The Raistlin Papers - For C64 Demoscene Creators
SIDBlaster: Breathing New Life Into C64 Music # Grab SIDBlaster here: github.com/RobertTroughton/SIDBlaster There's something magical about the sound of the Commodore 64's SID chip. Those distinctive bleeps and bloops have a warmth and character that continues to inspire musicians and demosceners decades after the computer's heyday. As someone who's been fascinated by this music for years, I've…
Summary # The X Demoparty is undoubtedly the biggest event in the demoscening calendar for C64 sceners. Traditionally being held every 2 years in Someren, X 2023 turned out to be a much bigger event thanks to COVID - creating a FIVE YEAR delay from the last (X 2018) to this one. Most of the big guns were there with a demo to release - and some couldn't quite finish in time (perhaps the nerves also…
Summary # Once the map and screens were in place, as detailed in Part 1 , we of course chose that the player sprite should be added - then we could start to look at walking around the map, streaming data from disk as needed. Keyboard and Joystick Control # Adding keyboard and joystick checking needed a bit of a refresher for me .. as a demo coder, I would barely use either in my old coding efforts…
Summary # In this series, I plan to (eventually) write about the development work going into Sabre Wulf Remastered, our little fan project where we try to update Sabre Wulf to be a more beautiful, smooth and fun experience for all. A full remaster of the original with hugely improved graphics (by the amazing Jon Eggelton), an amazing new soundtrack and audio (from Marcin Majdzik) and new code from…
Summary # If you haven't already read the blog post about DXYCPs, here , I'd recommend reading that first. Here I will be explaining how I added the infinite/repeating scroll element seen in our No Bounds demo (released at X2023). You can see the finished product in action here:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEwcyjrxJX8&t=251 The Idea # I really didn't want to make another bob scroller, I…
Summary # There's a lot to talk about from our No Bounds demo, for sure, but one part I was particularly happy with, out of those that I made myself, was the Finite Bobs part - or "Not Bob's Bobs" as we called it. This was similar to the old "infinite bobs" effects that the Amiga is famous for - but we clear the end of the bobs, out of sight, so that it's actually "finite bobs" or a "bob trail", I…
Summary # Music playback on C64 is one of the simplest things in the world to achieve ... usually just 2 calls to be made, MusicInit, done once, and MusicPlay, once per frame (though some music can be setup for different play rates). Something as simple as the following can play most tunes (with init at $1000, play at $1003): .var MusicInit = $1000 .var MusicPlay = $1003 sei lda #$00 jsr MusicInit…
Summary # Probably the effect that garnered the largest applause from our demo Memento Mori was the final part. This featured a beautiful, huge bitmap scrolling up through the full screen AND the sideborders while streaming extra data from disk… all at 25 frames per second. Definitely not an easy feat, and something that had never been done before on the C64. The effect was developed by myself (…
Summary # Another effect that was well-liked from Memento Mori was the large, animating sprite logo – where we had “Genesis” and “Project” swinging on a circular arc around a large skull-themed picture. This one is actually much easier to accomplish than most effects in the demo – though, of course, it was still quite a bit of work to get done. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob5GHijbWSg How Does…
Summary # In Memento Mori, we presented something that people hadn’t really seen on C64 before – a huge logo swinger with a huge sprite swinger as well… filling pretty much the whole screen for each layer. Take a look here:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob5GHijbWSg It was funny seeing people’s reactions to this .. for example, ChisWicked ( https://www.twitch.tv/chiswicked showed it during his…
Summary # We’ve all seen the openings to the Star Wars movies, with the scrawl starting just below the camera and moving out into the distance, the text slowly getting smaller and smaller until it fades away. Here’s one that I made earlier, featured in 2019’s Rivalry demo by The Seniors (Bonzai, Censor, Fairlight, Genesis Project and Offence), released at Revision 2019 (and winning the Oldschool…
Summary # With DYCPs being so popular in the early days of the demoscene (and still, to many, today), some looked for new ideas for where to take these next. The most obvious improvement was to allow full X and Y movement – inspired by the Commodore Amiga’s BOBs (Blitter Objects) perhaps. And so, the DXYCP was born. In scroller form, these would usually feature relatively small fonts – because to…
Summary # The “All Border Double DYPP” is one of the effects, used in Memento Mori (which you can download here),that I am asked about most often. Here we have 2 DYPPs moving across the whole screen, and through the borders, while wrapping behind some raster bars. I’m going to jump right into how this is pulled off in this, my first blog post on C64 demo coding. A funny aside… it’s hard when…