TheC64 Commodore 64 replica

[ddabrahim]

when you're working with memory from 1024 to 2024 (40x25 tiles) they are directly affected by you, there's no doublebuffer of any kind; you're in direct control of the true hardware.

Yes maybe this is the problem. On true hardware I am directly working with the hardware but I have considered that it is an emulated hardware which could potentially have buffers and different draw cycles with bugs of its own.

It is also totally possible the code is wrong. For now it is not that important, it doesn’t bother me. I’ll come back to this an other time. Thank you for the help.

You also have to remember that it's also using a modern television. It's one of the reason why those that collect vintage computers will try to get hold of CRT monitors

Yes but even if emulated, I was hoping an actual hardware with HDMI, does some optimisation to compensate for this and this is why I didn’t want to use just an emulator on a Raspberry Pi. Figured it might be better.

I would have loved to use actual hardware but old hardware can fail, I can’t repair it myself though would be interesting to change a couple transistors I guess.
New hardware is crazy expensive though tha AgonLight2 board is pretty cheap and I am surprised it is not out of stock. Maybe I try that and put that in to theC64 case if I can. It is not Commodore but I did want to have an authentic retro case and now I have, maybe I’m going to play with different boards if I can.

For now I stick with theC64 board though. Apart from this little glitch, it works fine for the most part.

 

[Wingnut]

I just need to add that if it does not emulate this kind of thing correctly, it is the worst emulator I have ever seen. Games would be impossible to run, and everyone who used the BASIC interpreter would have complained.

You should be able to deal with the memorymap like it was the real thing in every way. Maybe it does not emulate cycle-perfectly like the emulator I suggested, but not being cycle-perfect should not be a problem except in very few cases (mostly high-tech demos and games like Creatures, Turrican etc).

 

[MikeHart]

I will place my order for the agonlight 2 by the end of the week.

 

[ddabrahim]

Games would be impossible to run, and everyone who used the BASIC interpreter would have complained.

I have no problem with games apart from no joy with some tape images and no support for disk swap. I think the Carousel game system and the Basic system is 2 different system. For example when I launch a game from Basic, sometime the joy does not work or the game does not load at all I get black screen. But if I launch it from Carousel, it works.

So if people buy it for games, it is pretty good.
I don’t know how many people buy it for Basic like I did. TheC64 programming community doesn’t seems to be very active on the official forum.

I will place my order for the agonlight 2 by the end of the week.

Please share your experience with it. I am curious how good it is. Looks very promising.

 

[Wingnut]

Nice to see that people being interested in simpler machines! The are all the rage and some of them are quite attractive. I'm getting a ESP-32 myself.

 

[MikeHart]

Maybe it’s an age thing. I am 57, my son is 24. When I show such machines I get a dime “meh” from him. I find these machines attractive because they are limited but have all you need. That imho raises creativity.

 

[ddabrahim]

Wow that ESP-32 boards are insane cheap. I can get them from China for as low as €2-€6, free delivery but need to spend at minimum €10. Interesting board.

The reason I am looking at these boards and 8-bit computers is that as a kid I was briefly exposed to 8-bit tech for a short period of time. I didn't grow up with them but it did inspire me.
I also love programming, can't really say I am good at it and have a very good understanding of it, but I find it interesting. I have tried all the modern programming languages and operating systems, lots of modern frameworks, libraries, game engines, dev boards I have recently even touched machine learning and AI. There is only a very few things I haven't tried yet and programming an 8-bit computer is one of them.

So I think people need to have some genuine interest in programming and being exposed to a simple 8-bit system as a child can also certainly help with being interested. Also lack of goal, vision and just wondering around aimlessly like I do can also certainly help to end up using an 8-bit system

 

[Wingnut]

I come from that 8-bit era, being 48 years old. I've found my way back because I adore the simplicity that it gives you, and as Mike pointed out, limitations can spark incredible creativity. He hit his head on th nail there. I think that is a major attraction for many, myself included.

IMO, it's also easy to feel lost in the more modern world of technology, It has become a sort of pop culture. If you want to be the 'cool kid on the block,' you need to adapt quickly. And without a clear goal, in mind, you'll have a huge problem.

I've actually dabbled with programming my whole life, i went from old school machine coding hacking to modern web development but I would never claim to be particurly skilled at programming. I have a passion though and I do enjoy to sit down and just emmerse myself for a while.

 

[dawlane]

limitations can spark incredible creativity

And you can never really get more creative when you only have 1K of memory.... Wan't to play Chess on an un-expanded Sinclair ZX 81 anyone?

