Oolite Bulletins

Posted: **Mon Jun 16, 2008 7:48 pm**

Arexack_Heretic wrote:
I was really excited about the ROC once upon a time on a C=64...
I was confused because I hadn't progressed in ranking.
Selftaught english didn't really prepare me for it,
had to look it up in a dictionary and the cheap one I had did not contain enthymology or slang.
After some noodling I decided it was supposed to be some sort of "well done!"
Only years later I heard it again in I think Shaft, it went >snick< and has been a favourite ever since.

Right On Brotha!

just out of interest it also means "right on" in the sense that an opinion (such as a political or social viewpoint) is a good one to have.

e.g. "Pythons and Anacondas are good target practice" "Yeah right on!"

Posted: **Mon Jun 16, 2008 11:30 pm**

Amen to that!

Posted: **Tue Jun 17, 2008 11:38 am**

Ok!

Wait, wut?

Posted: **Tue Jun 17, 2008 4:16 pm**

Posted: **Tue Jun 17, 2008 7:09 pm**

TGHC wrote:
yes I think it was 256 which is why it's a bit puzzling.

A late reply yeah, but the reason for 256 kills..

The maximum value a byte in memory can hold is 255, hex decimal code FF

because it is 8 bits 1+2+4+8+16+32+64+128
which ofcourse is the binary system...

So each time that byte reached 0, which it would when you added 1 to it by the time it was 255, another byte was incremented by one, and the code "machine-code", printed the Right on commander.. it was prolly done this way to save memory as a check for a specific value would have been using more memory.

and machine code was nothing but numbers

like this

Code: Select all

if you used a machinecode assembler you would see things like this

Code: Select all

c000 LDA c100
c003 INC
c004 STA c100

that bit of code is the Equiviliant of

Code: Select all

i++;

in javascripting or c++; or ordinary C, dont think anybody uses C anymore though...

As you can see this simple increment a value in memory by 1,is using the memory from c000 to c006. which is 7 bytes... sounds like nothing, but when you think about it.. its actually quite exspensive... if you only had roughly 40 KB of Ram(C=64)to program and hold data... which in realiity was what you had, as the rest was reserved for the C=64s Kernel operating system..

Posted: **Tue Jun 17, 2008 8:09 pm**

fascinating - thanks for all the information. And from a far less technical viewpoint the fact that the original programming for Elite still haunts the space-lanes of Oolite is enduringly nostalgic.

Posted: **Tue Jun 17, 2008 9:45 pm**

Frame wrote:
if you used a machinecode assembler you would see things like this
Code: Select all
c000 LDA c100
c003 INC
c004 STA c100

Those were the days and with 64K to cram everything into.

Posted: **Fri Jun 20, 2008 10:57 pm**

The C64 only had 39611 bytes available to the BASIC programmer - more of the 64K was available if you knew what you were doing - in fact Andy Braybrook (Paradroid, Uridium, AlleyKat) managed to squeeze more memory out of the machine than the theoretical maximum (about 49K) by stealing some of the registers normally used as a buffer for the cartridge port - he was a very clever chap - he even worked out how to put sprites in the border which meant he could put scores in the border which meant a larger player area (this was also used by Thalamus when they produced Sanxion)

Posted: **Sat Jun 21, 2008 7:17 am**

DaddyHoggy wrote:
The C64 only had 39611 bytes available to the BASIC programmer - more of the 64K was available if you knew what you were doing - in fact Andy Braybrook (Paradroid, Uridium, AlleyKat) managed to squeeze more memory out of the machine than the theoretical maximum (about 49K) by stealing some of the registers normally used as a buffer for the cartridge port - he was a very clever chap - he even worked out how to put sprites in the border which meant he could put scores in the border which meant a larger player area (this was also used by Thalamus when they produced Sanxion)

yeah later on, i think as late as in 1990-92, someone produced a cartridge game that had 1 mb of ram on board, allthough it could only be used by the game on the same cartridge... as they where trying to put some sort of console version out of the C64 technology... offcourse it was doomed, with the decline in the gaming industry back then.. which was resurected(for the pc). With wolfenstein 3D(1992), doom(1993), and quake for the PC(1996).

i was stunned the first time i saw Quake, with the ability to go under water, with a 3dfx card(got it when i heard about it), that water even became transparent... and true 3D look around, and modding ability. it was just christmass all year that year... and me and freinds, threw together some small lan parties... where we played almost nothing but Quake. Later Unreal, Quake II and so on. And all the girls just thought.. damn males... what is so special about a computer game... just as with cars and football, they will never understand...

Posted: **Sat Jun 21, 2008 8:59 am**

DaddyHoggy wrote:
he was a very clever chap - he even worked out how to put sprites in the border

Yes, I remember the 'vertical blank interrupt' trick very well. The first time I demonstrated 32 sprites on screen at the same time people thought I was an Alchemist.

Posted: **Sat Jun 21, 2008 9:28 am**

CaptKev wrote:
DaddyHoggy wrote:
he was a very clever chap - he even worked out how to put sprites in the border
Yes, I remember the 'vertical blank interrupt' trick very well. The first time I demonstrated 32 sprites on screen at the same time people thought I was an Alchemist.

while the pedantic would argue there was only 8 at anyone time, only it flickerd so fast between the 4 series of 8 sprites that the human eye did not notice...

for others, the C64 had MOBs (moveable objects) known as sprites that was 64 by 64 larges blocks you could "paint" so to speak to resemble a 2d shape...

the c64 only had build in ability to show 8 at anyone time, and this was especially true if you programmed in BASIC.

You could trick this by calling something called an interupt request 50 times pr second(i think).. and thereby switch posistion an shape of the MOBs, however only machinecoding was fast enough to achive this.

nostalgic and know useless knowhow.. but it did introduce me to interupt requests... IRQ something todays PCs take automaticly care off, but in the 90s IRQs mattered.. and i presume still do, only it is the operating system/bios("plug and play)(used to call it plug and pray) that takes care of that know.

Posted: **Sat Jun 21, 2008 1:05 pm**

Ah, Moveable Object Blocks - a world full of peeks and pokes and hundreds and hundreds of data statements...

POKE 53680,0 (border to black)
POKE 53681,0 (screen to black)
POKE 646,1 (cursor to white)

From memory (so may be wrong, clouded)

There now I've gone all misty eyed and sniffly...

Anybody recommend any good C64 emulators for the PC? I used to have FRODO a very long time ago (early PII days) but I never got the PC serial port to read my old Atari joysticks so most of the games were fairly unplayable (even with keyboard emulation of the joystick).

But then again I still own two working C64s and the original Firebird big box copy of Elite...

Posted: **Sat Jun 21, 2008 5:14 pm**

i've used ccs64 to play some of jeff minters old llamasoft games:
ccs64: http://www.computerbrains.com/ccs64/

looks like there may be a linux version available too, although it's an older version of the emulator,

Posted: **Sat Jun 21, 2008 5:15 pm**

cheers griff - I've still got Iridis Alpha on 5.25" somewhere

Oolite Bulletins

right on commmander? yeeehawww!