6 ms·

Making a game on the C64

90 points by leafo 13y ago

drivers99 13y ago
Since it's posted on ludumdare, it should say "in 72 hours". (Or 48 hours if he entered it into the competition. Since it looks like he posted on Monday, he must have done the 72 hours jam and not the 48 hour competition.)
- leafo 13y ago
  It's a comp submission: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=1405 http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview... In the final graphic he says it took him only 8 hours though.
RawData 13y ago
That.is.awesome!
hoi 13y ago
ZX Spectrum all the way!
- pjmlp 13y ago
  Timex 2068! :)
SG- 13y ago
My dad used to get some C64 magazine subscription which included guides to making games and he would make some for me when I was just 3-4. It was honestly pretty amazing stuff looking back on it 30 years later and likely what got me in the field. I kept a lot of his C64 books and magazines after he passed away a few years ago, I might try and scan them or go through them myself one day.
waterlesscloud 13y ago
So much about this is beautiful. Don't miss the .png at the end that has the entire source code with explanatory annotations!
- derleth 13y ago
  > Don't miss the .png at the end that has the entire source code You mean I have to type it in by hand?
  - pjmlp 13y ago
    What else ?! :)
    - topbanana 13y ago
      I knew I was a geek when as a kid I would turn straight to the 'listings' pages of my C64 magazines! Happy days
      - robodale 13y ago
        Typing in pages and pages of hex...hoping like hell you typed each character in correctly...
        makeset 13y ago
        Oh God, those hours. Can't decide whether they built character, or caused permanent trauma. And in the odd case that the program worked, I would keep it on as long as I could, since the record button on my tape drive was broken.
wslh 13y ago
I have a t-shirt that says "Don't you miss Peek and Poke?"
onan_barbarian 13y ago
This is truly impressive in this day and age. I used to write little games like this on the C64. I do wonder why he is using a tape drive, though. That is taking retrocomputing a step too far. We had a 1541 (IIRC) from day 1 when I first got the C64 back in 1983, four years before the author was born. Tape is too painful; and should be reserved for someone who wants to retrocompute on the VIC-20. I was trying to explain how delightfully 'tangible' the C64 was the other day - POKE something into memory and bang, stuff happens. It never ceased to amaze me how much improvement could be achieved over the baseline h/w and s/w setup too - order of magnitude faster disk access, 80 columns, etc. etc.
greggman 13y ago
> Writing code on C64 is not like writing in a text editor or even like BASIC line numbers. You type your code directly into RAM and instructions are being assembled as you type Um, no. Maybe you do stuff like that. Most C64 devs used assemblers. We stored source on disk and ran assemblers on them. For the first C64 game I wrote [1] I actually used the Atari Macro assembler since it was pretty well made and supported relatively large programs. Then I'd transfer the result over to the C64 by the joystick ports with some custom cables and software I wrote. On the next big project we had dev environment that ran inside Super Text [2] on the Apple II and stored source on a networked Corvus HD. Pressing some combination of keys would start a compile directly from inside the editor. I don't remember how we transfer it. (getting old) [1] http://www.mobygames.com/game/c64/centipede_ http://www.mobygames.com/game/c64/centipede_ [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muse_Software http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muse_Software
- pjmlp 13y ago
  Yeah, I was jealous of the professional developers. While I had to type everything by hand on the same computer, most companies (well game studios) were using those type of solutions.
  - greggman 13y ago
    I don't think it was just "pros". I had assemblers during my high school years. In fact Atari shipped one as a cartridge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Assembler_Editor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Assembler_Editor With which I wrote several programs during my high school years. The thing that sucked about the Atari Assembler Editor is it worked like basic. Lines were numbered. You'd type LIST to see your program each line prefixed by a number. LIST 100-200 would list lines 100 to 200. Etc.. But you could renumber lines to insert stuff if you ran out of line numbers. That was replaced by the Atari Macro Assembler. http://www.mixinc.net/atari/amac.htm http://www.mixinc.net/atari/amac.htm Which I also had in my high school years before going pro. It was pretty similar to modern assemblers. I don't remember the price but I wasn't rich so it couldn't have been that expensive. It's possible I pirated the Atari Macro Assembler (thought I don't think so) but I couldn't have pirated the Atari Assembler Editor Cartridge :-)
kayoone 13y ago
At first i didnt get why he didnt have time to finish the first game he planned. Turns out this was a submission to the ludumdare game programming contest where you build a game in 72 hours.
- daredevildave 13y ago
  The solo competition is actually 48 hours. The Jam (teams) competition is 72 hours. This was a 48 hour entry.
zvrba 13y ago
In this day and age, you use PCs to develop games for C64. You're able to do stuff you couldn't before because now you have the capacity to precompute an compress a bunch of tables and such. And you use modern developer tools (assemblers, etc -- all on the PC) and test the stuff on emulators. (It still works on the real HW.) I know this because a colleague in the office is still active in the demo-scene (yes, it's still active) and participates each year in competitions.
jasonkester 13y ago
I grew up writing my own games on the C64, and one of the fun things that always got me was how close the video RAM was to the memory containing your program itself. So if you had a game where you moved a little character around the screen with the joystick, and you neglected to handle the case where he went off the screen to the top or bottom, you could crash him right into your source code (which was being actively interpreted). It'd dump you out abruptly, you'd list your program and find that a section had been monched and now contained a bunch of random special characters. Ouch. That hardly ever happens to me anymore, writing front-end code for the browser. But still I make a point of checking my bounds, just in case!
miketangotango 13y ago
I once attempted a Gameboy Color game running a Java Gameboy Color emulator running as an applet for the Ludum Dare. This was like 2006. Didn't complete anything but was a hell of an experience.
endgame 13y ago
If you think copying out 1K of code is masochistic, I remember Quantum P. copying out nearly 24K of ZZT boards by hand when his disk drive broke: http://web.archive.org/web/20091026160713/http://geocities.com/zztexpert/docs/upoprgv4.html http://web.archive.org/web/20091026160713/http://geocities.c...
Sosowski 13y ago
But I never had a Disk Drive! Eastern Europe was all about tapes! Noone have floopies.

