs as I locate and sample the cassettes.
I have been working on this a little here and there, stealing time away from work and classes when I can. I am happy with the progress I have been making, including redoing some of the graphics and screen layouts. The results follow.
I also found my stash of COMPUTE! magazines, including the issue from which this program was converted. "Tiles" comes from COMPUTE! Magazine, Volume 10, Number 2, Issue 93, February 1988, Pages 30-46. The program was originally written by Rick Harrison, with versions for the Commodore 64, Apple ][, Atari 8-bit, IBM PCjr, Amiga, and Atari ST. The Texas Instruments conversion is based upon the game description in the article. The graphics are based upon the Atari ST version, with the screen layout matched as closely to the original versions as possible.