read ebook on nes ?

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francois
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read ebook on nes ?

Post by francois »

Hello, thank you for this wonderfull forum !

Do you know the GameBoy Book Reader ( http://www.mqp.com/fun/index.html ), a tool for transforming .txt file to .gb file (open source software) ? It's amazing and useful, no ?

I would like the same tool, but txt2nes file.

This tool of my dream exists ? if not, do you think it would be easy to adapt GameBoy Book Reader to make NES Book Reader ? (I dont program cuputer, it's why I ask the question)
tepples
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Post by tepples »

It would be straightforward to write a .txt reader for the NES, but why? Book reader is intended for use where you can't use a PC, and the NES isn't nearly as portable as a Game Boy.
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Post by francois »

In fact, I have a portable DVD player with a nes emulator in it. I can play nes game on it. And I want to transform it in e-bbok reader .

This DVD player with NES emulator is the PDVD 8088 (see into google)
francois
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Post by francois »

Sorry, what mean "It would be straightforward to write a .txt reader for the NES", I dont understand, english is not my native language.
tepples
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Post by tepples »

define straightforward
What else did you not understand?
francois
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Post by francois »

ok, it's mean it can be easy to make a such tool, it's that ? A txt2nes software (or html2nes, why not) would be realy great to use with the PDVD 8088 !
I'm very interesting by utilities in .nes (calendar, calculator, text player, dictionary, etc...) for my PDVD
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tokumaru
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Post by tokumaru »

francois wrote:ok, it's mean it can be easy to make a such tool, it's that ?
Yes, it would be easy to code such a tool.
A txt2nes software (or html2nes, why not) would be realy great to use with the PDVD 8088 !
I don't know how much text you'd be able to put in a standard cart. Maybe some dictionary compression can be used to maximize the space. The HTML thing is interesting... a simple (very simple!) HTML interpreter for the NES would be fun to have... well, I'm not up for a task like this right now.
I'm very interesting by utilities in .nes (calendar, calculator, text player, dictionary, etc...) for my PDVD
Don't those chinese computers that are clones of the NES come with this kind of software? Maybe there are dumps of those... they probably require a keyboard and may not be 100% compatible with an actual NES, though.
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Memblers
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Post by Memblers »

I made a text viewer on NES once a long time ago, for this amusing crazy story someone wrote. I had to reformat it manually to 30 column though, which means there's a lot of hyphens and line breaks. I would've released it, but it's just another of one of my old progs that only runs on NESticle.

A variable-width font rendered into CHR-RAM, with the formatting etc. handled automatically would be a lot nicer.

There's a web browser that almost works on NES: http://www.sics.se/~adam/contiki/apps/webbrowser.html
I imagine that should work as an HTML viewer. It's written in C and compiles with cc65, but I think the "conio" library for the NES needs to be finished or rewritten.
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Post by tepples »

The biggest obstacle I see to implementing a full-screen variable-width text reader is the bankswitching. In order to fill the screen with variable-width text even in monochrome, you're going to need to use both pattern tables, and if you plan on scrolling the text (as opposed to just rewriting it), you're going to have to rewrite the background base address ($2000.4) twice per frame in order to see both pattern tables. This means you're going to have to either hit sprite 0 and waste time waiting on the second CHR bankswitch, or you'll need a board with both a scanline IRQ and CHR RAM. The only common board like this is TGROM (e.g. Mega Man 4), and even that's not all that common.

But if you'd accept a reader with only pageup/pagedown (not lineup/linedown), then it would only need sprite 0 at a constant position, and it would be easy to make a text reader with plain-old UOROM (mapper 2), which just about everything supports.

And are we going to need support for non-US-ASCII codepages such as latin-1, etc.?

Image
font data

Image
as seen on tv
francois
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Post by francois »

If it was possible to have this kind of tool, it would be great ! In the gameboy world they have such tool (txt2gb and html reader with hyperlink etc...)
Gameboy is such different than NES ? Do you thionk it's difficult to adapt this kind of program (it's only text and sting, and I think GB is 8 bit too)
I have very little dream :

1) You have a text
2) With a soft on Windows, you import the text.
3) Eventualy, you can select chapter and title for menu.
4) You clic on a button, and you have a .nes file.
5) on your NES console , you can read the text, scroll with up and down, turn page with right and left, and have a menu with chapters.

If I have a source code in NES langage of a simple book of that kind, I think I can make a tool to transform a txt in nes file in Windows.
francois
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Post by francois »

I don't find informations about text display in the NES documentation. How to developpe something to display text and scroll and turn page on NES? Please, help me, it very important for me .
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Bregalad
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Post by Bregalad »

Stuck with fixed width font, it is very easy to write text on the NES' screen.
Load each letter in pattern table and write the corresponding tile number on name tables.
If you arrange the letters in pattern table in maneer they matches ASCI definition, you just have to copy the text data to the nametable and go to the next row when a return character is encountered.
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Post by tepples »

Code: Select all

  |Fixed width fonts in a 30     |
  |column window aren't nearly as|
  |easy to read as variable width|
  |fonts.  If your DVD player's  |
  |NES emulator supports         |
  |the right mappers, then I     |
  |see no reason to compromise   |
  |functionality, especially when|
  |a variable width font could   |
  |look this good:               |
Image
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Dwedit
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Post by Dwedit »

As usual, your lowercase t's are still ugly, looking far too much like z's. :)
I actually though Tetanus on Drugs had an unimplemented "Drug Quiz" feature after misreading the quit option.
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tepples
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Post by tepples »

Dwedit wrote:As usual, your lowercase t's are still ugly, looking far too much like z's. :)
It's called the half-uncial 't'. Well at least it's not a cross :-)
I actually though Tetanus on Drugs had an unimplemented "Drug Quiz" feature after misreading the quit option.
Hmmm... Exodus for NES had multiple choice questions about the story of Moses. Thanks for the suggestion for M4, if I ever get to it ;-)
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