7 ms·

6502 source code for BBC Micro game Crazee Rider from 1987

165 points by gmiller123456 8y ago

pryelluw 8y ago
Makes me think of all the code lost to poor storage. Like all my C64 related code from the 80s and 90s. I had hundreds of programs typed in regular notebooks. The code for this game is really readable and easy to pick up after all these years of not doing any 6502 coding. Any 6502 wasm targets?
- ateesdalejr 8y ago
  Not WASM but also an equally fun target: https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/282269/ https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/282269/
- homarp 8y ago
  How about a C64 disk image that you run through mame online, like https://archive.org/details/C64Gamevideoarchive https://archive.org/details/C64Gamevideoarchive (and see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18379387 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18379387 to automate a bit the whole process )
- flohofwoe 8y ago
  There's quite a few 8-bit CPU emulators that can be compiled to WASM. Static translation of 6502 (or Z80) machine code to WASM is tricky because a lot of 8-bit code was using self-modifying code, so you'd need at least some sort of JIT. Shameless plug: I've started writing easy to integrate 8-bit chip emulators in standalone C headers a little while ago: https://github.com/floooh/chips https://github.com/floooh/chips For instance used in these WASM emulators: http://floooh.github.com/tiny8bit http://floooh.github.com/tiny8bit
- tluyben2 8y ago
  I copied my software sources from the 80s onto floppies until the mid 90s after which I put it on a tape. Years later I tried to get the data off the tape, but the tape was unreadable. Such a shame (for me, no one else is missing anything). Which is why I think everyone should just put whatever they have online; maybe someone likes it down the line and if not it cannot hurt.
thewizardofaus 8y ago
Assembly is so beautiful.
- DonHopkins 8y ago
  Especially 6502 assembly, because all the opcodes have three letters, so they form a sleek column of text that slides smoothly by without friction from jagged bumpy edges. All other assembly languages look rough and ragged to me!
- speedplane 8y ago
  CPU, registers, interrupts, RAM, I/O... It’s just you and the machine baby. I started programming with assembly, and evem though today I rarely use it, any excuse I can find, I’ll dig into in. No question, modern languages are more efficient, but knowing exactly what instructions are being run and how they interact with the hardware (a physical object), is so much more aesthetically pleasing.
  - tluyben2 8y ago
    In the embedded world there is still enough of it. Today we had to free up 1200 bytes because our software did no longer run after adding 2 new features; not enough free memory. With higher level languages we would already have no chance with the previous features on the hardware, with asm we managed to optimize enough to free up the needed memory. It is amazing you always seem to be able to push it further. All that was a must in the 70-80s homecomputers as they were not (easily, without soldering generally) expandable, so you had to make it work on what was there. I got into my current work because I like that kind of optimizing and puzzling from when I did it in the 80s as a kid.
    - speedplane 8y ago
      I used to work in the embedded world about 10 years ago. There was definitely plenty of byte-level optimization then, but reading the tea leaves pointed to a very different direction (eg, embedded java, embedded SQL). Makes me happy to hear folks are still hacking bits in 2018.
taneq 8y ago
Now I just have to dig my BBC Micro out from its cardboard box and find a display device that it can still connect to. :D
- dboreham 8y ago
  And hope the electrolytic capacitors still work.
  - taneq 8y ago
    Yeah... It did boot up a couple of years ago when I last plugged it in, though, so there's still hope! :)
    - ddingus 8y ago
      Could just recap it. I did an Apple a while back. Was not hard.
  - SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
    The RIFA X2 capacitors in the PSU tend to explode. I opened mine up and was lucky to find that my BBC is one of the few later revisions that don't use these. Well worth checking though.
    - dboreham 8y ago
      The failing electrolytic capacitor syndrome is interesting to me because I worked as a hardware designer in that period and I don't remember it being common knowledge that those components had a limited life. I do recall that we mostly used solid Tantalum capacitors with the transition to surface mount technology but I believe that was more to do with survival in the production process than long field life time.
- ddingus 8y ago
  Capture device could be quick and easy.
- 8y ago
lbj 8y ago
To me, this is pure art
- codazoda 8y ago
  Certainly it is. I had a computer teacher tell me that the 'cls' method in DOS would take hundreds of lines of asm to write yourself. A couple years later I decided to try it. Turns out it's only a few lines if you take advantage of OS Interrupts. I assume the teacher was suggesting it would take all these lines if you didn't "cheat" and use an interrupt.
userbinator 8y ago
Amusing how GitHub thinks the project is 94.9% Makefile and 5.1% Batchfile. It obviously doesn't know about Asm very well.
- omeid2 8y ago
  Github is using Linguist[0] for analyzing languages in a repo. https://github.com/github/linguist https://github.com/github/linguist
- fireattack 8y ago
  GitHub supports asm to certain degree but definitely not the .6502 extension (is it the standard choice?).