 

[Wingnut]

And you can never really get more creative when you only have 1K of memory.... Wan't to play Chess on an un-expanded Sinclair ZX 81 anyone?

It's all about the right kind of limitations.. The wrong ones will inhibit you.

 

[Wingnut]

I'm a FORTH lover so I'm actually intrested in that 1K limitation too, but I see your point. But the truth is that there are good limitations and there are bad limitations. This is the first thing that I look for when I sit down with a new system.

Too simple.. you will get nowhere..
Too complex.. you will get nowhere..

 

[MikeHart]

I have now ordered the AgonLight2 from Mouser. Seems to be the cheapest option for Germany.
Will order a keyboard and psu from amazon. VGA cables and an compatible lcd screen I should have in the basement.

 

[ddabrahim]

Regarding limitation spark creativity, I just learned that on the C64 it was very common to use characters as graphics since the video chip is limited to draw only 8 sprites, it can store more but can draw only 8. One example is Limbo's Quest, I was shocked to learn that, apart from the player and enemies, everything, all the scenary, background is made of characters. I would have never imagined it:

So how can you draw such detailed scenes with characters. Program it, position it all in BASIC sounds very daunting. I guess people wrote their own editors for this.

 

[Wingnut]

Regarding limitation spark creativity, I just learned that on the C64 it was very common to use characters as graphics since the video chip is limited to draw only 8 sprites, it can store more but can draw only 8. One example is Limbo's Quest, I was shocked to learn that, apart from the player and enemies, everything, all the scenary, background is made of characters. I would have never imagined it:


View attachment 1563

So how can you draw such detailed scenes with characters. Program it, position it all in BASIC sounds very daunting. I guess people wrote their own editors for this.

Ya, it's kind of amazing but this is how it was done in most games and on most 8-bit platforms. The Sinclair series was different it used pure processing power, but its colors where still limited in the same way, 2 colors per 8x8 cell.This is how it got its special style.

C64 on the other hand had different modes, I think 3 of them where char/tile based and 2-3 wehr bitmap based. you never used the bitmap for action games it was too slow to move graphics. I am still imporessed on how Sincalir could animate graphics so well without any help.

I know that SNES and many 16-bit machines, and most arcade systems also used this technique. Not the Amiag though, and that's why it needed it Blitter, it needed move around pixels just like the Sinclair computers where doing. But it needed more speed because it had more colors to juggle around.

Neo Geo would be the perfetct example of when things changed to how we do things today It didn't rely on any characters or tiles. No map at all. It has just blank screen and it has sprites.
It truy uses noothing but sprites, alot of them abit more then 300 I can't rmemeber the exact number, and each sprite can be as tall as you want. It was enough sprites to mimic 4-5 layers of chars/tiles.

Nowadays we just splat sprites or tiles anywere we want and we just don't have to care. it's an mazing progress..

One other thiing that comes to my mind is.. at that time you did anything you could to save the previous frame youc even cut out graphics areas, just to restore them in the next frame when you moves soft sprites. You would NEVER clear the screen and redraw everything, that would be considered a failure. And it would not run fast, no way.

So in way the charatcer map, aka tile map. where one of the first GPU feature. Sprites, Vectorgrahics..



Today we just.. draw

 

[ddabrahim]

One other thiing that comes to my mind is.. at that time you did anything you could to save the previous frame youc even cut out graphics areas, just to restore them in the next frame when you moves soft sprites. You would NEVER clear the screen and redraw everything

Ah that makes a lot of sense. Interesting. Appreciate what people were able to achieve with such a limited command set and computing power back then. Today with all the virtually unlimited resources and modern tools and languages we have, people need to know so much less. Just realised how much I don't actually know

 

[Wingnut]

Ya If you know what you want and can see through all the complexity t understand what is going on (actually youjustneed to know what is effificnt and not haha), the hardware today is acatully all great.

I forgot to say that I had one of those cartridges for the C64 that allowed you to "freeze" the computer and you could look around the memory whenever you wanted, at the press of a button. You could do this even in the middle of games, and then you'd resume them like nothing happened. You could steal the graphics and cheat the number of lives etc.

Today that would be equvivalence of stealing spritesheets I guess

I remeber my first more serious game that I made in BASIC, I defined the character-set to display some tiles it ya.. it was bascially a really bad Zelda clone where Link looked like a santas-little-helper, but still it was an amazing expeirnce when you finally found out how to peek the joysticks, move sprites about and everything. I quickly made a character-editor and a sprite editor.

My gawd.. It was good times. You where young and you where exploring exciting terretories..