Denial

Hi guys,

I received my first vic20 for Christmas in 1981. After dreaming of coding up a tribute to a very 'popular' game of the day for 30 plus years, I finally have something to upload. I remember drawing pictures of this with just the cursor keys and the stock character set graphics when I was a kid. All I had back in the day was a Super Expander and a cassette drive. I attempted to target that original environment and stuck to +3k or less.

Here's a you tube video of the first test run on the real iron:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKnd8T4pi18

Panicman
D. Bills : 6502 code
J. Messner: music, playtesting and infinite enthusiasm and support

Both versions should load and you can type 'run' from the basic prompt after loading.
e.g.: load "panicman3k.prg",8,1

There is no difference between the 8k and 3k version other than a splash screen to show the authors on the 8k.

+3k version:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0VOPY ... sp=sharing

+8k version

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0VOPY ... sp=sharing

Edit: renamed the images to have a .prg extension
Edit2: didn't get the rename quite right, tried again, and put new links up

Definitely nice looking and sounding. Any chance of being able to have a PRG file for the game instead of P00?

Mayhem wrote:Definitely nice looking and sounding. Any chance of being able to have a PRG file for the game instead of P00?

Could I just rename the file on the download link? Is .prg the better/correct extension for it? I'm not sure why I made it a p00, I think at some point I thought that was what I had to name it for WinVice or something.

Amazing! Very close to the original arcade! That's two fantastic releases in just a few days.

Would you care to explain the differences between the 3K and 8K version? Apart from the splash-screen I couldn't find any yet.

Also, please add a post for this release to the VIC-20 Software Releases of 2014 thread in Announcements. Always nice to go back to these in the months and years to come.

tokra wrote:Amazing! Very close to the original arcade! That's two fantastic releases in just a few days.

Would you care to explain the differences between the 3K and 8K version? Apart from the splash-screen I couldn't find any yet.

Also, please add a post for this release to the VIC-20 Software Releases of 2014 thread in Announcements. Always nice to go back to these in the months and years to come.

Hi, thankyou!
There is no play difference to the 8k version other than the splash screen which I'm hoping I can finish up a bit when I can take a breather. Ok. I didn't know if we were allowed to put messages in the Game releases by ourselves, they looked so formal and awesome there. I will follow the format I see there and put a release up. Thanks!

I certainly love its smoothness and how close it got to the original.

bills442 wrote:After dreaming of coding up a tribute to a very 'popular' game of the day for 30 plus years, I finally have something to upload.

It's never too late!

Looks cool - particularly like the sound effects, they sound very close to the original.

Damn! I can't download stuff from Google here at work

orion70 wrote:Damn! I can't download stuff from Google here at work

Leave man!!!

rhurst wrote:

bills442 wrote:After dreaming of coding up a tribute to a very 'popular' game of the day for 30 plus years, I finally have something to upload.

It's never too late!

Your game collection was a huge inspiration to me btw!

Victragic wrote:Looks cool - particularly like the sound effects, they sound very close to the original.

My musician friend Jeff helped with the sound effects, thank goodness, otherwise I would have been lost. He was able to figure the 'notes' by ear, despite his initial distaste at the odd frequencies generated by the VIC. My bloated "beginner" assembly coding left very very little memory so he had to figure out a way to compress the intro song into tables with some kind of shifts for the change in register as it plays. There was more I wanted to add but 37 bytes left pretty much 'ended' the project. Toward the end it was wearying because we would want to add something, like the sound effect for the eyes returning to the box, and you had to go scrounge up bytes. Hardly news to everyone here I know; but It was an eye opener for me.

Very nice! This makes the Atarisoft version look like a kindergartener made it. Awesome!

I noticed that it looks like you saved both versions from the beginning of the BASIC RAM areas ($0400 for 3k and $1200 for 8k). If you save starting at $0401 for 3k and $1201 for 8k then you won't need the ,1 at the end of the load command.

buzbard wrote:Very nice! This makes the Atarisoft version look like a kindergartener made it. Awesome!

I noticed that it looks like you saved both versions from the beginning of the BASIC RAM areas ($0400 for 3k and $1200 for 8k). If you save starting at $0401 for 3k and $1201 for 8k then you won't need the ,1 at the end of the load command.

thanks!

Ok, ya, I was reading some stuff last night in the programming sections and starting to realize I didn't do the address right. Someone was discussing some zero that basic inserts for you at the beginning, etc. What you describe makes more sense to me. It's always better to type less! I will try to update the images.

One thing I was wondering was how I could make a cassette for the 8k version from this ( just for amusement ). I tried to load the 8K version into an 8K machine and manipulate the basic pointers in zero page such that I could save the image to cassette with a save,8 command, but I didn't have much luck. I tried setting locations 43 and 44 to $1200 and 45,46 to $1200 plus the image size. Maybe I needed to make that $1201 and it would have worked?

Edit: I meant the 8K into the 8k, fixed the above paragraph.

Here's a routine that I use to save a block of memory: Type these lines one at a time pressing enter after each.
Change the 's' and 'e' variables in the first line for the start and end addresses.
In the second line change "filename" to the name you want and change ,8,1 to ,1,1 to save to tape.