1.8.0.1 3 July 2019

This is a maintenance release fixing some minor bugs:

• Fix graphical glitch when saving over an archived file
• Fix autoarchiving on time-out
• Made save delete confirmation screen also use splash background

1.8.0 1 July 2019

This is the first officially-ready release of Open Adventure CE. No options menu or scroll back is yet implemented, but the game is fully playable. I believe all bugs have been fixed.

To play Colossal Cave Adventure, you'll need to send to your calculator the files in the ZIP:

• ADVENT is the main executable game.
• ADVENT_data.8xv is the AdvenDat appvar, which holds the game's dungeon data. You'll probably want to keep it archived it to save RAM.
• DrSans.8xv is a font file the game needs.
• Times.8xv and Times_mini.8xv are also font files, but you only need to send one of them. Times.8xv is the full Times font pack, while Times_mini.8xv is the same font, but omits several unused sizes to save like 30 K.

The game program itself is about 24 K, and requires 50 K once it decompresses itself. The dungeon file is another 52 K. The fonts add another 45 K, 75 K if you send the complete Times font pack.

Changes from the last beta:

• Show message confirming that FILENAME verb did, in fact, change the file name.
• Added a fancy splash graphic for the title screen. It costs 6 K of space.
• Releases will no longer contain FontLibC or the fixed FileIOC libraries, as they have been formally published at the normal location of the C SDK libraries: https://github.com/CE-Programming/libraries/releases
• Turned on compression for the main executable. This more than halves its size!
• Fixed memory leak in Resume menu.
• README.txt has been added into release ZIP.

Release 28 June 2019

Colossal Cave Adventure is nearly ready for a first release. I believe all bugs have been fixed. Some enhancements still remain to be done, but they are purely cosmetic and will likely not appear in the first release.

Unfortunately, I found a bug in automatic saving in the previous release. This release fixes that and make some minor size optimizations. Those optimizations also break existing save files, though judging by traffic, it looks like that will affect almost no one.

To play Colossal Cave Adventure, you'll need to send to your calculator the files in the ZIP:

• ADVENT is the main executable game.
• ADVENT_data.8xv is the AdvenDat appvar, which holds the game's dungeon data. You'll probably want to keep it archived it to save RAM. This file has changed, please update your calculator's copy.
• fontlibc.8xv is a library that provides prettier text. It hasn't yet been released with the C libraries, but it is planned to be.
• DrSans.8xv is a font file the game needs.
• Times.8xv and Times_mini.8xv are also font files, but you only need to send one of them. Times.8xv is the full Times font pack, while Times_mini.8xv is the same font, but omits several unused sizes to save like 30 K.

The game program itself is about 50 K. The dungeon file is another 45 K. The fonts add another 45 K, 75 K if you send the complete Times font pack.

Release 27 June 2019

Colossal Cave Adventure is nearly ready for a first release. I believe all bugs have been fixed. Some enhancements still remain to be done, but they are purely cosmetic and will likely not appear in the first release.

To play Colossal Cave Adventure, you'll need to send to your calculator the files in the ZIP:

• ADVENT is the main executable game.
• ADVENT_data.8xv is the AdvenDat appvar, which holds the game's dungeon data. You'll probably want to keep it archived it to save RAM. This file has changed, please update your calculator's copy.
• fontlibc.8xv is a library that provides prettier text. It hasn't yet been released with the C libraries, but it is planned to be. This file has changed, please update your calculator's copy.
• DrSans.8xv is a font file the game needs.
• Times.8xv and Times_mini.8xv are also font files, but you only need to send one of them. Times.8xv is the full Times font pack, while Times_mini.8xv is the same font, but omits several unused sizes to save like 30 K.

The game itself is about 100 K. The fonts add another 45 K, 75 K if you send the complete Times font pack.

Changes:

• Improved formatting of text messages throughout the game.
• The dungeon file has been updated to use the new formatting. If you do not update your dungeon file, messages will be cut off.
• You can now un/archive files from the resume menu using STAT. (Unarchiving does not work due to a bug in FileIOC. The next update to FileIOC will contain a fix for the bug and unarchiving will automatically become functional. Overwriting an archived save still functions correctly.)
• Display an error when attempting to save if there is very low free RAM.
• Will automatically rearchive a save file if it was archived.
• Prevents massive graphical trouble if a garbage collection occurs when attempting archiving.
• This casues the screen to flicker for a moment. Every program should do this when archiving, but few (none?) do.
• Fix graphical garbage on homescreen after quitting if you ran Adventure without using a shell.

Beta 24 June 2019

To play Colossal Cave Adventure, you'll need to send to your calculator the files in the ZIP:

• ADVENT is the main executable game.
• ADVENT_data.8xv is the AdvenDat appvar, which holds the game's dungeon data. You'll probably want to keep it archived it to save RAM. This file has changed, please update your calculator's copy.
• fontlibc.8xv is a library that provides prettier text. It hasn't yet been released with the C libraries, but it is planned to be. This file has changed, please update your calculator's copy.
• DrSans.8xv is a font file the game needs.
• Times.8xv and Times_mini.8xv are also font files, but you only need to send one of them. Times.8xv is the full Times font pack, while Times_mini.8xv is the same font, but omits several unused sizes to save like 30 K.