90 points by leafo 13y ago

Since it's posted on ludumdare, it should say "in 72 hours". (Or 48 hours if he entered it into the competition. Since it looks like he posted on Monday, he must have done the 72 hours jam and not the 48 hour competition.)

leafo 13y ago
It's a comp submission: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=1405 http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview... In the final graphic he says it took him only 8 hours though.

RawData 13y ago

That.is.awesome!

hoi 13y ago

ZX Spectrum all the way!

pjmlp 13y ago
Timex 2068! :)

SG- 13y ago

My dad used to get some C64 magazine subscription which included guides to making games and he would make some for me when I was just 3-4. It was honestly pretty amazing stuff looking back on it 30 years later and likely what got me in the field. I kept a lot of his C64 books and magazines after he passed away a few years ago, I might try and scan them or go through them myself one day.

waterlesscloud 13y ago

So much about this is beautiful. Don't miss the .png at the end that has the entire source code with explanatory annotations!

derleth 13y ago
> Don't miss the .png at the end that has the entire source code You mean I have to type it in by hand?
- pjmlp 13y ago
  What else ?! :)
  - topbanana 13y ago
    I knew I was a geek when as a kid I would turn straight to the 'listings' pages of my C64 magazines! Happy days
    - robodale 13y ago
      Typing in pages and pages of hex...hoping like hell you typed each character in correctly...
      - makeset 13y ago
        Oh God, those hours. Can't decide whether they built character, or caused permanent trauma. And in the odd case that the program worked, I would keep it on as long as I could, since the record button on my tape drive was broken.

wslh 13y ago

I have a t-shirt that says "Don't you miss Peek and Poke?"

onan_barbarian 13y ago

This is truly impressive in this day and age. I used to write little games like this on the C64. I do wonder why he is using a tape drive, though. That is taking retrocomputing a step too far. We had a 1541 (IIRC) from day 1 when I first got the C64 back in 1983, four years before the author was born. Tape is too painful; and should be reserved for someone who wants to retrocompute on the VIC-20. I was trying to explain how delightfully 'tangible' the C64 was the other day - POKE something into memory and bang, stuff happens. It never ceased to amaze me how much improvement could be achieved over the baseline h/w and s/w setup too - order of magnitude faster disk access, 80 columns, etc. etc.

