Re: Single load - OK, this is what it all boils down to

[BLuRry <brendan.robert@gmail.com>]

On Dec 23, 2:50 pm, lyricalnanoha
<lyricalnan...@usotsuki.hoshinet.org> wrote:
> I'm in over my head now >:P
>
> My wondering about single-load stuff, about replacing OSes, etc., comes
> down to the idea that I want to make a nice Menu System and load games
> from it.  You know, kind-of like Beautiful Boot, but a little more
> powerful.  (Beautiful Boot does not need a DOS to operate, and uses the
> DOS 3.3 filesystem.)
>
> So basically I'll need to come up with some sort of a mini-DOS, using RWTS
> directly.  Leaves me with having to do just a few things.
>
> 1. Load the disk catalog into memory
> 2. Load a Binary program and run it
> 3. Load an Applesoft program and run it, cold-initializing BASIC by hand
> 4. Load an Integer program and run it, cold-initializing BASIC by hand
> 5. Identify the ROM BASIC (I know how to do this, I think), and load
>     FPBASIC/INTBASIC off disk if needed.  If the files aren't present, or
>     if the system has only 48K, display "LANGUAGE NOT AVAILABLE", and
>     return to the menu.  Basically just building up on 2-4.
>
> I suppose it could even use a custom DOS, if I put together tools to copy
> files to and from DOS 3.3...
>
> (This would look REALLY nice if it had a set of optional ".TH" thumbnail
> screenshots or titles!  Like Print Shop's graphic selector.)
>
> -uso.

That sounds so much like what I wanted to do with the game server
code, it's almost scary -- except of course you're talking about
something that is disk-based.  :-D  I was thinking of taking
screenshots in applewin and reducing the images to smaller captioned
pictures.  For this I wrote some code to convert gif images to near
equivalents in DHGR -- but was a bit stumped at the best way to do
something similar in HGR because I was unable to come up with a decent
algorithm to account for hires artifacts.