Commodore 64 on the beach!

I’ve been interviewed by La Caz’Retro team for their summer Bonus Stage! Check that frenchie podcast!

Pas de vacances pour La Caz’ Retro !
Alors sortez vos tongs et vos lecteurs mp3 car aujourd’hui c’est le Bonus Stage !
Et aujourd’hui c’est David (aka Stamba) fondateur du site mycommodore64 qui nous font le plaisir de se joindre à nous pour ce podcast d’été !
Il s’amène sur nos ondes pour nous parler de ses souvenirs de joueurs et nous faire découvrir son site.

La Caz’Retro website: http://lacazretro.fr/bonus-stage-19-mycommodore64/

Thanks to Anfalmyr & Prof.Oz!

Oh yes! Got mine!

As a backer of this amazing Kickstarted project, I’ve finally received the book!
Top notch Commodore 64 graphics over 230 pages. Nothing better than some pics! Check this!!

You can still buy the book at funstock: 
http://www.funstock.co.uk/commodore-64-a-visual-commpendium-c64-book

Like a  SD2IEC or XE1541 the C64TPC is one of the many opportunities to upgrade your Commodore 64 to remove the need for the 5 “1/4 floppies. The C64TPC is a very nice little box that emulates up to four floppy drives using your PC that becomes then a file server for disk images. If you want more information, you can read the full review of C64TPC I wrote for mycommodore64.com.

I am one of the lucky ones who were able to buy one at the time when it was still produced and sold by its founder, Ahmet Eymür . The C64TPC unfortunately is not sold anymore. Now an independent game developer, Ahmet , well aware that his C64TPC could still be improved in many ways, decided to put the full source code of the project available as open source for all !

Here’s a good reason for the most advanced developers among you to take control and refine it this project that deserves to be continued. For example : a better compatibility with USB<>serial adapters, a software version for OS X, etc, etc.

To download the complete source code, you can do it here.

To play the latest game created by Ahmet , Forbidden Forest , you can find it on Google Play by clicking here  or on the Apple App Store here .

In recent times it has become more and more common that brave developers have started to work on improving unsatisfactory existing versions of games. It is true that in the 80s ports from one machine to another were often botched. Today is Commando‘s turn to get  a makeover on Commodore 64 thanks to the group Nostalgia. This run n’ gun released by Capcom in 1985, on almost all platforms at the time, had had several levels and features cut in its version for 8-bit computers. Like the Arcade version of the title this new version has 8 levels, which is 5 more than in the C64 original version, as well as having improved graphics and music.

Note that all the music from the 1985 version was composed by Rob Hubbard and is now considered one of the best Commodore 64 games soundtracks.

Update: I just tested the game, I noticed that you can choose between the original music and sound or the remastered version! And that makes all the difference! In the original version of the game, the music was stopped at certain moments to enable the sound effects to be heard and in the new version you can hear them both at the same time! Also, the new sound effects are really good. I strongly advise you check out this improved version of the game !

If you want to test this for yourself or to learn more, download the rom is here.

Source : retrogamer.ca

OMFBBQ! Am I dreaming? Nope!
Pinball Dreams on my c64!

Pinball Dreams is definitly one of the demakes we all dream about since ages!
Laxity is offering us a playable version of the Ignition and Nightmare tables.

This release has been done in 2012… but… let’s have a closer look on how everything started… in 2002!

WVL (aka Werner) started to work on this demake in 2002; here is his original post on CSDb:

Hey guys/girls,

instead of updating my homepage all the time, I though I could open a new thread here instead. This will also allow other ppl to comment on the development.

okay, so whassup at the moment?

Well, Last month I completely restarted from scratch on the code. Why? Well, first I wanted to concentrate more on getting the game to run in less memory, also I wanted to focus more on accurate simulation of the ball and some small other things…

What I have done till now :

1 – spawned the ball 😉
2 – added gravity to the surroundings, the gravity data is now RLE encoded, so it doesn’t take up much memory anymore. Used to eat 20 blocks of memory, now I think a map would use 3-4 blocks..
3 – I changed the gravity routine to use polar-based vectors instead of cartesean, much more accurate!
4 – added a debug mode to the movement routines, you’re able to pick up the ball with the firebutton and move it around. Let go of the button and you drop it on the table again.
5 – Worked on an accurate (within 1 ‘bradian’ degree) direction calculation routine. This routine will be used for both friction calculations and calculating new directions after collisions. So it needs to be
6 – added a (simple) friction routine.
7 – I put a small preview on the web 😉

get it at http://www.interstyles.nl/pinball.rar

Download one of these early releases: Pinball Dreams early release by WVL

okay, what am I up to now?

1 – increase the speed accuracy to 24 bit, I need this because the friction only affects speed in the last 3 bits or so, so it’s not accurate at all..
2 – add spin to the ball, so it is allowed to roll.. (also gives effect to the ball like top-spin and such)
3 – dunno yet, I’ll see what is the next logical step after that.. probably the new method of collision detection, dunno..

I’m thinking of putting the sourcecode online as ascii file, so everyone can check it out…

Suggestions? Questions? other stuff?

greets, Werner

It seems WVL really spent hell a lot of time on this conversion and he even kindly gave some screenshots of his dedicated softwares while he was trying to save memory to get the best!

Here are some more explanations:

This picture shows where our walls are on top of the bitmap picture. The angle of the walls is depicted with the colors.

This picture shows how the RLE-ed data in the game looks. The yellow area is empty space, while the grey-areas are solid objects. On the right you can see the data that has been created. The data can be directly copy/pasted into the sourcecode of the game.

These screenshots can be found on lemon64 forum over a long serie of pages about Pinball Dreams. WVL mentioned many times an archive with all the source code; here it is (well just showing some of the thousand lines ;))!

;-------------
;main options-
;-------------
 
;if TABLE==0 => Nightmare
;if TABLE==1 => Ignition
 
CHANGE01        = 1    ;turn $01=#$30 on/off.. 0 => $01=#$35, 1 => $01=#$30
 
KEEPTIME        = 0    ;keep time during game, useful for keeping track of collisions
KEEPFLIPPERHIS  = 0    ;keep history of flipper collisions (needs KEEPTIME = 1)
 
SHOWRASTERTIME  = 0    ;show used rastertime in the border
WARNLOWRASTER   = 0    ;changes bordercolor if there was not enough rastertime
SENSERASTERTIME = 0    ;keep track of used rastertime
 
KEEPHISTORY     = 0    ;keep collision history
 
JOYCONTROL      = 1    ;make ball controlable by joystick, eats 91 bytes!
 
DAMPING         = 1    ;turn damping on/off
PLAYMUSIC       = 1    ;turn music on/off

Download Pinball Dreams for Commodore 64 source code by WVL : Dev.rar

Unfortunately, after many years working on this, it seems WVL completely lost interest (or just time) in this project. His website is just like “frozen” in time.

http://www.interstyles.nl/pinball/

Get lucky!

Laxity granted us with a new release in 2012 and it’s pleasure to play on a real Commodore 64 to this jewel!

Unfortunately(again), according to the team, it seem it’s quite difficult to add more features to the game so it probably won’t be finished… ::cry::

Download: Pinball_Dreams_preview2_LAXITY
Original link on CSDb: http://csdb.dk/release/?id=111246

So, guys! Who is up to continue the saga…? 😉