The Future of Game Mapping
To demonstrate the scrolling, I took some of the CharPad example that came packaged with the software download. A popular game called Metal Warrior (by Lasse Oorni) was included. My ultimate goal was to generate that map on the screen and start scrolling it. Now this was no easy task, and if it were not for the team I came to know that worked on the Machine Language Project, none of this would have been a reality.
However, I am now happy to present the scrolling example for Metal Warrior, other games, and the original Spelunker Clone my team was hard at work on. The Spelunker Clone is seen at the end of the video to save the best for last. I met a guy from Australia named Siggy when the team was assembled that extracted code segments from a game called Supernatural. This game didn’t contain any scrolling, but Siggy was able to use a lot of the concepts to create our game project. Watch the video (coming soon) below to see how this was accomplished. I’m on my way!
This means that very soon I will be able to create and possibly finish the Spelunker Clone game in given time now that I have added a new tool to my belt in mastering screen scrolling. This was my main purpose ever since I started working on video games back in the early 80’s. I had such a passion for game design, but could never get the scrolling to work. Hopefully in the near future, I may be able to release a game on cartridge for Psytronik Software website. Time will tell. All of this will only be possible if I stay consistent with my goal of studying assembly language, building maps, and learning more about Commodore 64 game design.
My goal is to eventually explain the Spelunker scrolling code completely. This will allow the reader to follow how the logic works in copying data to a back buffer and moving it back to the screen to save timing cycles when generating the map display. This works through a raster timed interrupt. So stay tuned as I work to accomplish this. In the meantime, you can still refer to the Machine Language Project tutorials found on this website, which highlights the progress we made in 2017 when working on the Spelunker Clone game through Google Hangouts, live on YouTube.