  - codazoda 8y ago
    I only ever did a clear screen or similarly simple programs in asm but I believe 6502 was a popular one. I think it was supported on both my TSR-80 and my first IBM PC.
- NotCamelCase 8y ago
  Off-topic but anyone know a way to have Github recalculate these stats for idle projects without needing to re-commit stuff? I have one repo which says 99% Mathematica which is so far from the truth (there is no Mathematica code whatsoever.)
  - fireattack 8y ago
    If it reports wrong, a recalculation likely won't help, you need to workaround/fix the underlying reason why it reports it wrong. For example, it doesn't count document-type files by default; you need to modify `.gitattributes` files to override that.
    - omeid2 8y ago
      Create a report at: https://github.com/github/linguist https://github.com/github/linguist
mycall 8y ago
I would love to see Crazy Climber. Excellent game.
- fit2rule 8y ago
  Yeah, this game definitely has a "Crazy Climber" aesthetic .. I too would love to see a Crazy Climber re-make, albeit for my preferred 8-bit machine the Oric-1/Atmos systems ..
asciimo 8y ago
Here's a YouTube video of the game, for those unfamiliar (like me). https://youtu.be/GFMp891Q6tY https://youtu.be/GFMp891Q6tY
jstimpfle 8y ago
Only 5171 lines of asm in this game, as measured by "wc -l src/*.6502". See the youtube link posted here to get an impression what it does.
WhitneyLand 8y ago
~5000 lines of code for that? Don’t know if that sounds like a lot or a little but the answer is yes. If you watched the youtube video, yes it was hard do that and took a long time. 5000 lines, but if I recall correctly there was no way do something fancy like this using only one line of code: x = 1000 + 1000 I don’t know what programming courses bother teaching, or even mentioning a line of code like this because, what’s there to say? I’m not even sure how to put it in perspective to a person under 200 years old that, I had to spend a pretty good amount of time to learn enough to do that (add together two numbers with more than 8-bits each). And that even the variable x is an oversimplification, because there were no variable names. You had a CPU, a few supporting chips, and some bytes of memory to directly throw instructions at or move stuff back and forth between. Why would anyone have been interested in doing that? Not sure, somehow seemed exciting at the time. Should the interest question have a different answer for today’s software when we look back from the future? Or, are we going to be scratching our heads again? Why did it take them so long to generalize AI they might as well have worked farming the fields? Can’t recall how much easier it became when you had a “Macro Asseembler” (which I guess most professionals used from day 1 but not always people who got these systems as a Christmas present). Just that finally having one felt like getting some kind of new luxury car. Yes I know. And it was uphill both ways to school, and my lawn, and so forth. My apologies.
- jackhack 8y ago
  Old Apple ][ asm coder here. Don't despair. It's not the merits of your "product" being judged. It's just the wrong audience (mostly). Colleges now don't even bother to teach two's-complement. Of course today's "coders" won't get it. This is a generation that has never had to count cycles, get timing just right, or worry about running out of memory. The idea of paying $1000 for a C compiler or $500 for an assembler (in 1985 dollars!), is almost unimaginable now. I remember the excitement of a 1200 baud modem -- my initial response was "wow! The text is coming faster than I can read it!" The systems were primitive, sure, (but at the time they were amazing!) but this challenge was met with creativity. What the games lacked in photorealism they surpassed with "fun." Programming was learned by doing. And most of the folks I met were amazingly generous about sharing techniques. It was like Jazz musicians sharing a cool lick, with others. There were no books, really. Coding in assembly is like juggling. It takes a little effort to get all the balls in the air and get the rhythm going, then it goes until you hit a roadblock and it all falls down. You plan, think, and start again. >>somehow seemed exciting at the time For you, me, and thousands more, it was absolutely magical. Thank you for sharing this. I'm reading it now and found myself smiling.
soegaard 8y ago
This game reminds me of Super Cycle for the commodore 64, which also had an 6502. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiebnDbq0w0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiebnDbq0w0 Are there any collections of source code for commercial games for the C64 ?
exlurker 8y ago
Related; the original sourcecode for Fort Apocalypse at https://github.com/heyigor/FortApocalypse https://github.com/heyigor/FortApocalypse
- Digital-Citizen 8y ago
  It's unfortunate that neither this BBC Micro game nor the Fort Apocalypse game are free software -- software one is free to run, inspect, share, and modify (even commercially). The Crazee Rider software seems to lack a license at all. Thus no permission is granted to engage in the freedoms of free software. Fort Apocalypse is also nonfree; it is distributed under a nonfree license -- http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ -- that even the license's author recommends against using for software per https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-creative-commons-license-to-software https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-creative-comm... .

