JVIC - Java VIC 20 emulator from 2003/2004

[lance.ewing]

Hi all,

I introduced myself in the announcement forum. I mentioned something there regarding my emulation efforts that I thought I would continue to elaborate on here in the emulation forum.

I said in my introduction that I wrote JVIC, a VIC 20 emulator written in Java, in 2004. I was feeling nostalgic today and decided to track it down in my collection of old files. What I found has brought back a few more memories. It seems that I was working on JVIC in 2003 and wrote most of it then. And it turns out that I did release it on the Internet, if only for a short time. I've found the HTML files for "The Ultimate VIC 20 Website" (the unoriginal name I gave my old VIC 20 web site) which included the old 1997 version with changes made in 2004 that included the applet running on a web page with about 20 games selectable from a drop down list. I had forgotten that I got that far with it.

I think that version of the web site must have disappeared at the end of 2004 when I moved from New Zealand to the UK and shut down the account I had with my ISP, which included the web hosting. So that version of the web site would have been up for only 6 months I guess. The Way Back machine didn't grab much from it, but it seems to confirm that it was on the Internet between July 2004 and December 2004.

Now I wish that I'd advertised it more. I guess I thought that with the Windows VIC 20 emulators being well established that there wouldn't be much interest in a Java version. I didn't realise that there was such a big VIC 20 community still active at that time.

Lance

[JohnnyRockets]

Hi all,

I introduced myself in the announcement forum. I mentioned something there regarding my emulation efforts that I thought I would continue to elaborate on here in the emulation forum.

I said in my introduction that I wrote JVIC, a VIC 20 emulator written in Java, in 2004. I was feeling nostalgic today and decided to track it down in my collection of old files. What I found has brought back a few more memories. It seems that I was working on JVIC in 2003 and wrote most of it then. And it turns out that I did release it on the Internet, if only for a short time. I've found the HTML files for "The Ultimate VIC 20 Website" (the unoriginal name I gave my old VIC 20 web site) which included the old 1997 version with changes made in 2004 that included the applet running on a web page with about 20 games selectable from a drop down list. I had forgotten that I got that far with it.

I think that version of the web site must have disappeared at the end of 2004 when I moved from New Zealand to the UK and shut down the account I had with my ISP, which included the web hosting. So that version of the web site would have been up for only 6 months I guess. The Way Back machine didn't grab much from it, but it seems to confirm that it was on the Internet between July 2004 and December 2004.

Now I wish that I'd advertised it more. I guess I thought that with the Windows VIC 20 emulators being well established that there wouldn't be much interest in a Java version. I didn't realise that there was such a big VIC 20 community still active at that time.

Lance

Great Lance! So how can we get our hands on this emulator? I'd love to try it out!

[lance.ewing]

Great Lance! So how can we get our hands on this emulator? I'd love to try it out!

Give this a go:

http://vic-20.appspot.com

There is a link to it on there. But be warned that the site is fairly rough and very retro (by which I mean Web 0.01). I've essentially copied the HTML from backups of my old web site into a new Google App Engine project, just so I had a place to host it. There are still over 90% of the links and images on the site that are broken (for some reason I didn't back up the images). I've only had time to change my email address, add an entry to the "what's new" page, and recreate a few of the images that were missing.

It might suffice for now though. I plan to tidy up the rest over the next week.

Regarding the Java emulator, I suspect it will only work on a PC. I tried in on my Macbook yesterday and it was impossible to control the joystick. At the moment it requires the PC number pad. This is exactly as it was 8 years ago. If I get a chance, I might make it a bit friendlier over the next few weeks. It seems to work well on my Windows machine. I tried it in Chrome. Hopefully it should work in the others.

Edit: To use the joystick on a PC, turn Numlock on and then use the arrow keys on the keypad. The Ins/0 key is fire. To start a game, sometimes you need to hit Ins/0 and sometimes the SPACE bar.

[JohnnyRockets]

Great Lance! So how can we get our hands on this emulator? I'd love to try it out!

Give this a go:

http://vic-20.appspot.com

There is a link to it on there. But be warned that the site is fairly rough and very retro (by which I mean Web 0.01). I've essentially copied the HTML from backups of my old web site into a new Google App Engine project, just so I had a place to host it. There are still over 90% of the links and images on the site that are broken (for some reason I didn't back up the images). I've only had time to change my email address, add an entry to the "what's new" page, and recreate a few of the images that were missing.

It might suffice for now though. I plan to tidy up the rest over the next week.

Regarding the Java emulator, I suspect it will only work on a PC. I tried in on my Macbook yesterday and it was impossible to control the joystick. At the moment it requires the PC number pad. This is exactly as it was 8 years ago. If I get a chance, I might make it a bit friendlier over the next few weeks. It seems to work well on my Windows machine. I tried it in Chrome. Hopefully it should work in the others.

Edit: To use the joystick on a PC, turn Numlock on and then use the arrow keys on the keypad. The Ins/0 key is fire. To start a game, sometimes you need to hit Ins/0 and sometimes the SPACE bar.

Hi Lance! Thanks I will definitely check this out, it sounds very cool!