The game itself is about 100 K. The fonts add another 45 K, 75 K if you send the complete Times font pack.

This release fixes a (possibly) game-breaking (but non-crashing) bug, as well as makes some general improvements:

• Resume menu is now a thing! You can also press DEL to delete a save directly from the resume menu.
• Fixed a small bug in FontLibC. Please update your FontLibC binary.
• Fixed up dungeon file so it doesn't have lots of newlines we need to ignore. This saves a few hundred bytes. You don't NEED to update your dungeon file, but if you don't, there'll be random newlines all over the place.
• Command history now goes up to 256 entires. Why not? This game doesn't use a ton of heap.
• Fixed issue with randomness not working right.
• Above fix also enables angry dwarves.

There's still stuff to do to make it better, but there shouldn't be any need for changes that break saving, hopefully.

Beta 22 June 2019

To play Colossal Cave Adventure, you'll need to send to your calculator the files in the ZIP:

• ADVENT is the main executable game. The old name, CCAVEADV, is no longer used.
• ADVENT_data.8xv is the AdvenDat appvar, which holds the game's dungeon data. You'll probably want to keep it archived it to save RAM.
• fontlibc.8xv is a library that provides prettier text. It hasn't yet been released with the C libraries, but it is planned to be.
• DrSans.8xv is a font file the game needs.
• Times.8xv and Times_mini.8xv are also font files, but you only need to send one of them. Times.8xv is the full Times font pack, while Times_mini.8xv is the same font, but omits several unused sizes to save like 30 K.

The game itself is about 100 K. The fonts add another 45 K, 75 K if you send the complete Times font pack.

This latest beta fixes some bugs and adds some improvements:

• Fixed allowing you to create a zero-length file name, which will cause a delayed crash.
• Now you can exit the file name entry prompt; prevents infinite loop if you have no save games (or can't remember the name).
• Fixed bug where you had to truncate all commands to five letters (e.g. "resum" instead of "resume", "inven" instead of "inventory"). Turns out it was caused by Mateo. Thanks, jacobly, for fixing it.
• Fixed possible weird issue with "fill" not correctly refilling the bottle, and needing to use "get water" twice to refill the bottle. Unfortunately, I have no idea why it wasn't working, other than that it was due to bad code generation from Zilog's compiler.
• Reduced the game binary by 6 K by changing macros into functions; this fixed the previous bug for some reason.
• Renamed executable from CCAVEADV to the more traditional but slightly less descriptive ADVENT.
• Similarly, the dungeon file is now named AdvenDat.
• Quitting the game now returns to the main menu.
• Added screen dimming for inactivity.
• Added anti-battery-killing feature: game will now automatically exit (without saving) if you don't press any keys for a few minutes. The OS, in turn, will eventually trigger its APD feature.
• Added quick abort feature: press ON and then CLEAR to trigger an immediate exit (without saving)

There's still stuff to do to make it better, but there shouldn't be any need for changes that break saving, hopefully.

Second beta 22 June 2019

To play Colossal Cave Adventure, you'll need to send to your calculator the files in the ZIP:

• ADVENT is the main executable game.
• ADVENT_data.8xv is the AdvenDat appvar, which holds the game's dungeon data. You'll probably want to keep it archived it to save RAM.
• fontlibc.8xv is a library that provides prettier text. It hasn't yet been released with the C libraries, but it is planned to be.
• DrSans.8xv is a font file the game needs.
• Times.8xv and Times_mini.8xv are also font files, but you only need to send one of them. Times.8xv is the full Times font pack, while Times_mini.8xv is the same font, but omits several unused sizes to save like 30 K.

The game itself is about 100 K. The fonts add another 45 K, 75 K if you send the complete Times font pack.

This release improves saving and loading:

• Resume code actually verifies the save header and displays an appropriate error message if the header is invalid.
• Save code will refuse to overwrite a file that isn't an Adventure save.
• When you resume a game, the name is saved.
• If you then save again, it defaults to using that name again.
• If the idle timeout timer expires, it will attempt to save to the file you resumed from.
• You can also manually specify the idle timeout's save file name using the command "filename". This is useful when you start a new game.
• Adding the new command "filename" required changing the dungeon file. You will need to update your dungeon file.
• Idle timeouts tweaked.

There's still stuff to do to make it better, but there shouldn't be any need for changes that break saving, hopefully.

Beta 20 June 2019

This looks like it's actually playable and doesn't have any fatal bugs, so I'm publishing it as a beta. Save and resume appears to work, but you have to use "resum" as the resume command; "resume" with an E doesn't work for some reason. There's still stuff to do to make it better, but there shouldn't be any need for changes that break saving, hopefully.

To play this, you'll need to send to your calculator every file in the ZIP.

• CCAVEADV is the main executable game.
• dungeon.8xv is the CCaveDun appvar, which holds the game's dungeon data. You'll probably want to keep it archived it to save RAM.
• fontlibc.8xv is a library that provides prettier text. It hasn't yet been released with the C libraries, but it is planned to be.
• DrSans.8xv and Times.8xv are fonts the game uses.

The game itself is about 100 K. The fonts add another 75 K, though most of that is the larger sizes of the Times font.