A few months back I got one of these:
It’s the C64 Mini console, which is a Commodore 64 on-a-chip in a cute little case with a bunch of software built in.
It’s good but not great, slightly crippled by a poor joystick and input lag. It’s also disappointingly bare bones in terms of presentation, with the lack of instructions making many of the games – originally from the 80s – borderline unplayably difficult.
But none of this matters since it includes C64 BASIC, and this meant I could code again! And I did…
I started to see if I could manage without an actual keyboard. I did, but it was excruciatingly slow selecting letters from the virtual keyboard (on the right of the screen as shown above). But I had enough fun I went and bought a cheap usb keyboard to continue.
As you can see I’m working on a ‘villain generator’, the obvious first step towards the long-awaited next installment in the Mercenary King series. My program would generate an infinite amount of bad guys that could easily fit into any game!
It didn’t take long, and it worked! Here’s four examples of the infinite results:
Unfortunately the lcd monitor I use doesn’t photograph well so you can’t appreciate the dazzling colour, but I’m sure you’re amazed by my amazing graphics? One of them I (may have) borrowed, but the other I designed from scratch! Here’s the sketchbook:
And here’s the sprite data in case you want to use it in your game:
Amazingly and coincidentally (*), while I was working on this I received a postcard that had this code on the back:
Naturally I had to type it in to see what it did…
It was an animated Gudetama sprite! Unfortunately the postcard had no sender on it so I’ll never know who sent me this incredible demo ?
Anyway let me know if you need a villain for a game and I’ll let my C64 mini generate it for you…
(* I may have sent my brother code on a postcard in the past plus he loves Gude…)