Tuesday, October 17, 2006

XeO3: C64 Transfter

I've spent the evening building a PC64 transfer cable for the C64, and after looking around for the simple transfer programs, found none. I was pointed at a couple but every one I look at needs to be compiled, typed in.... something. Sod that - I'll port my Plus4 one. All it needs is the GetAByte function. Its tiny (around 256 bytes), and the PC command line is very simple - download and/or run. Easy.

I've also started looking at the editor again, but this time I'm making it a bit more flexable to help with the spectrum version. Before I was just storing MCM pixels as a single colour byte and assuming it was MCM. I also kept the sprite a fixed size since I was only interested in 16x16. But Russell can have any size on the spectrum - which would be nice - also quicker. When making larger sprites I have to join several 16x16's together. This sounds okay, but because a 16x16 is in fact a 24x24 due to the scroll region around each sprite, theres a lot of overlap and over drawing - which isn't good. The only problem with making a sprite system that could handle larger sprites is the cache would have to somehow autosize....It is possible, and for larger objects would be quicker - but it'd be a pain in the arse to write.

So I'll play with the C64<->PC transfer cable for the rest of the night, and then start back onto the editor tomorrow - saying my son gives me enough free time that is! It would be nice to get a debug stub onto the C64 as well, and finish my remote debugger. I got pretty far on the plus4 side, downloading, executing, stopping, stepping etc... not bad. I think I'd probably take all the code into C# now. Things like screen drawing and GUI's are just easier in that.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, maybe not C128, bt Atari 800XL...mmmm... ;)

Mike said...

C128 will "probably"just be a super-charged C64 version.... but you never know if I finished th e+4 and C64, I might play with making a "special" c128 version.

Atari...yeah... well... CPU wise it should manage okay - graphically, not to sure, with only 128 chars most of that will be taken up with sprites. I'll probably leave it to someone else to port it - they'll have the source after all.

And yes. I read all the comments - I get them in emails as well as on here.