Hello from Ottawa

[AGMS]

My old NABU is now in York University's archives, but this is what it looked like when I packed it away in 2007. I did get the CP/M option near the end and we had an external disk drive most of the time we rented the NABU (for saving things, like a videotape database).

[My Nabu in 2007 before shipping it out]

I'm starting to have a look at programming the NABU, initially with Pong Wars (a bit like a Brick-out game) as a learning exercise. I need to figure out some fancy integer collision math, and then try doing remote networked multiplayer.



It took a couple of frustrating days to get MAME working in Linux (was not connecting to the network, tried out alternate ROM versions which broke other things, and finally found it was the MAME baud rate).

Anyway, my next step is trying to compile some code. My notes are at https://web.ncf.ca/au829/WeekendReports ... sBlog.html, mostly describing the dead ends and the documentation I found along the way. By the way, NABU-LIB's readme is unexpectedly also useful for describing how to do that compiling step and has example code and a skeleton. Thanks DJ Sures!

- AGMS20240228

[LeoBinkowski]

Well, welcome to another from Ottawa.

We really have to have a local meetup. I've tried to interest the museum of Science and Technology, but they're not that interested.

Your project does look interesting. Good luck and keep us informed!

[AGMS]

An Ottawa meetup would be great. Maybe some summer day, or alternate Tuesdays in February when it's super warm due to climate change I'm near the Tunney's Pasture area, so any location near an O-Train stop is convenient for me for a meet-up. Or we could meet at my house if the group isn't too large.

Pong Wars should be a relatively easy NABU project, networked and multi-joystick will make it more fun. Miniputt Golf would be the next project, but there's a big algorithmic optimisation research project there for making tile sets that not only show the background picture, but also handle animation of portions of the background (thinking classic windmill obstacle).