UPDATED: 10/01/18
Updated the font. Removed hard edges, softened them, expanded all images to be at least 7-pixels across, added some descenders, and completed the remaining drawing elements for the butterfly vector palette. Also installed standard PICO-8 licensing emblem and notification.
Details: https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=31927
Updated to save all SRAM now. CSTORE() RELOAD()
This UPDATED cart (09-28-18) now takes advantage of the ability to save 4096-bytes externally, thus you have 17-pages to work in. Were you using only 256-bytes, you could only have a single 16x14 (224-bytes) text page to edit.
To see the original code and the ability to easily load and save 4096-bytes of permanent memory that works and is recorded in Immediate/ Splore/ EXE/ Linux/ Macintosh/ HTML/ JS as well as functions correctly in the browsers of Firefox/ Opera/ Google Chrome, go HERE:
https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=31950
To skip the logo, hold (Z) and tap it when the monkey appears. If this is your first time to see this cart, sit back and watch the show. :)
Quick Help:
Once the page appears with the light orange dots on it, you are ready to begin.
Arrow keys navigate. Move the cursor on the page mark at the bottom-left or bottom-right hand corners of the page and tap (Z) to move forwards or backwards a single page. Hold to repeat. You have 17-pages to work with.
In editor, press (Z) to bring up the character select. Press (Z) again to type that character. Staying in character select, hold (X) to show arrows left and right of select. From HERE still holding (X), press LEFT or RIGHT to select a new 5x5 character set.
The 5th set is icons with faces, emoticons, animals, and other ornaments.
Release (X) to return to character select. Tap (X) by itself to exit.
In editor, press (X) to erase the character beneath the cursor.
In editor, hold (Z) and (X) together to save your notepad work. You can test this by rebooting anywhere and in any console.
Information: Below are icons. After page is the page #. After that is the X/Y location of the cursor. After the "chip" icon is the amount of memory you have remaining to type in. If you are running it for the first time, you should have welcome text appear above and have 4070-bytes to type in.
These are the basic instructions. Look below for more details and information.
Any carts below this is for an earlier version of Easy Notepad and may not save your notepad work correctly if run Online. There are additional notes to the system, however.
Do you like what I've done here ? Click on the gray star above seen just to the right of the CC to show your appreciation !
NEW VERSION, FASTER, BETTER. STILL RETAINS ALL YOUR PREVIOUS NOTES DESPITE VERSION UPDATE!
Post your pictures online made with the butterfly or spider set by pressing [F1]. Show your old-school art ability ! :)
09-27-16
-
key (a)+(b) now save. press
(a) first. future release
will bring up menu of opts -
got control box to move
intelligently if its in the
way of your typing -
** hard work! greatly sped up
whole system by only
redrawing when necessary
shouldn't be necessary,
i'm running a quad-core! - added keyclick for keypad
? note! i may remove the mary
miss spider vectors in place
of supporting the butterfly
shapes with 22 degree angle
triangles. what do you think?
? for now you have 6-keypads
next release will have option
to show basic or advanced
? next release will have true
paintbox - explained later
09-26-16
-
extra chars flag, they only
appear if you trigger them
from the menu -
fixed error where you could
type over page mark -
made softer sound for change
font -
tricky! got true diagonal
keystrokes working -
got the hold (b) left+right
working to change font -
made a retro 'butterfly' for
old-school character doodling -
made a 'mary miss spider' set
of vertices for later page
doodling - set it so it only centers
after a keypress on letter
page or digits page
09-25-16
- beefed up the lowercase width
looks great now for 8x8.
A labor of love ? Data entry. :)
Quite a bit going on here.
You have 34 text pages to work with. Uppercase/Lowercase letters, a few extra characters including some fun stuff.
== keyboard instrux ==
edit:
arrows navigate
[a] enter typing mode
[b] space, hold to repeat
[left+right] menu (not yet active)
[up+down] save work
type:
arrows select character
[a] type this character
[a] hold to repeat
[b] tap to exit type mode
[b] hold for next font page
menu (not yet active):
left and right select option
up and down select line
[a] do this option
[b] exit menu
select the open door icon to
exit the program.
Changing pages ?
