Video

Was Pyramid a text adventure? I recall an audio tape cassette game titled Pyramid for the CoCo2, which I never got too far into that - just a few chambers.

I don't know why FM shouldn't be part of chiptunes, especially since the AdLib first came out in 1987. I feel like FM is such a big part of 80s music, too.

Welll... I'm still not 100% sure on that. In the annotated description of the disassembled code, it appears the ABYE sets your EXTERION (heart rate) = 102 * STRENGTH. Dunno why 102 (or 0x66 hex), but it means the stronger you are (STR) the larger it is going to impact the heart rate. I never really viewed it as poison or harmful, but more as a "test" of where your stats are - just since my rule of thumb was: if you can survive that drink, then you're probably ready to go to the next level. But it's a risk - if you're not ready for it, it's Game Over (and I can agree it's not really worth the risk - either way it is a nice life lesson: {a} don't risk drinking random stuff, {b} if you do and survive, you're probably tough as nails! ) Another subtle clue is what the word "abye" itself means: "to pay the penalty; redeem" in contrast to the meaning of the words "hale" and "thews" (the other flasks). From that, then maybe it is true the abye one is best avoided - but still I always drank them before going to the next level, as my "I'm ready to go!" self-check.

No, it's always been 40col - at least ever since I found it in a dumpster in 1988. No transplant as far as I'm aware. Though as I recall, the story is Commodore technically released the 80-col like a month before the 40-col (in around 1980?). Perhaps they used some 80-col CRTs at some point, but still installed the 40-col character ROM/video? (if that even makes sense)

Pls don't tell the SYNDICATE!

The early Commodore PET's like this (1980 and earlier), they didn't have programmable character sets yet. This is all stock PETSCII character codes as set in the character set ROM. But there are a few tricks if you overwrite certain characters fast enough, the combination can briefly appear as a different symbol.

@@voidstar1337 It must've been another 8-bit PC I was thinking about. There was a CZcams video showing lines fanning out from the center and a platform game that looked quite good, both black and white. Might've been on the 8-bit Guy's channel. Perhaps a Sinclair or Acorn.

Yep, Appendix C of the original manual is all about ZSAVE. You could even name your saved games. The code of the game is exactly 8KB (the initials of one of the developers is the last two bytes), but the runtime of the game needs a bit of RAM to function, so the game still requires a 16KB RAM system. And true, I think it was mostly under appreciated in how they did the audio effects with a 6-bit DAC. Combined with the torch and endurance (heartbeat) mechanic - many games have time limits, but I've yet to see one that has a reason for the time limit (that is, integrating into the gameplay a natural time limit due to just running out of resources-- and yet, the game could still technically be beaten without a torch). For all the fancy modern gaming, and yet every dungeon is just miraculously illuminated.

@@voidstar1337 I just reread the instruction booklet after all these years. I had forgotten about the save function but largely because we didnt have a tape recorder to do it. Also just used our TV to play the game! I had the keyboard and cartridge only :)

It's a "CPU Utilization" graph, an idea borrowed from the prior Caliope player. It might only appear in VGA output, as I think there were some tricks to drawing that far to the edge (but I could be wrong). The little LED display is from TechDungeon, I'll add a note about it in the Description.

Odd. The "graph" simply appears as a flickering line that seems to keep time with the music.

Various contributors! Updated the description to clarify.

Added more time offset stuff in the description to more easily get to the other demo'd titles. Top down racing isn't for everyone, but the "zoom in/out" scaling this one does is interesting. A kind of Pole Position remake would be great, someday!

I was experimenting with other ZSMs players and some of them didn't support long filenames. So I had to adjust those to 8.3 filenames and since Melodius sorts alphabetically I wanted them in a specific order. The original names were spelled out (long filenames) in both the ones you mentioned. And at some point I swapped between the two titles and forgot to update the description. So just a mix up in preparing a demo and testing the system with multiple players.

@@voidstar1337 Ah i see, that makes sense.

strategic hack is to climb up from 3 to 2 after defeating everything BUT the wizard's image and take everything with you. climb up to level 2 using the vision scroll to find a long dead end and drop everything but a few things like hale flasks (never under any circumstances should you ever use an abye flask) then wait for the enemies. by the time you get through, the wizards image is eliminated with a single ring hit and the galdrogs on level four are easy peasy 👍

@@mikepadget9777 I think from reverse engineering the code, someone did determine that it's true, the abye flask had no benefit. But I view it differently: being able to down an abye flask is a signal that you're ready to move to the next level of the dungeon.

LED Display form Tech Dungeon, uses an Arduino. They have lots of examples, but I did write the X16 program for it though :) Fades and cursor blinking does need an actual little for-loop program.