I am very close, the final run of testing for bugs on various machines and emulation is going well. It’s now down to the spit and polish.
Almost out of the programming Mine…
Trogue64 Programming Notes: Part 1 GFX
Before we begin…
There were a lot of things that I learned in the process of making this game. I can’t imagine making something like this back in the day. I’ve always had a lot of respect for the games and software developed for the machine on the machine. Without emulation, this would have been a real mess.
GFX:
I’ve never made MultiColor GFX (serious ones) and it was always this mystery to get a koala painter image going with a scroller. I always wanted to make an ESI Intro (that eagle one). Draw a cool picture, make a custom font scroller and bang out a simple tune. I could do everything but the picture.. there was always something getting in the way.
Cross Development is really hard in the MC Picture side of things. I’m used to Photoshop or Deluxe Paint for source material.. but getting it looking ok on the commie was a royal pain. At the end after piles of crashing plugins and ageing software, I found something that works great:
Photoshop using the Dan Fessler method -> GangEd ( https://csdb.dk/release/?id=19831 ) -> PRG for Import or Viewing on Real C64 -> MMC64 Cart
Photoshop could be replaced by any other bitmap software, but it is what I am comfortable with. GangEd is great for the conversion and troublesome as an editor. I would love to help clean up that application.
I’m colour blind ( Protanopia ), so having some colour conversion or colour by numbers is really helpful. So the tool/dev chain above really helps.. if I had to come up with gradients by eye… well that is not going to happen. Also having the commodore palette files for photoshop is really helpful.
A great resource for gradients is Daniel Krajzewicz’s notes on his blog.
I can do sprites and fonts ala code, which in the day I also had a nice editor from Compute! Gazette — but SpritePad and CharPad are awesome tools. It’s also handy to load snapshots from VICE and see charsets that have been modified by code or have as a reference for where things are.
One of my “like to have” addons for Trogue64 is fade/pattern wipe for the intro graphic. It’s not hard but I had to draw the line somewhere to get this to Beta.
A3000: Amber’s Variable Resistor
The A3000 was randomly deciding to output a proper signal to VGA. I know the monitor I was using (or LCD) was capable of displaying in the right frequency range — but only 1 out 5 power-ups would yield an active VGA display.
It was easy to tell when a good powerup would occur, as the VGA display would have some very dark gray vertical lines in the black screen.
Putting a scope on the VGA port showed signals on the RGB and H/V sync pins. Each signal looked okay from a casual inspection (comparing a good powerup versus bad). I checked all the pins around the board to see if there was anything missing on the way into the VGA… but if the VGA signals looked ok either way (on or off) then it must be a very slight signal variance.
The variable resistor on Amber was very touchy. I had a spare that would work, but I re-soldered the old part just to be sure.. it looked like there had been some work previously done on it. Using a metal screwdriver, I noticed the signals jumping around on the V/H pins. Removing the screwdriver would change the signal as well. I had a plastic screwdriver for altering TBC signals — TBC’s did the same thing with metal tools.
Without worrying about over turning the resistor, I swung it pretty far. I then noticed it was loose. After screwing it down for a while, I felt a bump and then the signal seemed to tune easier. I found the sweet spot, rebooted — VGA stable. I waited 30 minutes with the machine off tried again, still good. Off for two days, powered it up — still working fine. Nailed it 🙂
C64: Asteroids Emulation on a C64
Link: http://members.aon.at/nkehrer/astc64.html
Well, it’s pretty awesome. A quote from the site, explains the awesomeness of this:
Since the nineties, arcade emulators like MAME can emulate the classics like Asteroids on the PC or the Mac. This program is an Asteroids emulator for the Commodore 64. The “emulation” of the arcade machine’s CPU is done natively by the 6510 processor of the C64. The video and sound hardware is simulated by the Asteroids emulator program. In this way, the original arcade game program is executed and interpreted, and the original game play is (more or less) exactly reproduced.
I can remember the disappointment in the conversions that showed up over the years of this amazing game. It was one of the first games I loaded in MAME to check out. Well Done Norbert!
C128X Graphic
At some point everyone thinks about making their own computer, I’ve always wanted to make one. The C128X was supposed to be used for a commodore themed website, never got down to making it. As my electronics skills are mediocre at best, I doubt that I could make a computer on my own — but I can at least design the look of one. I always liked the the 128D’s design, the pull out keyboard and the built in floppy. The A2000 as well I always liked especially for the front facing joystick and keyboard ports. The A2000 was a barn though, you could hide an entire other computer in there with room to spare (if you had the AT addon then you did have two).
The file for this is here: C128X
Commodore 1571 Graphic
Another PSD, this time of a Commodore 1571 disk drive. You can get the file here: Commodore 1571. I remember getting a C128, which replaced the first C64 we had. My father managed to talk to Jim Butterfield, who arranged the original C64 purchase — first generation hardware coupled with a white 1541. It’s funny, as that original C64 was never traded away.. unlike that C128 which somehow I got an A500 for. Weird.
CBM 8050 Graphic
This is the image of the 8050, which I made in Photoshop. All the layers are there, to edit the details. If you want a copy of the file go here: CBM 8050 PSD
My BBS in the day had one of these, an 8250 and a SFD1001 attached to a BUS Card with a pile of 1541’s. The grade school I was in, had 4 pets sharing an 8050. That was the first network I noticed, then a pair of ICON’s showed up.
Amiga and Commodore Disk Icons for SD Cards
A link to the Photoshop sources are here: Photoshop Files
A link to the actual .ICO Files are here : Windows ICO
I’ve also included with the ICO files the config file that you can use to make these a disk icon. These are nice to replace the SD cards default disk icon, great for people with MMC replays or Turbo Chameleon 64’s. Note: The Commodore PSD uses Adobe Photoshop CC’s 3D capabilities, the other file is a flat bitmap.