Nobody knows why exactly, but my cartridge code is now alive. The problem is on the C64 side of things and mainly has to do with the routine that would copy my bootloader into a safe RAM location.
Started a new Git project for Larry on cartridge. Adapted the framework I found online and things now work. I can actually load a cartridge reliably and get the machine into a state that I can work with. Decided to do an intro sequence for the game. It helps that this forces me to deal with bitmapped graphics again, which is something I hadn’t incorporated into the automated build before.
Started a new Git project for Larry on cartridge. Adapted the framework I found online and things now work. I can actually load a cartridge reliably and get the machine into a state that I can work with. Decided to do an intro sequence for the game. It helps that this forces me to deal with bitmapped graphics again, which is something I hadn’t incorporated into the automated build before.
Had a few days off this project. Obviously that doesn’t mean that no on-topic thinking takes place, and it’s been fruitful. The Easyflash generator works correctly now as far as I can tell. Not releasing it to the world just yet, but for now I can generate a working EasyFlash cartridge.
Spending a little bit of time today on my EasyFlash generator. Decided to feed the tool YAML files instead of command line parameters. Defined the YAML spec in the README that goes with the tool.
Not much time to work on Larry or its surrounding projects today. Read up on the cartridge formats most of yesterday and decided on implementing EasyFlash as a CRT image. The CRT format seems to be canonically defined by the VICE emulator nowadays, so that’s what I’m going to use. The main problem there is a lack of scriptable tooling. I will not proceed with a game of this size without the ability to automate the build process.
The C64 community on Twitter pointed me in the direction of releasing Larry in a cartridge format. That’s something I never even considered because it used to mean creating physical hardware. Nowadays cartridges are just files so it could be useful, so next steps: figure out what they are and how they work.
In the last post I explored why porting the AGI engine would be a fruitless endeavour. So now what? Hand-code the whole thing 6502 Assembler! Yes! Well, sure, but how to go about that? This blog describes some of the design choices I made while weighing my options on the Commodore 64.
Back in 1987 Sierra OnLine released an adventure game that shaped a significant part of my “gaming upbringing”. Leisure Suit Larry may not have been very appropriate for my 10 year-old self but it was fun! Walk the guy around a city and try to get him to do all sorts of things in order to finally win the game. The game came out on the IBM PC, which is also what I played it on. Later on, I saw the very bad Amiga port and at some point I wondered why it never came out for the C64. Looking for a hobby project, I decided to bite off a lot more than I can chew and started porting the game.