Conversation

Notices

1. Bernie (codewiz@mstdn.io)'s status on Sunday, 19-Feb-2023 05:05:29 UTC Bernie

   Fully documented source code for Elite on the BBC Micro
   https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34852219

   #retrocomputing #retrogaming #6502 #asm #programming #bbcmicro #elite

   • Bernie (codewiz@mstdn.io)'s status on Sunday, 19-Feb-2023 05:13:06 UTC Bernie

     in reply to

     The #C64 version of this game was the first 3D game I ever played, running with less than 64KB of RAM on a 1MHz, 8-bit CPU with a very limited ALU (no hardware multiplication and not even a barrel-shifter).

     It's unbelievable that someone was able to code a real-time wire-frame 3D engine on this system and then build a full space sim on top of it.

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhTTpV5qFrs

     #retrocomputing #c64 #3d #programming

   • Bernie (codewiz@mstdn.io)'s status on Sunday, 19-Feb-2023 05:16:58 UTC Bernie

     in reply to

     The reverse-engineered assembly seems very well written, and neatly documented.

     Here's the code for the title screen with the rotating Cobra Mk III, with hyperlinks to the various subroutines that draw the ship, the text prompts and polls the keyboard:

     https://www.bbcelite.com/elite-a/docked/subroutine/title.html

   • Bernie (codewiz@mstdn.io)'s status on Sunday, 19-Feb-2023 05:23:37 UTC Bernie

     in reply to

     There is even documentation on how various subroutines interact to build high-level functionality.

     Here's a description of wire-frame ship rendering:
     https://www.bbcelite.com/deep_dives/drawing_ships.html

     #elite #c64 #6502 #assembly #3d #graphics

   • Bernie (codewiz@mstdn.io)'s status on Sunday, 19-Feb-2023 05:55:38 UTC Bernie

     in reply to

     There's an active #C64 #Elite project which includes commented disassembly of the original code plus an impressive number of improvements 😮

     https://github.com/Kroc/elite-harmless#improvements-implemented

   • Bernie (codewiz@mstdn.io)'s status on Sunday, 19-Feb-2023 05:57:21 UTC Bernie

     in reply to

     Looks like the new Elite Harmless could be built entirely from VSCode 😄

     They don't distribute binaries for copyright reasons, but if you happen to have a pre-built binary I'd be interested in... ehm... testing it.

     https://github.com/Kroc/elite-harmless/blob/kroc/INSTALL.md
     #c64 #elite #retrocomputing #retrogaming #programming

   • Bernie (codewiz@mstdn.io)'s status on Sunday, 19-Feb-2023 07:23:23 UTC Bernie

     in reply to

     I was able to compile it from sources, but the elite-harmless-fastlines.d64 binary is bugged:

   • Nathan (nathan@mastodon.nz)'s status on Monday, 20-Feb-2023 00:49:27 UTC Nathan

     in reply to

     @codewiz
     I occasionally toy around with the SuperCPU version of the VICE emulator, and the Elite128 (modified) version of Elite for the C64. Amazing to have a version that won't flicker, and won't slow down, even if the sun is in view. 🌞