You have 34-pages to work with, working with 8192 bytes of persistent data. press (A) on any of the page tabs in the bottom left and right hand corners of the page.
I'm working on a menu that will make changing pages a lot easier. Gimme a sec will ya ? :)
Typing ?
The cursor always jumps back to the center after you enter a key. If it's the first font page, then that is letter M. Learn to type quickly this way. This is a text-entry method I developed back on the Apple ][ when I wanted to make a fancy name entry for high score.
By jumping to the center character each click, your brain learns in a short amount time how to type rapidly on this keypad.
Here's what I have left to do (icon bar w commands):
I'm also wondering if the little pink dots help or they should be removed to have a true blank white page for the notepad. What do you think ?
Lookin' nice! What are the chances of getting the keyboard to slide up/down automatically to keep it from hiding what the cursor's doing?
(Those opposing-direction key combos won't work on most controllers.)
Thanks, Tyroney ! Years ago I built databases from the ground up. I actually have a version of this for Gameboy Advance too, but I never got around to finishing the menu.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4b5ry0ivc9lxhrx/GBA_Notepad_dw817.zip?dl=0
Since I'm redrawing everything every step during keyboard input (yeah really bad programming to do that I know). This should actually be relatively easy to do - to slide the keyboard around so you can see what its typing.
Regarding the controller. Yes. Now I can make it a player 2 button or something, but there's just not much to work with when you only have 2-buttons and arrows total for a little word-processor. :)
I guess the question is, would a 2-player 2-buttons to bring up menu/save work be more desirable than hitting LEFT/RIGHT or UP/DOWN simultaneously ?
I think we need more buttons ! Even good old NES had 8 on one controller:
Left, Right, Up, Down, (A), (B), Select, and Start.
I would suggest replacing "hold button for specific time" commands with those that depend on holding two buttons together.
For example, instead of holding the (X) button for some time to switch pages, how about pressing LEFT or RIGHT while holding (X)? This would help make input a bit faster.
Also, I would like to note that, on many controllers, holding opposite directions at the same time (LEFT+RIGHT or UP+DOWN) is physically impossible.
Last night I was thinking I could bring up the main menu (not yet written) by holding both buttons together.
I like your idea of (B) and arrow keys LEFT and RIGHT to choose font.
By Jiminy, I'll do it !
Hey dw187, could you potentially shorten the intro or make it skip-able? It takes way too long to boot up the program :/ Just a suggestion
It should be skippable. Just hold down (A). Wow, you got patience. Me ? Anytime I try out a new video game or conversion, like for NES, I'm always a-whacking that (A) or (B) button to skip stuff.
I'm just about ready to post. Got your hold (B) and tap left and right to select characters. I - ahh - got a little creative, hope you don't mind.
Beefed up the lowercase, looks really sharp now, and added two new 'doodling' pads. One of which looks like Mary Miss Spider herself, the other, a very retro butterfly.
With them you can doodle all kinds of things. The 'spider' limbs will let you draw vectors like good old VideoTEL did, and maybe a shade better.
The butterfly lets you go old school and whip up pages like the PET used to do.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/db/PET_Keyboard.svg/640px-PET_Keyboard.svg.png
I've uploaded to a game site now ! You can find my program HERE:
http://www.kongregate.com/games/dw817/easy-notepad
I use Adblocker Plus all the time to block all ads. Might be good to do so there as well.
... can anyone suggest a game site outside of Lexaloffle I can upload one of my carts to that doesn't have advertising ?
@dw817 Well, running your own server would probably be the best idea. Though port forwarding is dangerous and you should use something like CloudFlare to protect yourself.
... I don't have a server (and not sure how to set up one given the chance). What is Port Forwarding mean and CloudFlare ?
Thanks, Tyroney. That was remarkably helpful !
https://dw817.itch.io/easy-notepad
Still getting lag in Firefox. Not so much in Chrome.
I see other people have posted projects that are downloadable. Perhaps ... I can finally post some of my game making utilities from BlitzMAX there ?
... I still don't know what Port Forwarding is - or CloudFlare, though.
Tomorrow when I get back from everything, I wanted to update the character set for this. Currently the font is 7-pixels across and the digits are 5-pixels across ... not the best idea.
Will fix them up then. Hope to see you there !
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