Writing an Apple 2 game in 2021 | Hacker News Reader

Writing an Apple 2 game in 2021

nick.zoic.org

77 pointsshdon17 comments

If you're into Apple II programming, see a bunch of demoscene demos written in the past 5 years: http://www.deater.net/weave/vmwprod/demos/

and a bunch of games written in the past 5 years http://www.deater.net/weave/vmwprod/demakes/

more info on finding the vblank w/o an interrupt using the floating bus, sometimes called "vapor lock" http://www.deater.net/weave/vmwprod/megademo/vapor_lock.html

all of these have full source code available

For the security of your visitors, would you please set up TLS?

It's trivial with LetsEncypt and an ACME client. If you're on a webhost, most of them make it a one-click operation. If it's a legacy/retro webserver, you can put something like caddy in front of it and caddy will do everything for you. Or use Cloudlfare. Etc. etc.

Are you worried about your ISP injecting ads, or ...?

Overhead on maintaining this stuff is not free (close to free tho it may be in best case scenarios) -- if there is no private user data being submitted, I've never begrudged someone for running their machine as they see fit.

also, explanations of 80 demos that fit in 280 chars (they were tweets to the AppleIIbot Applesoft BASIC twitter bot) http://www.deater.net/weave/vmwprod/appleiibot/

unfortunately there’s no way to detect vertical blanking

Oh, but there are ways ...

https://web.archive.org/web/20151021120320/http://hoop-la.ca...

Sweet! I'm glad to see some resources. I've been experimenting with music on this platform [0] and there's very little out there... most of what I've found is original source material from the 80s. It's nothing like the modern C64 scene. But then again, I'm finding the apple2 fantastic limited by a few things, but most especially: no interrupts! no timers! no reference for how fast things are moving... It's tough enough to get consistency for any advanced multi-tasking, e.g. even a joystick-physics-graphic loop... but through sound effects in there and everything is so highly interdependent and limited it's bleak!

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSSEuX-dO7E

G'day all! That's me ... as you can tell, it's been on the back-burner for a while due to work and so on but I'll get back to it at some point and at least get our goose walking around.

@deater those look great, I'll check them out and add a link, especially since there's some lo-res stuff there! I don't recall every seeing a lo-res game other than brick out!

Thanks for the tips re: blanking interrupts, although to be fair there's no way in the world I'm going to cycle-count the entire thing ... unless ... unless ...

Anyway, such a shame there's no little wire there to trigger IRQ from VBI, it'd make so many things easier. It seems really obvious now but I guess at the time it Wozn't.

> I don’t actually have an Apple II any more … it’s tempting to pick up a IIc or IIe from fleabay but there’s not many left

Order a kit. It will be in brand new condition, no bad surprise, and you can put it in a PC case like those AII clones in the 80s.

It should be about the same price as a II+ from eBay, or even less since AII go for quite a lot of money nowadays.

https://www.reactivemicro.com/product/apple-ii-plus-rev-7-rf...

Actually, I wonder why nobody made an open-hardware II+ PCB by now. Or a mini-ATX version of it with a PS2 connector for the keyboard.

Umm, wouldn't that be Apple ][?

Or Apple II, yes.

Apple (U+2161)

https://nick.zoic.org/art/writing-an-apple-2-game-in-2021-3/

He's made it to Part 3 - really interesting stuff!

This guy may be of interest to you all: https://www.youtube.com/c/The8BitGuy

Here's a good talk he did about the demo scene

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bdh5I7F1oMs

Brings back memories, writing chase/swarm and projectile movement simulations in 6502 as a kid. And so many hours playing Ultima and Wizardry.

I socked away a number of Apple ]['s and Apple II's during the times when they were cheap, I have several which were given away. I also have my old Apple IIgs from when I was a kid, it has several upgrades like a CFFA and one of the rare, original, fully populated 8MB RAM boards.

Is there an Apple II tracker? I have the Music Construction Set which was actually my introduction to electronic music. But is there anything else out there?

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