165 points by gmiller123456 8y ago

Makes me think of all the code lost to poor storage. Like all my C64 related code from the 80s and 90s. I had hundreds of programs typed in regular notebooks. The code for this game is really readable and easy to pick up after all these years of not doing any 6502 coding. Any 6502 wasm targets?

ateesdalejr 8y ago
Not WASM but also an equally fun target: https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/282269/ https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/282269/
homarp 8y ago
How about a C64 disk image that you run through mame online, like https://archive.org/details/C64Gamevideoarchive https://archive.org/details/C64Gamevideoarchive (and see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18379387 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18379387 to automate a bit the whole process )
flohofwoe 8y ago
There's quite a few 8-bit CPU emulators that can be compiled to WASM. Static translation of 6502 (or Z80) machine code to WASM is tricky because a lot of 8-bit code was using self-modifying code, so you'd need at least some sort of JIT. Shameless plug: I've started writing easy to integrate 8-bit chip emulators in standalone C headers a little while ago: https://github.com/floooh/chips https://github.com/floooh/chips For instance used in these WASM emulators: http://floooh.github.com/tiny8bit http://floooh.github.com/tiny8bit
tluyben2 8y ago
I copied my software sources from the 80s onto floppies until the mid 90s after which I put it on a tape. Years later I tried to get the data off the tape, but the tape was unreadable. Such a shame (for me, no one else is missing anything). Which is why I think everyone should just put whatever they have online; maybe someone likes it down the line and if not it cannot hurt.

thewizardofaus 8y ago

Assembly is so beautiful.

DonHopkins 8y ago
Especially 6502 assembly, because all the opcodes have three letters, so they form a sleek column of text that slides smoothly by without friction from jagged bumpy edges. All other assembly languages look rough and ragged to me!
speedplane 8y ago
CPU, registers, interrupts, RAM, I/O... It’s just you and the machine baby. I started programming with assembly, and evem though today I rarely use it, any excuse I can find, I’ll dig into in. No question, modern languages are more efficient, but knowing exactly what instructions are being run and how they interact with the hardware (a physical object), is so much more aesthetically pleasing.
- tluyben2 8y ago
  In the embedded world there is still enough of it. Today we had to free up 1200 bytes because our software did no longer run after adding 2 new features; not enough free memory. With higher level languages we would already have no chance with the previous features on the hardware, with asm we managed to optimize enough to free up the needed memory. It is amazing you always seem to be able to push it further. All that was a must in the 70-80s homecomputers as they were not (easily, without soldering generally) expandable, so you had to make it work on what was there. I got into my current work because I like that kind of optimizing and puzzling from when I did it in the 80s as a kid.
  - speedplane 8y ago
    I used to work in the embedded world about 10 years ago. There was definitely plenty of byte-level optimization then, but reading the tea leaves pointed to a very different direction (eg, embedded java, embedded SQL). Makes me happy to hear folks are still hacking bits in 2018.

taneq 8y ago

Now I just have to dig my BBC Micro out from its cardboard box and find a display device that it can still connect to. :D

dboreham 8y ago
And hope the electrolytic capacitors still work.
- taneq 8y ago
  Yeah... It did boot up a couple of years ago when I last plugged it in, though, so there's still hope! :)
  - ddingus 8y ago
    Could just recap it. I did an Apple a while back. Was not hard.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  The RIFA X2 capacitors in the PSU tend to explode. I opened mine up and was lucky to find that my BBC is one of the few later revisions that don't use these. Well worth checking though.
  - dboreham 8y ago
    The failing electrolytic capacitor syndrome is interesting to me because I worked as a hardware designer in that period and I don't remember it being common knowledge that those components had a limited life. I do recall that we mostly used solid Tantalum capacitors with the transition to surface mount technology but I believe that was more to do with survival in the production process than long field life time.
ddingus 8y ago
Capture device could be quick and easy.
8y ago

lbj 8y ago

To me, this is pure art

codazoda 8y ago
Certainly it is. I had a computer teacher tell me that the 'cls' method in DOS would take hundreds of lines of asm to write yourself. A couple years later I decided to try it. Turns out it's only a few lines if you take advantage of OS Interrupts. I assume the teacher was suggesting it would take all these lines if you didn't "cheat" and use an interrupt.

userbinator 8y ago

Amusing how GitHub thinks the project is 94.9% Makefile and 5.1% Batchfile. It obviously doesn't know about Asm very well.

