It's been a while that I posted here. Been busy converting #Larry to #EasyFlash #C64 cartridge format. That took a whole lot of time and effort to learn new tricks, but I finally have the hang of it. Here's an experimental bit of the intro sequence I'm making for the game now that I have a full megabyte of ROM to work with. The speed difference really is astounding compared to even the fastest disk loader. I'm still going with disk for savegames, though. EasyFlash emulation isn't perfect on all platforms so I'll treat the cart as 100% ROM only. I wrote a few CLI tools to help me prep .CRT builds. Cartman for CRT building: https://code.area536.com/Public/cartman and Kla2kick for bitmap to ASM processing: https://code.area536.com/Public/kla2kick Both are very rough around the edges but they work. They're BSD-licensed so have at them if you like!

Very little progress on #C64 Larry. Refactoring into a cartridge format, which is a 100% non-functional change but a big task for me. Should eliminate slow loading though. Also: creating a CI/CD-proof build tool for cartridge images first, so I'm off into the weeds for a bit.

Question for #Commodore64 coders. Can the VIC II be coaxed into "seeing" part of a cartridge ROM directly? Like: would banking the VIC II to $C000 allow rendering a bitmap from the cartridge ROM nearly instantaneously?

Want to run #Larry for #C64 right from your browser? You can, even though it's 1980's style slow. The screen will turn blank for a *long* time while this loads so be very patient. The currently running build of the game is incredibly glitchy, buggy and incomplete. I'm working on fixing that and will update it later. For now: check it out! https://www.area536.com/larry/

Small details bring life to a scene. I don't have the luxury of full EGA software sprites, but still.. I like my version of the broken hotel sign better. Now let's see if we can get some dialogue going in there. #C64 #gamedev #retrogaming

This looks minor, but it's actually a pretty big step. The scene itself has its own logic separate from the main game. This means there's a place to do small trickery like this to improve the visuals and Larry can play hide 'n seek outside Lefty's. #C64 #gamedev #retrogaming

Anyone testing my current #C64 Larry should know that it's hardly functional at all. I'm mainly looking for compatibility feedback for hardware combinations. Get it at https://area536.com/lsl.d64 or https://area536.com/lsl.d81. Email feedback to [email protected] if a toot won't fit.

Anyone here with real #C64 hardware who would like to test if my Larry game crashes on load? It doesn't seem to do so anymore in VICE or on my MiSTer. I'm also interested in testing with speedloaders and 1581 drives (on drive ID 8 only for now).

This game being my first ever try at 6502 Assembly and it having been 32 years since I wrote any C64 BASIC, Larry smoothly walking all the way across the screen is somewhat of a small personal victory. Sorry for the boring video but #C64 coders may sympathize. ;-)

Walking around animation is now complete. There's still some fine tuning to do on the actual controls (keyboard only for now). Sprite masking and bounding also need work, but it's almost time for the story.