Ah, this takes me way back in time… Just wanted to test the speed of C64’s basic with a simple program of controlling a worm. The video:
It was 1987 when I last coded with Commodore 64. ..and I admit it: I never learned 6502 / 6510 assembly well.. On Amiga I have done 680×0 assembly coding a lot, though…
Let’s see a picture of the source code:
1024 is the starting address of C64’s screen memory and 56320 is the address of joystick port 2.
If you want to download the d64 image with the program, it’s available below:
It was, when I was about 10 – 11 years old, when I invented this kind of style to beat the computer player on Commodore 64’s Pitstop II. Watch the video:
The computer player is stuck behind me and AI computer player and eventually the computer player’s tires will blow up. After that, it’s easy to win the race. 🙂
Commodore 64 gets still new games or remakes of the old ones. In the end of the year 2019 was released Manic Miner 64DX. I tried my new retro joystick with it. The video below may give a picture can it be used for playing this kind of game:
Playing old retro games helps me to cut loose from my hard studies. This is perhaps because playing retro games today is not so serious as it was back in the day when the games were new.
Some pictures of the joystick:
Retro games also take me back in time. As a programmer I also think at the same time while playing the how the games might be programmed.
Nowadays studies take all my time.. Now I’m actually a student of computer science in a university… Since January of this year, I’ve lived in the world of Python, JavaScript & Ajax, CSS and HTML in the context of web server programming… I wish that the 7th week assignment of this course was behind… I’m working on the 5th now.. Today begins the Algorithms 2 course too for me..
I just made a video of me playing C64’s Stix. There’s something magic in this game..
Perhaps next summer.. Though, I’ve already made plans what to study in the summer..
In my old blog post I discussed my computer gaming history with Vic 20 And Commodore 64. Of course, I forgot some nice games that as re-made could be good games even today.
First, I’d like to mention the game I have discussed before: Stix.
I’ve even started to make a remake of this game to Android. Though, I think this project will take some time to get finished.
One game we played with my friends as youngsters a lot is Artillery Duel.
This could be a nice Android game with possibility to play with others via the internet.
Omega Race has been for example to the Amiga as shareware remake game. It would be nice to make some kind of version of this game to Android, too. Below a video of the Vic 20 version of this game:
I’ve started to make a remake also from this game to Android…
Cataball is also something, that could be interesting to make to Android platform. Video of the Commodore 64 version:
With nice backgrounds with parallax scrolling, the result could be nice.
Also, a version of Gyruss to Android could be nice.
One of my online games reminds me of this game, namely Defense III.
Let’s see how the Android versions turn out to be… 🙂
It’s night when I’m writing this. I came up with a little Monkey X tutorial on how to program the bouncing of the ball, when it touches the bat in the “old school way” — like in the popular C64 game Krakout in the 80s.
In the video for the tutorial you can see, that as the ball touches the bat for the first time, delta y doesn’t change. This is because both the ball and the bat are uneven as height in pixels; now both the ball and the bat have a middle point.
This is just a short piece of code, that doesn’t handle the case, when the ball is at the horizontal top or bottom of the bat. There’s some extra work for anyone who wants to make an 80s style Krakout game. 🙂
The delta y for the ball is calculated simply how the ball’s y-position is related to the middle point to the bat. The “scale” variable is used to adjust the max y-speed of the ball.
Source code below:
Import mojo
Function Main()
New MyApp
End
Class MyApp Extends App
Field gfxBG:Image, gfxBat:Image, gfxBall:Image
Field scaleX:Float, scaleY:Float
Field touchX:Float, touchY:Float
Field prevTX:Float, prevTY:Float
Field batY:Float
Field ballX:Float, ballY:Float
Field ballDX:Float, ballDY:Float
Field scale:Float
Method OnCreate()
' Load graphics
gfxBG = LoadImage("bg2.png")
gfxBat = LoadImage("bat3.png")
gfxBall = LoadImage("ball4.png")
SetDeviceWindow(640,480,0)
scaleX = DeviceWidth() / 640.0
scaleY = DeviceHeight() / 480.0
ballX = 42
batY = 230
ballY = 230 + 36 - 8
ballDX = 2
ballDY = 0
prevTY = 0
touchY = 0
touchX = 0
touchY = 0
scale = 16
End
Method OnUpdate()
' The if-sentence prevents the bat to appear at bottom of the screen at the start..
If prevTY <> 0 Then batY = batY - (prevTY - touchY)
prevTY = touchY
touchY = TouchY()
touchY = touchY / scaleY
' Keep the bat in the borders of the screen
If batY < 0 Then batY = 0
If batY > 479 - 72 Then batY = 479 - 72
' Move the ball
ballX = ballX + ballDX
ballY = ballY + ballDY
' Keep the ball in the borders of the screen
If ballY < Abs(ballDY) Then ballDY = -ballDY
If ballY > 479 - 17 Then ballDY = -ballDY
If ballX < -Abs(ballDX) Then ballDX = -ballDX
If ballX > 639 - Abs(ballDX) - 16 Then ballDX = -ballDX
' Calculate the deltaY value for the ball in the "old school way"...
If ballX >= 601 - 16 And ballY + 16 > batY And ballY < batY + 72 Then
ballDY = -((batY + 36) - (ballY + 8)) / scale
ballDX = -ballDX
Endif
End
Method OnRender()
PushMatrix()
Scale(scaleX,scaleY)
DrawImage gfxBG,0,0
DrawImage gfxBall, ballX, ballY
DrawImage gfxBat, 601, batY
PopMatrix()
End
End Class
Feel free to use and improve the source above in your own projects.
