Green on Black game compilation

[orion70]

Hi there,

here's my new compilation of games converted from PET to the 40-column FAT40-powered VIC. It contains 20 titles, ranging from text adventures (of course ) to strategy, from flight simulation to card games. All for the 16K or 24K expanded VIC-20.

Some of the games - e.g. Island of Secrets, Lemonade, Nuclear Power Plant - were already published in Denial.
All have been single-filed and pucrunched thanks to Nicola "nbla000", who also provided the excellent game loader. To load games, LOAD"*",8 then RUN. Navigate the loader with arrow keys; left and right to change page.

I wrote an instructions booklet collecting infos about the games from the internet, old computer magazines, books, or directly from the on-screen directions.

Download the disk HERE, and the games instructions HERE.
The virtual disk has also its front and back covers (also in the first page of the instructions booklet). If you want higher res images of the covers, PM me your e-mail address.

Last, I would like to show a collage of screenshots:


Sorry for not being able to convert some other games, especially the ones with many pokes and peeks (Dungeon is way beyond my knowledge, sorry ral-clan). Have fun with these.

[nbla000]

Finally we have new games for holidays

Many compliments Orion for your Compilation

[orion70]

Thanks . Fun "light" games in the summertime, Realms of Quest III for the long winter nights .

[nbla000]

In the back cover you said Type LOAD"*",8,1 at the prompt but ,8 is enough

[Diddl]

Wonderful, I love this old PET style games!

How is this possible??! With 8x16 chars?

[orion70]

How is this possible??! With 8x16 chars?

Thanks to one of the available programs which turn the VIC to a 40 column mode. Don't know many details, someone else will be able to explain how this can be done.

See also HERE.

[Mayhem]

Oh very nice work... now do we have years, publisher and programmer info for me to add all these into GB20?

[Mike]

How is this possible??! With 8x16 chars?

Yes, these 40 column emulators employ a bitmap mode with 160 pixels horizontal, and 176 or 192 lines. FAT-40 uses 4 pixels wide, and 7 pixels high characters and thus fits 40x25 characters on 176 vertical lines. Other emulators use 192 lines, and 8 lines high characters, giving 24 (slightly better readable) text lines.

Then all these programs use an off-screen text buffer, and divert the KERNAL vectors, so the BASIC editor, PRINT, and INPUT operate on this off-screen buffer. And alterations of that text buffer get reflected in the display bitmap (not necessarily POKE's to the text buffer - this requires a wedge in the POKE command being part of the emulator). The colour resolution is 8x16 pixels, which at best forces 2x2 chars to be in identical foreground colour. In most cases the emulators only support one global foreground colour.

Of course, these emulators aren't strictly necessary to achieve this feat. Witness MINIPAINT.

[Ghislain]

Thanks . Fun "light" games in the summertime, Realms of Quest III for the long winter nights .

Realms of .... what? Never heard of it.

This is a great package you put out. I look forward to playing some PET games on the VIC-20 when I download these tonight.

I'm just wondering -- what is the difference between using FAT-40 and something like PET LOADER in this case? Does the added layer of emulation use up too much memory?

[Mike]

what is the difference between using FAT-40 and something like PET LOADER in this case?

PET Loader loads to BLK5, thus requires RAM also be present there. FAT-40 allocates memory up to address 11882 for bitmap, off-screen text buffer, and its own code; i.e. a +8K RAM expansion suffices (4500 bytes are left free in that case).

Even though it displays 40 columns, a POKE 32768,1 - which should put an 'A' in the top-left corner - doesn't work with PET Loader. So here the emulation falls short.

In FAT-40, this POKE works.

[orion70]

Oh very nice work... now do we have years, publisher and programmer info for me to add all these into GB20?

Thank you Mayhem. Here are the data I could retrieve (title - publisher - programmer - year):

Artillery - Creative Computing vol.8 n.8 - Jeff Jessee -1982
Atlantic Patrol - (unknown) - R.D. Watts - 1978
Voyage to Atlantis (aka Atlantis) - Mad Hatter Software - Greg Hassett - 1980
PET Super Baseball 7.4 - (unknown) - Jinshi Suzuki & Bill Munch - 1983
Bets - Cursor Magazine n.20 - Randall Lockwood - 1980
Casino Blackjack 5.7 - CMS Software Systems - (unknown) - 1979
Eliza - (unknown) - Joseph Weizenbaum in 1966 - (adapted to PET in) 1983
Flight Simulator - Commodore Educational Software - Jerry Panofsky & Peter Ragsdale - 1983
The Island of Secrets - Usborne Publishing, Ltd - Jenny Tyler & Les Howarth - 1984
Journey to the Center of the Earth - Mad Hatter Software - Greg Hassett - 1978
Jumbo Jet Lander - Courbois Software - R.A. Smith & L.J. Slow - 1980
Lemonade - (Public Domain) - Mark D. Rejhon - 1986
Lunar Lander - Commodore Business Machines, Inc. - (unknown) - 1978
Nuclear Power Plant - Commodore Educational Software - Stephen R. Breggren - 1982
Ouranos! (aka Weather War) - Cursor Magazine n.21 - Kathy Higby - 1980
Poker - Cursor Magazine n.22 - David Hook - 1980
Slot - Cursor Magazine n.9 - Mark Heaney - 1979
Snark 3.0 - (unknown) - Vince Mills - 1979
Sorcerer's Castle Adventure - Mad Hatter Software - Greg Hassett - 1979
Hunt the Wumpus - (unknown) - Gregory Yob in 1972 - (adapted to PET by David Estall in) 1980

***

I uploaded a new version of game instructions, with the correct titles list on the back cover (AIR PATROL -> ATL PATROL).

[Pedro Lambrini]

Looking forward to playing some of these games over the next couple of days. BTW, I really like the idea of the 'disk cover'.

[orion70]

Thanks. The idea of a "stylish" design came when in the Lemonade thread Carlsson wrote

Green on black is the new black!

Indeed, I created the cover before the disk itself .

[TheAnachronaut]

Hello fellow VICtims,
I can’t get any of the links for this masterpiece to download! PETulator, programs, AND disk labels? Brilliant! But where can I download them, not here. Help!
Yours, Mark

[orion70]

Thanks Mark, I remember I had lots of fun converting those programs. Unfortunately, they fall in the bunch of software (and manuals etc) that was lost forever as Google inexplicably cut my repository a few years ago. I also had a backup in an old external HDD, so I turned to it, only to realize that it was broken . Should anyone have a copy of those files, it would be much appreciated (Mayhem? Sorry I always call you when I can't find files ).