Finally, I have some time to work on my own projects!

I've joined local hackerspace, and with a friend we decided to revitalize couple old C64s (after some deliberation on platform - it was either that or ZX Speccy). At first we want to add some simple functionality like SD card reader, but eventually we want to have a portable C64. I recalled that Endurion was making a series on making game on this platform, so I started studying his code. I've noticed that however good that tutorial was, I'll be needing some more basic knowledge about the platform. I found some scene sites dedicated to making demos, and - most importantly - C64 programmer's reference booklets. Those things are full with explanation on why poking at some addresses will give me certain effects. Again, Endurion's journal is great, and I'd like to give him mad props, but it has some problems like at-will switching between decimal and hex numbers, adding to confusion of development on a new platform. Fortunately, now I have some outside resource to fall back to.

First couple days (weeks? depends how much time I can scrape) I'll be studying the internals of the machine and replicating Endurion's code while trying to understand it, and later I'll move to making simple oldschool demo (sin scrolling text, 3d tunnel, fake fire, the lot). Final goal is to write a game (demake of Skyrim to a side-scrolling platformer or Zelda clone) for our own handheld, while my friend does the majority of hardware job.

Today's image: fooling around with BASIC to understand C64 memory layout.