How hard would it to make a Vic 20 homebrew game on tape?

[swlovinist]

It has been quite a dream of mine to help make a classic homebrew game. I dont know how to program, but I would love to collabarate with someone into making a Commodore Vic 20 game. I feel that probably putting it on a cassette tape would be the best way to go in terms of actually getting it in physical form. I obviously understand that I couldnt do a ton in terms of graphics, sprites, even colors, but I have a solid idea that I think would be a great classic game. I have a TON of Vic 20 stuff to play with, including many vintage programming books and various prepherals for the Vic 20 that could assist someone that wanted to help me run down a dream. Anyone interested? It would be all about the love, and if I assisted someone with it, I would want it to be a CGE exclusive! Let me know, John

[digitalpress]

One person you should certainly contact is our forum member Jeff-20 - Jeff is the guy that developed the homebrew game "Denial" for the VIC-20 about three years ago. I'm sure he could lend you some assistance, plus he's a really good dude.

[Blendo75]

This wouldnt be difficult at all. You would just type up your program on a (real) VIC-20 and then save it to a tape drive connected to the VIC-20. All you do is type "SAVE" then the VIC will respond with "PRESS RECORD & PLAY ON TAPE". Voila, instant homebrew.

[Ze_ro]

It has been quite a dream of mine to help make a classic homebrew game. I dont know how to program, but I would love to collabarate with someone into making a Commodore Vic 20 game.

Whoa, whoa, whoa... before you start worrying about things like distribution and that, you might want to learn how to program. When, and if (sorry to be pessimistic, but the vast majority of homebrew games don't even make it off the drawing board) you get something working, then you can start worrying about cassette tapes and such.

--Zero

[InfernalCheese]

Well it might not sound like much but you could always just make a text adventure, as it would require only the most basic understanding of BASIC.

[Kid Ice]

It has been quite a dream of mine to help make a classic homebrew game. I dont know how to program, but I would love to collabarate with someone into making a Commodore Vic 20 game.

Whoa, whoa, whoa... before you start worrying about things like distribution and that, you might want to learn how to program. When, and if (sorry to be pessimistic, but the vast majority of homebrew games don't even make it off the drawing board) you get something working, then you can start worrying about cassette tapes and such.

--Zero

Yeah, I did some Vic 20 games back in the day and I recall really struggling with the sprite collisions. Plus, I had a separate program I used to make the sprites.

Tape would be okay for distribution I guess, but your gonna want a 1541 so you can quickly save your progress as you write the program.

[Aswald]

The Vic-20 didn't have any sprites; are you thinking of the Commodore-64?

Programming on a Vic-20 is easy, although limited. And, as with most computers, once you've written the program, it's easy to save it for the use of others with similar machines- unlike consoles, in which case you have to find a way to put it onto a cartridge.

Go for it. :)

[Kid Ice]

The Vic-20 didn't have any sprites; are you thinking of the Commodore-64?

Programming on a Vic-20 is easy, although limited. And, as with most computers, once you've written the program, it's easy to save it for the use of others with similar machines- unlike consoles, in which case you have to find a way to put it onto a cartridge.

Go for it. :)

I don't know. Maybe. I remember a lot of "poke" and "peek" nonsense. I could have sworn I had a "sprite creator" on the Vic. Without sprites how could they have done Defender and the numerous other arcade ports. I mean it's not like a Pet where you just have ASCII characters.

[Ze_ro]

Both the Vic and the C-64 used a lot of PEEK's and POKE's, but indeed, the Vic has no sprites. Instead, you would create your own 8x8 characters (POKE'ing the data in the proper memory locations), and draw them on the screen as if they were regular letters and numbers (although the Vic had a pretty large variety of pre-defined tiles as it was). I think you could do bitmap modes too, but I didn't get very far with the Vic before moving to the C-64.

--Zero

[swlovinist]

I appreciate all the advice and I will just start messing around with my Vic 20 and read the basic programming books I have for it. The worst I could do is not make anything, the best could be that I could make a game. I have a while to mess around with it, but it WILL happen, with help or not. I have been diving into vintage computer collecting, and it has been one heck of a ride. Along that ride, I found why I collect....for history and the pure gaming experience. I am finding many games on these systems to be what I have time for today and what is missing from so many games today....simplicity of gameplay. It has been fun, and it has opened me up to a gaming time that time is slowly forgetting. Although I was young and didnt have a ton of experience with the Commodore and Atari stuff, I find it most interesting to collect....and the best platform for me to make a homebrew!

[KJN]

There has been an increase in Vic20 releases the last few years which is very nice. For those who havent seen or need some insperation here are a coupple recent demos:

Bah! Bah! (http://www.cosine.org.uk/files/bah_bah.zip)
Impossiblator (http://www.hytti.uku.fi/~vheikkil/pwp/impossiblator.zip)
Impossiblator 2 (http://www.pelulamu.net/pwp/vic20/impo2.zip)
Postmodern Bullshit (http://www.pelulamu.net/pwp/vic20/postmodern.zip) (the speech synthesis wont sound to good on an emulator though)
Kuutiomitta (http://www.pelulamu.net/pwp/vic20/pwp-kuutio.zip)
Bad Scene Poetry (http://www.cosine.org.uk/files/bad_scene_poetry.zip)

Because non of the current emulators cant quite handle this demo yet here is a 23 meg video of Robotic Liberation (http://www.pelulamu.net/pwp/vic20/pwp-liberation.mpeg) (more speech synthesis, now with singing robots)

Oh and here is a little game to:
Dragonwing (http://www.funet.fi/pub/cbm/vic20/demos/aeeben/dragonwing.prg)

All of them run on an unexpanded VIC20.

[carlsson]

Regarding sprites and bitmap modes on the VIC-20: no, the video chip does not have support for either, but as you know it does support user defined graphics (8x8 or 8x16 pixels each). So called software sprites were made by constantly updating the graphics data inside one or more UDG cells, and bitmap mode is also simulated by placing many different user defined graphics next to eachother and plot individual pixels.

The software sprites is by far not unique to the VIC; many other computers with similar capacities did the same. Some routines are better than others, less flicker or better collission detection, but unfortunately so called colour clashes appear when a "sprite" meets the background.

As written above, a homebrew tape or even disk game is not difficult. A homebrew cartridge game would be a little more challenge, up to the level of making a circuit board, burning an EPROM and possibly finding a plastic case to put it in, if you don't have spares already.