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You can't call a planet "Bob", can't we just call it "Earth"? - No one said you have to live on Bob.

Entries in this blog

To map or not to map?

Hi there!   So, in previous discussions some guys (bros ) told me how much of an experience I've been missing for never having mapped a dungeon.   Well, despite me failing miserably at a previous attempt of playing the NES version of The Bard's Tale, I picked it up again a few days ago, really trying to get into it this time. I even found a solution for one of my gripes back then: The game sorta has an escapipe, in form of a special bard song you can play, which'll bring you straight home t
Cybergoth

Cybergoth

3

It was the plant!

Hi there!   Oh no. How could I ever be so dead wrong...   Remember last entry, when I listed "self-modifying" code as one of my problems?   Well, well... forget what I said about that. After spending some quality time with the 6502 simulator I finally figured what the code did: It's responsible for the plant.   Now he's losing his mind completely you think?   Well, let me tell you about it. Or better, show it first:   Looks like any other thing in the game?   Well, if you read
Cybergoth

Cybergoth

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Even more problems...

Hi there!   Ah, the challenge!   I ran into some more things making my port more and more complicated:   1. The game uses raster interrupts. Since I decided to make my port a 32K no-mapper game, this is something I have to analyse carefully. Of course there's workarounds for this. For example one can approximate the amount of cycles until a certain scannline is met. Or one can have an invisible sprite hitting an invisible background block at a certain scanline, I think the NES has an inte
Cybergoth

Cybergoth

7

More Garbage!

Hi there!   Another Park Patrol riddle has been solved! Remember me reporting that the "used" half of the first bank of the game mostly contained alternating $FF and $00 pages?   Believe it or not, but after all the fuss of getting those 4K extracted from the cartridge, some lines of code further down the road - it get's just completely overwritten with zeros!   Kinda disturbing. There you have a commercially released game of 1984 coming on a 32K cartridge with 4 8K banks, one of which i
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Problems, nothing but problems...

Hi there!   Phew... going into NESland with Babysteps, yet still there's problems lurking on every corner. The 'highlights' so far:   1. The NES lockout chip. Funny beast that is. There you go, one chip inside the NES, the other in each and every cartridge. If they don't manage to talk to each other properly => WHAM! Offline it goes!   2. There's no publishing service! With zillions of hacks around, almost 100 translations of formerly japanese only games, completed homebrew projects li
Cybergoth

Cybergoth

13

It's a Milestone!

Hi there!   I guess I have reached a first breakthrough milestone today!   I finally have a piece of sourcecode now, that will properly compile into a clean and working version of Park Patrol!   Basically I just followed the plan from yesterday, merging all ID'd parts of the game into one, putting the $00 and $01 writes in front of it and a C64 conform loading address.   The so (DASM) compiled raw binary only needs to be renamed giving it a *.PRG ending and then VICE for example will lo
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Code escapes from Cartridge!

Hi there!   Uihjah!   Remember that small snippet from yesterday? Besides calling half a dozen reset routines from the kernel and the BASIC interpreter, it basically just copies the first two bank 1 pages into the C64 RAM. Then it jumps there and does something rather unusual (at least for the VCS programmer ):   It switches through all four banks, copying all content of the cartridge into the C64 RAM, creating a solid 28K block of ROM. If you ever tried booting the Park Patrol cartridge
Cybergoth

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2

Analyzing the Park Patrol CRT

Hi there!   For the start, I should mention, that there's 4 completly different 100% versions of Park Patrol available, which could be used as base for a NES port: An image of a original Tape An image of a original disk A dump of a original Cartridge A Remember Crack They'd all have their advantages and disadvantages. I choose to check out the cartridge first, because it it seems to have the least overhead of all versions, having the game concentrated in 32K.   Ok, I'm a bit r
Cybergoth

Cybergoth

2

Park Patrol NES

Hi there!   Hm... well, I guess this could've been an "Introducing" entry as well. But I have some bigger plans regarding Park Patrol. In short, I'm thinking about porting it to the NES   There's dozens of things to sort out, so this will probably just be another momentarily toy project of mine, but we'll see how far it gets.   In case you've never heard or seen anything about Park Patrol, well, here you go:   You're a Park Ranger, keeping a Park tidy by collecting all kinds of garbag
Cybergoth

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Ultimate RPG Archive

Hi there!   Wow, I never knew that something like this was released: Mobygames Entry   To sum it up, this box from 1998 contains throughout essential genre defining RPG classics, namely: The Bard's Tale I The Bard's Tale II The Bard's Tale III Might & Magic IV Might & Magic V Stonekeep Ultima Underworld I Ultima Underworld II Dragon Wars Wasteland Wizardry VII All in their latest and greatest available version.   Just added yet another eBay s
Cybergoth

Cybergoth

2

Introducing Beach Head Part 2

Hi there!   So, I made it! I just beat the game on skill level 2! Just as I thought, one has to skip the cave scene! I did sink the carrier though and even then I made it to the beach with 4 ships. It took 4 tanks to take out the cannon, so I still had plenty in reserve   Next I'll try skill level 3...   Time for a spoiler warning: I have a picture of the games end coming below! Don't scroll there if you want to try for yourself first!   But one after another... last time we stopped by
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Introducing Beach Head part 1

Hi there!   Beach Head is a pretty famous game in C64 circles. Written very early in the C64s life cycle, Access had a big hit with it in 1983 already, establishing Access software as a major software house for quality gaming. Besides their "war" games, they also set standards for computer golf games with their Leaderboard/Links/Ms Golf titles and most adventure fans will recoginze the "Tex Murphy" series, which started on the C64 with "Mean Streets".   Back to Beach Head. Due to its success
Cybergoth

Cybergoth

6

I hate 7-ZIP!

