A new "old school" game
PostPosted: Sat Dec 11, 2004 7:56 am
I thought about whether this should go in one of the art galleries, since I'm showing off the art right now (it's a non-playable trailer), but then OTOH it's going to be a game eventually, so I'll put it here.
This is a game for the Commodore 64 I've been working on, and here's the initial cutscene. Yup, it's in manga-style. I had a native speaker help me a bit with some of the translations.
Those of you who want to run this on a real Commodore 64 (that's probably only me
), check the compatibility list as a few third-party disk speeders will NOT work with it.
Those of you who want to run it on an emulator (the vast majority), run it on VICE, and make sure that true 1541 emulation is on. Mac owners, run it under Power64, and make sure 1541 emulation is on (turn off the turbo loader feature or it will run way too quickly).
Even if you don't know what the heck a C64 is, there are screenshots of the cutscene running (in quasi-letterbox format), and here is a great introduction to the C64: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64
By the way, please keep this in mind:
* You are not using anything near modern computer components. The Commodore 64 was introduced in 1982, which means it has technology older than most of the people here. The 64 means it has only 64 kilobytes of RAM.
* It is -still- the best selling single computer model ever. Yes, there are more PCs as a sum total now, but as far as single models sold, the C64 will never be eclipsed. Some estimates put total sales in excess of 22 million units.
* There are probably still a good hundred thousand or so in use.
* It was sold for over a decade in the original brown "breadbox" form, the later 64C, and as a compatibility mode in the Commodore 128.
* It has a 1.02MHz (that's megahertz, not gigahertz ... 1.0GHz = 1024MHz) 8-bit CPU, the 6510 (a variation of the 6502 in the Apple II and Atari 8-bit line). A variant of the 6502 is in the NES (the N2A03, which has some extra sound lines and no decimal mode), and the later 16-bit 65816 is in the Apple IIgs and the Super NES. (PAL systems are even slower, just 0.986MHz.)
* The Commodore 1541 5.25" disk drive gets 170K to a disk side, and is notoriously slow. However, it has its own 6502 inside of it so that it can be used as a co-processor, which is (bluntly) abused by my loader; this program uses compression and custom disk routines to increase its bandwidth over the single-bit serial bus.
* The Commodore 64 has a palette of only 16 colours (raster trickery can mix them but this is flickery and usually ugly), and maximum 320x200 resolution, although you can only get 2 colours per 8x8 cell in this mode. To get around it, this demo uses the lower-resolution 160x200 multicolour mode, which trades half the horizontal resolution for double the colour count. Further modes are available, but these require CPU support and are tricky to manage.
* The Commodore 64 has a 3-voice FM synthesizer chip which has three full operators and four waveforms. It's nowhere near that of a modern OPL synth, but by driving its frequency registers at a high rate, you can get good approximations and there are custom drivers in this demo to do just that.
Finally, the URL itself:
http://www.armory.com/%7Espectre/cwi/geotrope/
Have fun.
This is a game for the Commodore 64 I've been working on, and here's the initial cutscene. Yup, it's in manga-style. I had a native speaker help me a bit with some of the translations.
Those of you who want to run this on a real Commodore 64 (that's probably only me
), check the compatibility list as a few third-party disk speeders will NOT work with it.
Those of you who want to run it on an emulator (the vast majority), run it on VICE, and make sure that true 1541 emulation is on. Mac owners, run it under Power64, and make sure 1541 emulation is on (turn off the turbo loader feature or it will run way too quickly).
Even if you don't know what the heck a C64 is, there are screenshots of the cutscene running (in quasi-letterbox format), and here is a great introduction to the C64: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64
By the way, please keep this in mind:
* You are not using anything near modern computer components. The Commodore 64 was introduced in 1982, which means it has technology older than most of the people here. The 64 means it has only 64 kilobytes of RAM.
* It is -still- the best selling single computer model ever. Yes, there are more PCs as a sum total now, but as far as single models sold, the C64 will never be eclipsed. Some estimates put total sales in excess of 22 million units.
* There are probably still a good hundred thousand or so in use.
* It was sold for over a decade in the original brown "breadbox" form, the later 64C, and as a compatibility mode in the Commodore 128.
* It has a 1.02MHz (that's megahertz, not gigahertz ... 1.0GHz = 1024MHz) 8-bit CPU, the 6510 (a variation of the 6502 in the Apple II and Atari 8-bit line). A variant of the 6502 is in the NES (the N2A03, which has some extra sound lines and no decimal mode), and the later 16-bit 65816 is in the Apple IIgs and the Super NES. (PAL systems are even slower, just 0.986MHz.)
* The Commodore 1541 5.25" disk drive gets 170K to a disk side, and is notoriously slow. However, it has its own 6502 inside of it so that it can be used as a co-processor, which is (bluntly) abused by my loader; this program uses compression and custom disk routines to increase its bandwidth over the single-bit serial bus.
* The Commodore 64 has a palette of only 16 colours (raster trickery can mix them but this is flickery and usually ugly), and maximum 320x200 resolution, although you can only get 2 colours per 8x8 cell in this mode. To get around it, this demo uses the lower-resolution 160x200 multicolour mode, which trades half the horizontal resolution for double the colour count. Further modes are available, but these require CPU support and are tricky to manage.
* The Commodore 64 has a 3-voice FM synthesizer chip which has three full operators and four waveforms. It's nowhere near that of a modern OPL synth, but by driving its frequency registers at a high rate, you can get good approximations and there are custom drivers in this demo to do just that.
Finally, the URL itself:
http://www.armory.com/%7Espectre/cwi/geotrope/
Have fun.
I'll have to watch the opening cutscene later when I get a chance.
) as a child and didn't get a C64, I went from my TI to a 286 with EGA.