Here’s the graphics to download (license: public domain), except the background picture (right click and save as…):
The bat is 32 x 73 pixels as size, the ball is 16 x 17 pixels.
For comparing to the C64’s popular Krakout, see the video below:
Many years ago I started to program Krakout style game in the spirit of the good old Commodore 64, but as usual, something went wrong. Three months work with multiple levels and a level editor programmed in Blitz3D were lost because I hadn’t taken backups of the files, when I, well, “fixed” the Windows installation I had at the time…
It all started in 1984, when in Finland the prices of home computers were significantly reduced. One could buy a home computer for under 1000 Finnish marks. That’s about 167 euros. My parents bought me a Commodore Vic 20, that costed 999 Finnish marks.
I really liked the first (and at the time only) game I got with Vic 20: Radar Rat Race. See below a picture of the module:
Below is a YouTube video from the game:
I remember that the game had some bug though: When one got far enough, playing the game became somehow impossible.
Another game I liked, was Fire Galaxy. Below is a little video from the game:
A bit later my Commodore 64 times began.
At those days I saw many C64 games. The most remarkable games from me at the time were Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar and Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny. Ah, the story of the games and all the philosophy in them… Especially the three principles (of the eight virtues): Love, Truth and Courage. These define the good in the games. Evil is defined as ”principles” of the opposite of the mentioned: hate, falsehood and cowardice.
As to choosing the character in these games, I always answered the philosophical questions as myself, not by trying to get my character certain quality. As a result of this, my character became to be of the weakest profession in the game: The shepherd.
Intro from C64’s Ultima IV:
Intro from Ultima V (C64/C128):
When running the game on the C64, there isn’t background music, the sound effects only, because the game is so huge, that C64 hasn’t enough memory for the music.
Boulder Dash and Boulder Dash II were my favourites too.
Below is a video from both games:
I played a lot also Delta, a game by a Finnish programmer Stavros Fasoulas (music by famous Rob Hubbard), see the video below:
One good game for the C64 that teaches also some strategy is Paradroid. There are many remakes of this classic game also to PC.
Commodore 64’s Tetris has incredible music!
There are many games in the world of Commodore 64 that I wasn’t really interested in, but the music is incredible. As an example I must mention Cybernoid II:
Some games were simple and fun to play with good graphics and music, but let the player down with one thing: There was no ending of anykind! I remember playing ”endlessly” both International Karate and IK+ with black belt, but the games just went on and on…
As an youngster I decided, that if I was ever to program a computer game, it would always have an ending.
One incredible C64 game I remember, is Wizball:
Some C64 games I liked, were kind of games that often other people didn’t like. As an example let me mention Armourdillo:
the music of Armourdillo:
If my memory serves my right, I played Armourdillo with music.
Another game, that I almost forget as an example of a game that other people often didn’t seem to like was Master of Lamps:
For the third example of game that the other people didn’t seem to like, but was fun to me as a kid is Poster Paster:
As to Defender of the Crown, I liked C64’s version more than Amiga’s, altough the Amiga version has better graphics and music.
One very good game I almost forgot to the C64 is Thrust:
With Spy vs. Spy II we both, I and one of my friends had lots of fun. We made lots of traps to each other in order to get to that submarine and win the game. There might be one “room” filled with so many traps while we were playing the game, that in practice there was only one special way to get through the room.
One special game from the year 1984: Ghostbusters. Why this game was special? At the time I was Vic 20 user and to me (and to many others) it was simply amazing to hear so authentic speech from a movie in a computer game! What a miracle computer C64 was: With it one can even listen little parts of authentic speech from a movie in a game. How we were amazed!
A game that made many of us laugh, when we were kids, is Super Pipeline II. A fun quality game with nice music and funny graphics and not too hard to finish.
One funny detail from the past in the 80s in our C64 times was C64’s Commando; first the other boys told how hard game Commando is. Eventually one of my friends tried to play Commando for the first time in his life (and this was the first time he saw the game too) and this one friend managed to finish the game from the very beginning to the end at his first try — how the other boys were confused. “Yeah, really hard game!”, he said with little sarcasm.
A game that required fast thinking and good reflexes and gave us visually something new compared to what we had seen before was Cosmic Causeway:
For the end let be mentioned some early gems in the world of Commodore 64 games: M.U.L.E., Archon and Archon II.
Videos below:
Perhaps I come back later with my Amiga gaming history…
The computer games that have given me best gaming experiences ever, are Commodore 64’s Ultima IV and Ultima V. In my youth I always wanted to create a game like these. Many, many years ago I even started making some kind of Ultima like game on Amiga in assembly and C, but I never got that project finished. I made everything myself, the code, graphics and musics.
Here’s a screenshot from work in progress from WinUAE (Amiga emulator):
The screenshot is from a demo written in assembly where there is jumping scrolltext (in Finnish) with the three bitplanes jumping separately. In the demo there’s a little world where the boy in the picture wanders, destroys ghosts and in the end finds his love…
Both demo and the unfinished game that is written in C use Amiga’s system routines. The unfinished game doesn’t have (of course) a scrolltext. The graphics that are made with Amiga’s Deluxe Paint II, are only experimental…
Hopefully I will sometime in the future find time to make this kind of a game for PC, probably in BlitzMax. Because of lack of time, I prefer nowadays to use a programming language, that makes it possible to get something done pretty quickly. And for the sake of nostalgia, the game would have 2D graphics like the original Ultima IV and Ultima V of Commodre 64 (and Amiga).
In the scrolltext it says: ”[Ja he] elivät onnellisina jne…” That’s in English: ”[And they] lived happily etc…”
