Search found 58 matches

by johncl
Fri Jan 23, 2015 3:29 am
Forum: Emulation and Cross Development
Topic: Vic 20 Screen and Character designer
Replies: 129
Views: 57670

Re: Vic 20 Screen and Character designer

Works for me in Chrome at least. You first have to select the chars in the screen area you want to edit as bitmap, then press the button. The bitmap editor will ofc edit those chars that are in those locations so if you just clear the screen you are editing the same char in all positions. So you can...
by johncl
Thu Jan 15, 2015 12:34 pm
Forum: Emulation and Cross Development
Topic: Vic 20 Screen and Character designer
Replies: 129
Views: 57670

Re: Vic 20 Screen and Character designer

Wow, thats really great! :) Excellent work!
by johncl
Tue Dec 16, 2014 4:27 am
Forum: Programming
Topic: MINIPAINT 1.2
Replies: 74
Views: 91665

Re: MINIPAINT 1.2

Hi, bringing alive this old thread as I was checking out the best way to pixel a bitmap image for the Vic20. I understand the bitmap mode is achieved by a special 16x8 mode (never tried this though) where each char is 16 lines each. I saw this minipaint tool and realized that the online character dr...
by johncl
Tue Dec 16, 2014 4:24 am
Forum: Emulation and Cross Development
Topic: Vic 20 Screen and Character designer
Replies: 129
Views: 57670

Re: Vic 20 Screen and Character designer

Ah thanks. That would solve the colour drawing challenge. As for the pixel thing, most artists will hand pixel anyway at each char level, and likely not have much problem with that. The full screen drawing thing is basically just nice to flesh out a quick sketch as a basis before the hand-pixelling ...
by johncl
Tue Dec 16, 2014 4:04 am
Forum: Emulation and Cross Development
Topic: Vic 20 Screen and Character designer
Replies: 129
Views: 57670

Re: Vic 20 Screen and Character designer

Thanks for developing on this still! A lot of very nice features! I think the only thing missing from this tool now is a button to lay out the chars from the charset on the screen spread out (char 0 in top left, then 1 to the right, etc) so that one can more easily do bitmaps. A draw directly on scr...
by johncl
Sat Dec 06, 2014 12:11 pm
Forum: Programming
Topic: Vic20 5k memory
Replies: 51
Views: 10953

Re: Vic20 5k memory

Gauntlet on unexpanded Vic20 surely is a daunting challenge, I can imagine a project like that taking forever, even if you expand the machine - it is after all a rather large game. But I perfectly understand the motivation to see what you can fit in 5k memory. But it might not be the memory limit th...
by johncl
Fri Dec 05, 2014 9:27 am
Forum: Programming
Topic: Vic20 5k memory
Replies: 51
Views: 10953

Re: Vic20 5k memory

Well, anything is possible with endless amounts of memory. This discussion comes up very often, and personally I feel a large portion of my own motivation comes from limited hardware resources, and not to create another Bards Tale. When memory becomes abundant, it becomes much more about how much gr...
by johncl
Fri Dec 05, 2014 7:03 am
Forum: Programming
Topic: Vic20 5k memory
Replies: 51
Views: 10953

Re: Vic20 5k memory

Reached the limit of the unexpanded Vic20 with my VICRPG (working title), and there is still quite a bit to add to the game. Been optimizing a bit here and there (which is great fun), trying to find smart ways of arranging the code saving space, better use of registers, etc. Also moved all variables...
by johncl
Fri Nov 28, 2014 3:32 am
Forum: Programming
Topic: Code compression with bytecode
Replies: 17
Views: 4377

Re: Code compression with bytecode

Well, for the other C64 project I am working on I use exomize to unpack each level/regions sprites as needed and the depacker code takes around 256 bytes including some custom code and pointer tables I have to set up which block should be unpacked. In addition it needs 156 bytes temporary memory whi...
by johncl
Thu Nov 27, 2014 1:43 am
Forum: Programming
Topic: More random questions
Replies: 13
Views: 4162

Re:

Since I didn't find anything on the internet, I just did an exhaustive search of the a and c parameters for a mod 256 Linear Congruential Generator, feeding the results into Monte Carlo Pi (PI) and Serial Correlation Coefficient (SCC) tests from "ent" (http://www.fourmilab.ch/random/). Th...
by johncl
Mon Nov 24, 2014 6:00 am
Forum: Programming
Topic: Code compression with bytecode
Replies: 17
Views: 4377

Re: Code compression with bytecode

Smart ways of crunching data is always welcome in my world, and even if some are just theoretical tickling of the brain - I welcome the discussion. Coming from a Java world, some sort of bytecode thing is interesting, and as several have said BASIC is generally just that, but an idea that is more op...
by johncl
Mon Nov 24, 2014 1:40 am
Forum: Programming
Topic: Why still use tape?
Replies: 35
Views: 8708

Re: Why still use tape?

Tape is important, its basically what I grew up with on the C64 here, and I suppose if I had a Vic20 back then it would be tape too. If I find that my game project for the Vic20 is good, I'd love for it to be published on tape by something like Psytronik just to feel the physical release on tape in ...
by johncl
Fri Nov 21, 2014 12:07 pm
Forum: Programming
Topic: Vic20 5k memory
Replies: 51
Views: 10953

Re: Vic20 5k memory

Yes, I use for example the tape buffer now for the map, and had planned to use the stack for objects tables (things monsters drop and is found around the map). I might relocate some of these though if I can have a longer contiguous block although my objects structure can be easily adapted to have &q...
by johncl
Fri Nov 21, 2014 8:02 am
Forum: Programming
Topic: Vic20 5k memory
Replies: 51
Views: 10953

Re: Vic20 5k memory

Hehe, couldnt resist optimizing this further if you don't need your own IRQ: sei lda #$12 sta $0314 inc $0315 stx $0289 // set keyboard buffer size to 0 - X is always 0 on entry here! (read from $030d) dex txs // reset stack back to bottom cli I checked the ROM disassembly and saw that page 0,2,3 ar...
by johncl
Fri Nov 21, 2014 7:20 am
Forum: Programming
Topic: Vic20 5k memory
Replies: 51
Views: 10953

Re: Vic20 5k memory

Haha, you were quicker than me, I just discovered that myself and was going to fix it. :) Copy-Paste is an old habit hard to shake off. ;)