MOS_8502 🇨🇦

Well, now that I can actually play music, I guess I need to talk to a C64 SID composer-for-hire with Goattracker experience.

The cost: 4KB of RAM (ugh) and (so far) one of the fixed sprites in the RAM under 0xD000-0xDFFF.

This means that as long as each individual SID music track fits in 0x0C00 bytes, I can have as many tracks as I want, played one at a time, pulled in from the REU as needed.

It also means I can have sound effects playing, automatically taking over one channel of the SID for the SFX duration.

Progress: I have music playing from 0x9400, shared with SFX via the "SFX Anywhere" sound driver.

Thanks. I'm fighting for bytes here, trying to fit my engine *and* the music player *and* some way to play sound effects into memory.

Honestly, I am not particularly anti-AI, but you have to be absolutely off the planet to allow it the freedom to change anything in a production database.

Is there a more compact representation of music for the C64 than SID files, which I gather contain binary instructions? Perhaps something like MIDI files?

Success: I have relocated an example .sid file to 0x9000, and made it play alongside gameplay without crashing.

I will need to figure out some way to make this work with sound effects too. There's a driver program for that I can play with.

Yes, but I can't put music there, so I have to relocate the SID file with a utility, apparently.

Okay. I have reserved a 4KB buffer in memory that nothing else touches. It starts at 0x9000, going to 0x9FFF. I can easily load a file from disk into this memory area, so I now need some kind of SID file to put in there, and to learn how to make it play.

Now I think I'll work on making entities more data-driven, to allow for more variability without more code size bloat.

I don't just want to make a good game. I want Rowan to be the game for C64U everyone has to have. I want it to make an impression on people. I want people to look at what the C64U is really capable of, and decide to start making better games for it.

Watch out! There are traps about!

#gamedev #c64 #c64u #commodore #retrocomputing

Working on doors that close when you enter the room and won't open until you kill all the enemies has led me to a generic "trap" entity that runs a script when you touch it -- this will be very useful later on.

Progress: Implemented locked doors, which consume keys to open.

#gamedev #c64 #c64u #commodore #retrocomputing

19 seasons. Buckle up.

How strange it was, thought Rowan. But no matter how Rowan protested, none of the adults could be roused from their stupor. So Rowan did the only thing they could do: they went to play in the woods, and hoped to find a way to break everyone they knew out of their endless repetitive fugue.

Nobody in Brackenreed noticed much of anything, actually, and one day, Rowan realized this: the adults all said the same things, did the same things, thought the same thoughts, every day.

Once upon a time, in a world like ours once was, there lived in a village called Brackenreed a child named Rowan. Rowan was an odd child, but nobody minded.

Why are these people the way they are?

What are the concerns if I can ask? I’ve been up to my neck in code for days.

Rational and fair.

Oh for the love of…

What are they up to now?

Added a string resource association so each room can show the name of the area you're in, thus completing the status bar.

#gamedev #programming #c64 #c64u #commodore #retrocomputing

Progress: implemented coin, bomb, and key meters that track your inventory.

#gamedev #c64 #c64u #commodore

Burger Becky was a goddamn legend. I'm honored to have had the opportunity to just -have lunch- with her at Kansasfest 2019.

Her stories of the games industry were enthralling.

Can AI even do that? Make SID tunes?

How much memory do I need to reserve for a Sid tune?

I will need at least the following SID tunes:

• Title theme
• Overworld theme
• Cave theme
• Dungeon theme
• Game over theme

I wonder what that’s going to cost me?