BRIDGE RACER (1kb) by tomaes (03/2013)
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1. Info
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Hi. This is my attempt to make a (somewhat) fully featured C64 game in
less than 20 lines of Commodore Basic v2 code, taking less than 1kb of Basic RAM,
which is about 2.5% of the default space available for Basic code on the machine.
It's also an entry for the 8bit BASIC competition: http://rsp.retrocomputacion.com
Some of the "highlights" include:
- Custom graphics (generated charset/modified ROM font, one new character matrix)
- Highscore saver/loader
- Animated title screen (by character animation + drawn PETSCII "bridges")
- Game Over "Music" (by messing with the SID's global volume register and abusing
the well known "plop" hardware glitch; not enough space for some actual music.)
- Joystick (port 2) support (controls are a bit sluggish, but the game remains playable)
You might wonder about the self-imposed limits:
- 20 lines of code:
Tribute to German 64'er magazine (1984-1996) and their Basic competitions
- 1 kilobyte (I'm using the old definition, aka 2^10 bytes):
Sounds like a challenge and arbitrary size limits are very demoscene-ish :)
2. How to play
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- Wait a couple of seconds for the title screen to appear
- Press space for the game to begin
- Use Joystick in Port#2 to steer your car to the left/right
- Avoid holes in the ground ;)
- Don't miss the bridges, they are only 2 characters wide
- The numbers beside the track? Car damage! The lower, the better
- The game ends after 10 hits ("9" damage, you start with Zero)
- Press space (or any other key) to return to the title screen
3. Misc
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Licence: The code is in the Public Domain
Web: http://tomaes.32x.de, e-mail: tomaes{a/t}32x{d\o/t}de
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info[at]rsp.retrocomputacion.com
Name and/or nick/handle of the author(s):
- tomaes
Name of the entry:
- BRIDGE RACER (1kb)
Description:
- A "fully featured" game in Commodore Basic v2, in less than 20 lines of code,
taking less than 1kb of Basic RAM. (for detailed info, see readme.txt)
Platform:
- C64
Tools used:
- CBM Program Studio (coding)
- VICE emulator (testing)
- DirMaster (to edit the disk image)