wow, first one! ok, i downloaded this game in my calculator and ran it. then i chose "new game" from the list and then except for the arrow keys, no other keys work. and i had to take the freakin' batteries out to reset my calculator. could someone tell me how to start the game.

Once a new game has started, you have to go through all of the selection screens before you can exit. UP/DOWN will change the stat to upgrade, RIGHT will upgrade the stat 2 points. When the counter above (starts at 170) reaches zero, you will progress to the next screen.

At the next screen, pick a spell (the first one being HEAL). At the next screen pick a skill (you can choose any of the 8).

I'm sure Alex Highsmith (the original author) had some reason why he didn't include an exit key.

What does tetris attack have to do with 4? Why is it called that?

It doesn't have to do with 4. This was a game nintendo made for the gameboy, nes, and snes. I simply used the same name. They probably did it to get people's attention. The only relation I can see to tetris is that they're both fast puzzle games. If you read the readme you would know this. No one ever does. I don't know why i ever include them.

I love readme's sometimes I read them and skip the game because they were so much fun!! ;)

Um... there's a bug in the 85 port =\
When you're in the battle screen you need to hold the up key to make the arrow stay in place if you want to attack, etc. (any icon in the upper menu). Also, if you go into the menu on the main screen the selection also keeps moving down (very annoying to choose something from the menu).

I believe you need to replace your calculator's batteries.

I'm using YAS to play it so that might be why :P

I realized that, my 86 has the same problem. Once the batteries get low enough to require a level 6 or above contrast, the calculator acts like the DOWN key is being held down.

The TI-86 uses port 0 (normally used for the keypad) to also tell you how low the batteries are. If you don't use the proper mask, or if you don't restore the mask every time before reading from the port, then you will end up reading the battery level instead of a key!

Why does the "problem" occur only when the batteries are low?
Also, why would the problem still occur even when the keyport is not being read directly(the places that "kane" is reporting that this occurs uses the standard GET_KEY function)?

I don't know this for a fact, but the getkey function may be getting a value that is equal to the value returned when the down key is pressed. I've only experienced this problem when my battery level is extremely low.

(Does anyone else think that the contrast level might have something to do with it? I thought it could for a second, but isnt the contrast read from port 3?)

You can convert the 83 versioin the same way you would an 82 game and it will run in YAS

I'm sure Kirk meant port 1. Port 1 is used for the keypad, not 0 (port 0 controls the screen write offset). I didn't know that it used the port for that, but I can tell you how to fix it. At the start of your key reading code, reset the port:

ld a,$ff
out (1),a

This should only be a problem if you disable interrupts or use a custom handler and don't call the ROMs, because the ROM handler seems to take care of this for you. This might be a side effect of YAS, but I have no idea. Just do it and it'll fix it :)

Thanks for the help =]

So are the memory corrupting bugs fixed on the 83 ASHELL version?

Read the last two sentences of the first paragraph of this news article. The answer is YES.

I played it last nite and the memory corrupting bugs are still present if you die in combat

I've had no problems since implimenting the "bug" fix. I'll look into it further, though.

I got the version from ticalc i'll try the one on your page next but to go more into detail...
the bug seems to only occur during combat if you die when the game over screen appears i hit either enter or clear to return to sos (can't remember which key..sorry) and it doesn't exit from assembly mode and it resets my calcs mem.

I apologize for an off-topic comment, but in case you haven't noticed, ticalc.org now uses a different icon for animated screenshots (different color)! I think this is newsworthy (by ticalc.org's standards, as well as my own)! If nothing else, it's pretty convenient!...

Yes, that's true. However, we never know what our users will criticize as being unnewsworthy. But it's very true, we now have a new icon indicating animated screenshots. To see it, look at the recent updates list, they're kind of purple-ish. Right now there are 62 animated screenshots.

Well, it's good that you've started with the
animated screenshots, but when are you going to
make them for lower-level calcs such as the 83?

Nick is /starting/ with the lower level calculator. :)

There are a few animated screenshots for 83 already... mostly in the SOS directory.