[H.E.R.O. for VIC20]

On 10/17/2022 at 11:19 PM, Casey said:

Downloaded and played V1.3 also - I do think the average person would be surprised if they saw this game to know the VIC-20 doesn't have hardware sprites, because the animation is so smooth.

Yes, you can be fooled. It also makes it harder to convince anyone that it's harder to do a VIC20 version than a C64 version for this reason.

 

Quote

One minor bug I've noticed.  If the character dies because they blew up dynamite too close to them, or they hit a magma flow, and there is an enemy further away (a bat as an example) - the enemy goes away when the player is respawned.  That's the only thing I've noticed while playing.  

It's by design and this is how the original works as well. All dangers in the same vertical section as the hero will disappear when he dies to avoid the possibility of death on respawn. A typical scenario could be that the hero drowns in water and respawns where there's an enemy.

[H.E.R.O. for VIC20]

I just want to let you know I released an update that only modifies the colors used on NTSC.

[H.E.R.O. for VIC20]

4 hours ago, Casey said:

It's an excellent port, and a great example of what the VIC 20 is capable of when programmed by someone willing to take the time to let the VIC shine.  The animation is very smooth.  This was one of my favorite games for the 64 back in the day - it's great to see it just as playable on the VIC 20.

Thanks! I played it mostly on the C64 as well. A very good game, even if it's hard.

[H.E.R.O. for VIC20]

6 hours ago, cvga said:

Wow! Looks amazing!!

 

Question: Can walls be destroyed with the microlaser beam in the Atari 2600 version also? If so, I never knew that!

Thanks! Yes, the microlaser can remove walls on the Atari 2600 version as well. I didn't know it either when I started this conversion. It looks a bit different. Half of the wall is removed horizontally as the first step and then it disappears. It's not used very often but can be handy sometimes. I found a bug regarding that in the 2600 version. If you stop shooting and start again it may be ineffective so you can end up shooting forever without anything happening. If you stop and start again it may start taking damage again.

[H.E.R.O. for VIC20]

7 hours ago, Chris+++ said:

 

Since the VIC-20 doesn't allow for hardware sprites, are the characters, background, etc. in graphically intense games like this all the results of redefining the default character set?

 

Yes, it is. If the screen size is reduced a bit all characters fit on the screen and will effectively become a bitmap.

[H.E.R.O. for VIC20]

9 hours ago, RobertB said:

Now all you need is a conversion of the game for the C128! 

 

Haha!

[H.E.R.O. for VIC20]

A new VIC20 port of the classic Atari 2600 game H.E.R.O. was released yesterday.

 

https://kollektivet.nu/hero/

[Volley for Two - new C128 game]

The game can now run off a cartridge! The hardware design is based on Magic Desk and is open source. Go build your own!

Links to cartridge image, hardware design and printable label can be found here:

https://kollektivet.nu/v42/

[C64 Emu on Mac]

esc = run....& then nothing. 
I cannot get a game to play.

It’s a bit unclear how far you get. Is carlsson correct in that the game starts but you are unable to progress past an initial screen waiting for joystick input?

VICE has swap joystick ports mapped to alt+J on Linux. I’m guessing something similar on the Mac.

[What are some good games for the ZX Spectrum that I should try?]

I didn’t own a Spectrum but the Paradroid clone Quazatron was done in isomeric 3D and looked interesting to me. I remembered the Star Wars port being much better than the C64 equivalent so I’d recommend having a look at that.

[C64 Atari2600 Cross Compiler]

I suppose you don't touch address 0 and 1 since those are I/O ports? Otherwise I think if you disable the ROM Kernel, you might have rest of the zeropage for yourself. Someone like [mention=50625]bjonte[/mention] probably can chime in at a later occasion, as he's well versed in C64 programming.

I’m note sure I understand the problem here. As carlsson says, the kernal shouldn’t need to be used when running a game like this without any disk loading. Kernal interrupts should be turned off. Atari 2600 har RAM from $80-$ff I think, so 2-$7f should be available for other uses during emulation.

[Games Beaten In 2022 (classic computing edition)]

 I would love to finally beat Kult on the Amiga.  I gave up on that decades ago.  Maybe this can be my year!

I hadn’t heard of that. It sounds interesting!

[Games Beaten In 2022 (classic computing edition)]

[mention=50625]bjonte[/mention]
Well done to you as well!  I hadn't heard of that game so I looked it up.  Recommended?

It’s hard but very short so if you want some arcade action that’s possible to complete within a couple of minutes, it’s a good pick.

[Games Beaten In 2022 (classic computing edition)]

Well done!

I completed Snokie on the Commodore 64 on the high speed difficulty level.

[C64 SID diagnostics confusion]

The question is what the test is really testing. Since the machine can’t hear the SID it can only look at the input it has - paddles and the waveform/envelope output registers. So either paddles aren’t working or reading the waveform output isn’t working properly. Try paddles on it or a program that auto detects the SID type. Either of those might be failing.

[Disassembling Commodore 64 & Vic-20 programs]

A modern tool for C64 assembler is https://iceteam.itch.io/jc64dis

[C64 Bible Trivia Game - error in music routine]

As a bonus, you can use POKE 65,low:POKE 66,high to RESTORE data statements to a given address.

Wow! I didn’t know about this trick. Should it point to the next value or just after the previous or is this a line pointer?

[The future of C64/128 homebrew]

I think developers will avoid REU requirements simply because it cuts the user base and will mean less cheering after the release. On the other hand I believe most developers are struggling to get games to work on NTSC with the higher frame rate. Going the Sam’s Journey route and require it for NTSC is an interesting approach that I think we will see more of. It cuts a smaller part of the user base and helps ship the game with less effort.

[Porting Bioshock to the Plus 4?]

You make a z-code file. Go to https://www.microheaven.com/ozmooonline/ and upload it. Select target platform and press Build. You should then receive a disk image with the game. A bit slow to iterate like this but it’s as simple as it gets. But if you aren’t going to learn a new language you can forget it.

[Porting Bioshock to the Plus 4?]

Adventures can be made in a Z-machine also to get all that text parsing stuff for free. Play back in Ozmoo on many platforms.

[Porting Bioshock to the Plus 4?]

Multi Load?

Divide the game into levels, store them separately on disk and load each one when you are about to play it.

[Porting Bioshock to the Plus 4?]

I think we're currently aiming for a multiple choice text adventure, similar to those choose your adventure-books.

Ok, I see. Then I guess the amount of text would be the limit. If there will be a lot, the C128 seems like the best choice. You could start there and port it to plus/4 in case it fits later on. Multi load is an option.

[Porting Bioshock to the Plus 4?]

For a crap games compo, no demake is too simple.

I agree to that. So what kind of game would it be? Top down action game with the same resource hunting mechanics and upgrades should be possible I think. Flip screen or scrolling. As a multiload game it could also be quite large in scale.

[Porting Bioshock to the Plus 4?]

Ah, *that* Bioshock. It got me quite confused because the original question didn’t mention in any way how the game should be simplified, reimagined and cut down in order to be made possible on an 8-bit platform. The answer is ”no” unless you make a different game that is only inspired by the original.

[Porting Bioshock to the Plus 4?]

What *is* this Bioshock 1 you are referring to? A text adventure?