New game: Vegetables Deluxe - VIC20 3K +8K (blk0 and blk1)

[orion70]

A VIC port of the C64, Amiga and Spectrum puzzle game Vegetables by Mike Richmond has been created. The author of this port is Nick Sherman of Arlasoft. It's available here: https://arlagames.itch.io/vegetables-vic-20

Also, if you want, you can browse and download several other games for various platforms - including Cave Man for the VIC (2020).

If you are reading, thank you Nick!

[Mike]

The requirement of +8K RAM combined with +3K RAM is a rather unfortunate choice. It would be better require a +16K RAM expansion instead.

Edit: I see Nick is registered here in Denial, as madbeagle. PM sent.

[orion70]

Thanks Mike, I didn't notice that. Also, hope this will get a standard memory configuration.

(And thanks for calling too )

[MCes]

The requirement of +8K RAM combined with +3K RAM is a rather unfortunate choice. It would be better require a +16K RAM expansion instead.

Two games like this can fit into one JOLLY CARTRIDGE: (+3k +24k)RAM +2x(8k BLK5 ROM: loader/launcher/game.prg)

[desiv]

Picked this one up...
Fun game...

Admittedly, I haven't tried it on my real Vic yet, as I need to re-organize the office a bit.
Darn cleaning up for the holidays!!! ;-( ;-(

I've found the two most common RAM configs I've been using are unexpanded and fully expanded, and with the emulator at least it ran fine with fully expanded.
I've seen some other games list the +3K +8K too, and I've thought that was a bit odd...

But fun game!!!

Funny tho, I don't find myself paying even $0.99 for an Android game of this genre, but I will donate around $4 for a Vic-20 version.

[Mike]

I've seen some other games list the +3K +8K too, and I've thought that was a bit odd...

You'd care to cite actual examples?

The combination of +8K with +3K RAM expansion is rather inconvenient. It is useless for the BASIC programmer as the +3K do not add to the available memory (for BASIC programs). The machine code programmer will have to put up with discontinuous memory as well. Unless the coder is adventurous enough to put the screen at $0200(?) or even $0000(???), screen memory has to reside in the $1000..$1FFF range and that will split the rest of available memory in two parts.

On real hardware this requires a cartridge expander, a +3K RAM cartridge and a +8K RAM cartridge for a true retro setup. Full RAM expansions with +32K *and* +3K combined as true +35K (i.e. no mirroring between RAMx and BLK5, for example) only became somewhat more widespread in the last decade, but these are then over the top again for the memory requirements of the game.

My suspicion is the author wanted the game to be run with the lowest amount of extra RAM possible to contain all the game data (as in: "Weeeee, my program only requires an extra +11K - not +16K!!!"). In doing so, he arrived at the equivalent of tilted photography: it suits noone, and annoys everyone. As I already wrote, requiring +16K instead would have been a much better choice: just plug in a VIC-1111 or the like and there you go.

[desiv]

I've seen some other games list the +3K +8K too, and I've thought that was a bit odd...

You'd care to cite actual examples?

Looks like you are right...
The ones I was thinking I was seeing look like they actually had a 3K and an 8K version, not requiring both. (Like Panicman)
I saw "3k/8k" on them and made an improper assumption...

My bad there...

Although I don't think it annoys everyone...
I think a fair amount of people have an expander now that will work with this. (Penultimate or other with configurable options. Mine is DIP Switch settable..)
But I do agree, it is a quirky option and just making it work with a 16k expander probably makes a lot more sense...

[Mayhem]

Yeah some games I've found had both versions to accommodate if people owned either the +3K expansion or the +8K expansion.