greggman 13y ago

> Writing code on C64 is not like writing in a text editor or even like BASIC line numbers. You type your code directly into RAM and instructions are being assembled as you type Um, no. Maybe you do stuff like that. Most C64 devs used assemblers. We stored source on disk and ran assemblers on them. For the first C64 game I wrote [1] I actually used the Atari Macro assembler since it was pretty well made and supported relatively large programs. Then I'd transfer the result over to the C64 by the joystick ports with some custom cables and software I wrote. On the next big project we had dev environment that ran inside Super Text [2] on the Apple II and stored source on a networked Corvus HD. Pressing some combination of keys would start a compile directly from inside the editor. I don't remember how we transfer it. (getting old) [1] http://www.mobygames.com/game/c64/centipede_ http://www.mobygames.com/game/c64/centipede_ [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muse_Software http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muse_Software

pjmlp 13y ago
Yeah, I was jealous of the professional developers. While I had to type everything by hand on the same computer, most companies (well game studios) were using those type of solutions.
- greggman 13y ago
  I don't think it was just "pros". I had assemblers during my high school years. In fact Atari shipped one as a cartridge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Assembler_Editor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Assembler_Editor With which I wrote several programs during my high school years. The thing that sucked about the Atari Assembler Editor is it worked like basic. Lines were numbered. You'd type LIST to see your program each line prefixed by a number. LIST 100-200 would list lines 100 to 200. Etc.. But you could renumber lines to insert stuff if you ran out of line numbers. That was replaced by the Atari Macro Assembler. http://www.mixinc.net/atari/amac.htm http://www.mixinc.net/atari/amac.htm Which I also had in my high school years before going pro. It was pretty similar to modern assemblers. I don't remember the price but I wasn't rich so it couldn't have been that expensive. It's possible I pirated the Atari Macro Assembler (thought I don't think so) but I couldn't have pirated the Atari Assembler Editor Cartridge :-)

kayoone 13y ago

At first i didnt get why he didnt have time to finish the first game he planned. Turns out this was a submission to the ludumdare game programming contest where you build a game in 72 hours.

daredevildave 13y ago
The solo competition is actually 48 hours. The Jam (teams) competition is 72 hours. This was a 48 hour entry.

zvrba 13y ago

In this day and age, you use PCs to develop games for C64. You're able to do stuff you couldn't before because now you have the capacity to precompute an compress a bunch of tables and such. And you use modern developer tools (assemblers, etc -- all on the PC) and test the stuff on emulators. (It still works on the real HW.) I know this because a colleague in the office is still active in the demo-scene (yes, it's still active) and participates each year in competitions.

jasonkester 13y ago

I grew up writing my own games on the C64, and one of the fun things that always got me was how close the video RAM was to the memory containing your program itself. So if you had a game where you moved a little character around the screen with the joystick, and you neglected to handle the case where he went off the screen to the top or bottom, you could crash him right into your source code (which was being actively interpreted). It'd dump you out abruptly, you'd list your program and find that a section had been monched and now contained a bunch of random special characters. Ouch. That hardly ever happens to me anymore, writing front-end code for the browser. But still I make a point of checking my bounds, just in case!

miketangotango 13y ago

I once attempted a Gameboy Color game running a Java Gameboy Color emulator running as an applet for the Ludum Dare. This was like 2006. Didn't complete anything but was a hell of an experience.

endgame 13y ago

If you think copying out 1K of code is masochistic, I remember Quantum P. copying out nearly 24K of ZZT boards by hand when his disk drive broke: http://web.archive.org/web/20091026160713/http://geocities.com/zztexpert/docs/upoprgv4.html http://web.archive.org/web/20091026160713/http://geocities.c...

Sosowski 13y ago

But I never had a Disk Drive! Eastern Europe was all about tapes! Noone have floopies.