Hi there!   Whah! What a crap thing some smartasses invented here   So what when it can pack some % better than ZIP or RAR!   Hey, for that single minute it saves me when downloading 450MB instead of 480MB, I then sit and wait a complete extra hour for that crappy tool to unpack it, while keeping my computer so busy that it won't run anything else during that time! :x   Greetings, Manuel
Cybergoth

Cybergoth

4

Colony 7 delayed / Kickman PD

Hi there!   Real life strikes once again. At our company we currently do a mega 5 month project with an (as usual ) impossible deadline. All summer vacation has been cancelled, so I don't think I'll finish Colony 7 still this year. On the other hand that means I have some 5-6 weeks of winter holidays, so I hope I can make it a february/march release.   I also decided to stop all activities regarding Kickman. Toying with this was some fun brain-jogging, finally trying some Multi-Resp trickery
Cybergoth

Cybergoth

7

A Kickman Kernel...

Hi there!   Well, based on previous Kickman discussions I just "prototyped" a Kickman kernel. Prototyped as in "consider everything hardcoded would be RAM driven in a later version"   A Screenshot:   Source and binary are available:   EDIT: Emulatorz only! Don't try on a TV!   Greetings, Manuel
Cybergoth

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25

Post World Cup Depression

Hi there!   Phew... after 4 weeks non-stop soccer party, I now decided I need to find me some other things to do... (...to fill the gap until the 2010 World Cup... )   So, now it's time to catch up with things, tie some lose ends and plan the future   Let me see, what do we have:   I definitely must spend some hours playing Lady Bug, and I better quickly get my act together and finish Colony 7 in time for the Mini Game deadline.   I recently added one last bunch of eBay searches fo
Cybergoth

Cybergoth

4

Germanys road to the World Cup

Hi there!   Just toying with some Excel-Sheet I found: (Of course I'm not claiming an exact result prognose, that's just win/lose dummies.)     Greetings, Manuel
Cybergoth

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32

Discussing a Kickman Kernel

Hi there!   Trying to get back into some active programming once again, I spent some time thinking about a possible Kickman kernel.   This is the goal to achieve:   My first thought was that at best the kernel can get "Space Invaderish with more colors".   Still, a first calculation will bring it down to earth, as the most elegant standard approach for one sprite (disregarding any timings) would be like this:   LDA (colorPtr), Y STA COLUPX LDA (shapePtr), Y STA GRPX   So, tha
Cybergoth

Cybergoth

22

Introducing Wizball

Hi there!   Here's yet another all time favourite of mine, Wizball from Sensible Software:   This all-time classic should need no introduction, yet still: (story grabbed from the manual):   "For many years, Wiz and his fantastic cat lived happily in brightly coloured Wizworld. All was not well however as a malevolent force had discovered this vista and intended to stamp out brilliance once and for all.   The evil Zark and his horrible sprites have moved in to eliminate the spectrum an
Cybergoth

Cybergoth

2

54, 74, 90 & 2006!

Hi there!   There's magic in the air - Everything is possible...   We'll make it!   Greetings, Manuel
Cybergoth

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7

Introducing They stole a Million

Hi there!   Ha! I knew that nobody knew it Well, I wasn't sure about TJ, as They Stole a Million was amazingly popular in Germany at a time   Ok. So... They Stole a Million is a "Robbery Simulator".   Yup you read that right. So incredibly cool an idea, it makes you really wonder, why it never turned into something like a genre of its own.   Still today it's rather unique. As I said, it was popular in Germany in... hm... 1987 or so. So some Austrian company created two remakes "Der Cl
Cybergoth

Cybergoth

2

Colony 7 Title Screen

Hi there!   So after I already let a recent WIP escape, I now got green lights from Nathan that we're done with the title screen   Also new in this build is the "shipcounter", a small red line below the score in the action screen. It indicates the # of attackers left in the current wave. I also already linked it to the Scout, so when it is on the screen, the # of enemy ships will slowly increase. (=> Right now there's some "underflow" bug in this behaviour, if you shoot more enemies than
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0

NITZEREBBREUNIONSHOWS2006

Hi there!   Incredible. After seeing bands like Sex Pistols, Front 242, DAF, Softcell, The Sisters of Mercy, Human League, Erasure, Alien Sex Fiend, Kraftwerk, Skinny Puppy, Fields of the Nephilim, Bauhaus, Sigue Sigue Sputnik and others returning to german stages during the past few years, it probably was only a matter of time until this was going to happen.   Everything good will come back some day, so does Nitzer Ebb!   Looking forward to see them once again (after 1995!) @ http://www.
Cybergoth

Cybergoth

2

Virocop

Hi there!   Welcome to the grand Graftgold Finale with:   Virocop     Programming: Iain Wallington, Steve Turner, Andrew Braybrook Graphics: Colin Seaman, John Kershaw, Steve Wilkins, Terry Cattrell Design: Iain Wallington, Colin Seaman, John Kershaw, Steve Turner Music & SFX: Lee Banyard   Ratings: Amiga Format: 83% Amiga Joker: 74% LemonAmiga: 7.52   Overview: Here comes a game, so over the top that I have two screenshots this time, as words could never describe it
Cybergoth

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Uridium 2

Hi there!   So here it comes, Graftgolds other major Amiga update besides Paradroid 90:   Uridium 2     Programming: Andrew Braybrook Graphics: Mark Bentley, Stephen Rushbrook, Colin Seaman, Simon Sheridan Musician: Jason Page   Ratings: CU Amiga: 78% LemonAmiga: 7.96   Evolution: Uridium fans had to wait some long 7 years for "their" Amiga version. It was well worth waiting I'd say these days, yet back then I had already bought me some 50MHz VGA PC when it finally arrived.  
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