Subject: CRPG on the TI help

From: Owen Brand <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:14:21 -0500

I have been working diligently on this new RPG, "The Legend of Beryl  
Reichardt" for the TI.  I know XB is not the friendliest of  
environments for record keeping and storing mass amounts of variables,  
but I posted a topic to the Atariage forum about this very subject.  I  
have pasted my initial question below and added a link for anyone  
wanting to keep up with development...  I've had some good responses  
so far, but I thought I'd bring it to the table here-- since many of  
you are not regular visitors to our bustling Atariage community.  Any  
advice you all may have would be welcome, as I am entering the hot and  
heavy stages of game-planning now, and with a project of this scope, I  
do not want to start coding until I have a solid map for what I want  
to accomplish.  Thanks!

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/158604-using-open-%231-help/

****

Starting to really think about this filing system on my CRPG, "Legend  
of Beryl Reichardt," and thought that this might be a topic that could  
be discussed on its own thread.

I am in need of a concise, planned out, strutured filing system for  
the large amounts of variables contained in this game. I could pass  
them all as arrays all through the program, but I know that because of  
the varying environments that will be built into the gameplay, I will  
need seperate and independant records kept on DSK. This will make the  
RUNning of XB programs from other XB programs (for different game  
worlds, character definitions, battle sequences, etc.) easy to manage.  
Here's what I need help on::

I want to see and try several different examples of how this can be  
used to keep track of variables using the UPDATE mode.
I have written several very small programs in XB trying out this  
function of XB, but nothing real extravagant. I'd like to learn to be  
creative with this.

Any suggestions you guys could make, I'd love to learn. I have the XB  
manual examples (p.138-140) and a few I had to debug in "Old Dark  
Caves"... I'm learning, but I will need to be proficient in this if I  
want to have an organized game engine. Thanks alot in advance. =)

**XB examples** (p.140) "TI-99/4 TI Extended BASIC manual"

*Example 1

 >100 OPEN #1:"CS1",FIXED,OUT

*Example 2

 >300 OPEN #23:"DSK.MYDISK.X",RELATIVE 100,INTERNAL,UPDATE,FIXED

*Example 3

 >100 OPEN #243:A$,INTERNAL

Example 4

 >100 OPEN #17:"TP",OUTPUT

Thanks!

***Edit***

And remember.... This is an RPG, I'm not worried about a couple  
seconds of load time between a battle sequence and the next  
"exploration" screen. I'm more concerned with "orderly" than "fast". I  
know we can achieve both, but my primary concern isn't the speed. =)  
Slow and steady wins the race, I hear.....
This post has been edited by Opry99er: Yesterday, 12:35 AM
Owen Brand
Opry99er.com