omeid2 8y ago
Github is using Linguist[0] for analyzing languages in a repo. https://github.com/github/linguist https://github.com/github/linguist
fireattack 8y ago
GitHub supports asm to certain degree but definitely not the .6502 extension (is it the standard choice?).
- codazoda 8y ago
  I only ever did a clear screen or similarly simple programs in asm but I believe 6502 was a popular one. I think it was supported on both my TSR-80 and my first IBM PC.
NotCamelCase 8y ago
Off-topic but anyone know a way to have Github recalculate these stats for idle projects without needing to re-commit stuff? I have one repo which says 99% Mathematica which is so far from the truth (there is no Mathematica code whatsoever.)
- fireattack 8y ago
  If it reports wrong, a recalculation likely won't help, you need to workaround/fix the underlying reason why it reports it wrong. For example, it doesn't count document-type files by default; you need to modify `.gitattributes` files to override that.
  - omeid2 8y ago
    Create a report at: https://github.com/github/linguist https://github.com/github/linguist

mycall 8y ago

I would love to see Crazy Climber. Excellent game.

fit2rule 8y ago
Yeah, this game definitely has a "Crazy Climber" aesthetic .. I too would love to see a Crazy Climber re-make, albeit for my preferred 8-bit machine the Oric-1/Atmos systems ..

asciimo 8y ago

Here's a YouTube video of the game, for those unfamiliar (like me). https://youtu.be/GFMp891Q6tY https://youtu.be/GFMp891Q6tY

jstimpfle 8y ago

Only 5171 lines of asm in this game, as measured by "wc -l src/*.6502". See the youtube link posted here to get an impression what it does.

WhitneyLand 8y ago

~5000 lines of code for that? Don’t know if that sounds like a lot or a little but the answer is yes. If you watched the youtube video, yes it was hard do that and took a long time. 5000 lines, but if I recall correctly there was no way do something fancy like this using only one line of code: x = 1000 + 1000 I don’t know what programming courses bother teaching, or even mentioning a line of code like this because, what’s there to say? I’m not even sure how to put it in perspective to a person under 200 years old that, I had to spend a pretty good amount of time to learn enough to do that (add together two numbers with more than 8-bits each). And that even the variable x is an oversimplification, because there were no variable names. You had a CPU, a few supporting chips, and some bytes of memory to directly throw instructions at or move stuff back and forth between. Why would anyone have been interested in doing that? Not sure, somehow seemed exciting at the time. Should the interest question have a different answer for today’s software when we look back from the future? Or, are we going to be scratching our heads again? Why did it take them so long to generalize AI they might as well have worked farming the fields? Can’t recall how much easier it became when you had a “Macro Asseembler” (which I guess most professionals used from day 1 but not always people who got these systems as a Christmas present). Just that finally having one felt like getting some kind of new luxury car. Yes I know. And it was uphill both ways to school, and my lawn, and so forth. My apologies.

jackhack 8y ago
Old Apple ][ asm coder here. Don't despair. It's not the merits of your "product" being judged. It's just the wrong audience (mostly). Colleges now don't even bother to teach two's-complement. Of course today's "coders" won't get it. This is a generation that has never had to count cycles, get timing just right, or worry about running out of memory. The idea of paying $1000 for a C compiler or $500 for an assembler (in 1985 dollars!), is almost unimaginable now. I remember the excitement of a 1200 baud modem -- my initial response was "wow! The text is coming faster than I can read it!" The systems were primitive, sure, (but at the time they were amazing!) but this challenge was met with creativity. What the games lacked in photorealism they surpassed with "fun." Programming was learned by doing. And most of the folks I met were amazingly generous about sharing techniques. It was like Jazz musicians sharing a cool lick, with others. There were no books, really. Coding in assembly is like juggling. It takes a little effort to get all the balls in the air and get the rhythm going, then it goes until you hit a roadblock and it all falls down. You plan, think, and start again. >>somehow seemed exciting at the time For you, me, and thousands more, it was absolutely magical. Thank you for sharing this. I'm reading it now and found myself smiling.

soegaard 8y ago

This game reminds me of Super Cycle for the commodore 64, which also had an 6502. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiebnDbq0w0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiebnDbq0w0 Are there any collections of source code for commercial games for the C64 ?

exlurker 8y ago

Related; the original sourcecode for Fort Apocalypse at https://github.com/heyigor/FortApocalypse https://github.com/heyigor/FortApocalypse

Digital-Citizen 8y ago
It's unfortunate that neither this BBC Micro game nor the Fort Apocalypse game are free software -- software one is free to run, inspect, share, and modify (even commercially). The Crazee Rider software seems to lack a license at all. Thus no permission is granted to engage in the freedoms of free software. Fort Apocalypse is also nonfree; it is distributed under a nonfree license -- http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ -- that even the license's author recommends against using for software per https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-creative-commons-license-to-software https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-creative-comm... .