Why would anyone want to own a VIC 20???

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Thu Aug 03, 2006 4:57 pm

I would never consider making VIC-20 (or C64, or even Amiga) games for a living. The amount of time it takes does not begin to match the money you can expect to earn on selling it. From time to time I make an 1K game for the fun of it, and hopefully someone will like to play it. If not, well, at least I had a reason to write it.

A couple of years ago I was contacted by Cronosoft regarding if I wanted to be featured. It would require me to slightly improve or rewrite the games I had released so far, and preferrably not offer the same as free downloads while they were trying to sell my work. I sincerely declined the offer, based on what I wrote above. I know now they have free downloads and that you can buy tapes or disks with cover, instructions etc if you like that better. Good for those who do it, but I'm still not interested in trying to make money on new developments. I can make money on selling old stuff that I have too many of instead.

Regarding Turrican 3.. the C64 scene is what it is. You would expect people by now are quite mature, but there always are mental 17 year olds who find attaching lame intros to other people's work cool. I'm glad Ironstone et.al. never bothered much into releasing new C64 games, because they would probably just have gotten upset about the scene and potential customer base.

Mikam73 · Post by **Mikam73** » Thu Aug 03, 2006 5:20 pm

ral-clan wrote:The article:

http://my.stratos.net/%7Ehewston95/RTM2 ... Why_Vic-20

Wonder what happend.. After that I did buy AtariMax Colecovision 128-in-1..

Well.. Heard of it at RetroBits before, but..

hawk · Post by **hawk** » Thu Aug 03, 2006 6:26 pm

I must fall into the nostalgic category. I just received my order of cassettes from Cronosoft, half of which I had already downloaded and put on floppy. I guess in my own way, I'm trying to encourage those people who take the time to develop games to continue to do so. I can't imagine that the developers are making much money out of it, even in a world market, but at least it may let them know that there are still some people out here that appreciate their effort.

Thomas Hechelhammer · Thu Aug 03, 2006 11:39 pm

carlsson wrote:I would never consider making VIC-20 (or C64, or even Amiga) games for a living. The amount of time it takes does not begin to match the money you can expect to earn on selling it.

I never thought about making money developing software, because I'm doing this in my free-time and should always be fun-stuff or something useful.

No, the main-issue pretending me stepping forward are the limitations of the hardware.

I'm thinking about some games to be converted to the vic20, but the poor screen-layout makes me wondering if it makes sense doing this.

(I'm a big friend of turrican, but when I want to play a round I always dig my A500 out of the closet.)

The only game making more fun on the vic20 is shamus, the C64-port is ugly.

Probably I should open a new thread asking if anyone is interested in a new game / port and the type of game (jump'n run, shooter, maze, adventure).

-- Thomas

eslapion · Post by **eslapion** » Fri Aug 04, 2006 1:15 am

Thomas Hechelhammer wrote:The only game making more fun on the vic20 is shamus, the C64-port is ugly.

Lunar Leeper is much nicer on the VIC than on the 64 and so is Omega Race.

Donkey Kong is much easier to play because the larger pixels makes the alignement resolution necessary to control Mario much lower.

Jaicen · Post by **Jaicen** » Fri Aug 04, 2006 5:59 am

I'm always looking to support developers on new stuff whenever possible. I'd love to see people getting involved with Cronosoft, not to make money per-se, but to encourage the development of future software that could make a profit. For example, over at prophet64.com, the alien has designed what could be the greatest C64 sequencing software ever and is selling it on cartridge for just 39e! Now that'a bargain for professional musicians however you look at it. In this case it's not possible (I think) to port to disk to sell as it needs to look up stuff on the cart periodically, but the MONO/TB/TR could indeed be licenced and sold on disk. Obviously it's not going to happen, but my point is that this software was originally developed as a hobby and is now making money. If people can see that their software is getting supported, they'll be more inclined to finish it.

At the end of the day, if you're doing this for a hobby you may as well license your software for at least a while and get some reward. How good would it feel to be a published coder?!

Thomas, if you're interested here are a few games i'd like to see ported:
From the GB:
Pokemon (plus online trading with a modem?

), Mystic Quest, Metroid II (from the GB as well).

I don't think there should be any limit in terms of RAM size, most people should have at least 8K, and expansions are cheap enough.
I can help with music and SFX, but not much else i'm afraid.

eslapion · Post by **eslapion** » Sat Aug 05, 2006 12:57 pm

What kind of game could somebody design for a VIC that has full 32k RAM expansion?

I mean ram in all BLK 1-2-3-5 ?

Would be nice to have a game specifically designed for the expander I make.

How about M.U.L.E. for the VIC?

Or even, the beautiful 3d space simulator Elite ?

Thomas Hechelhammer · Post by **Thomas Hechelhammer** » Sat Aug 05, 2006 1:07 pm

Nice idea but ...

The memory in BLK1 is (in my eyes) a waste of memory.
Because of a layout-error, this memory can't be accessed by the videochip which would have been a very nice feature for double or triple-buffering of screens.

The memory in BLK5 you'll need for your development-tools, at least a monitor while debugging.

-- Thomas

eslapion · Post by **eslapion** » Sat Aug 05, 2006 1:36 pm

Thomas Hechelhammer wrote:Nice idea but ...

The memory in BLK1 is (in my eyes) a waste of memory.
Because of a layout-error, this memory can't be accessed by the videochip which would have been a very nice feature for double or triple-buffering of screens.

The memory in BLK5 you'll need for your development-tools, at least a monitor while debugging.

-- Thomas

What's wrong with BLK1 ? Donkey kong and Lunar Leeper both use BLK1 to put code in it. They work just fine! Its not a "layout error" NONE of the expansion BLKs is accessible by the video chip. BLK1-2-3-4-5-6-7.

You could have a tiny monitor in IO2 and IO3 ($9800) instead of wasting your precious BLK ranges for your development tools.

Thomas Hechelhammer · Post by **Thomas Hechelhammer** » Sat Aug 05, 2006 1:57 pm

eslapion wrote:
What's wrong with BLK1 ? Donkey kong and Lunar Leeper both use BLK1 to put code in it. They work just fine! Its not a "layout error" NONE of the expansion BLKs is accessible by the video chip. BLK1-2-3-4-5-6-7.

Oh, I was wrong and meant BLK0 with the external RAM 1-3 (expansion from 0400 to 0FFF).

With a slightly other board-design the video-chip can access the whole memory in BLK0 from 0000 to 1FFF, which is a "feature" and coding-error in two emulators I had on my old win2k-system.

I know a guy who had a selfmade internal expansion which was supported by the VIC.

Why putting memory in I/O2 and I/O3?
I'm using this area for my mmu (memory-management-unit) for my 128k expansion.

-- Thomas

hawk · Post by **hawk** » Sat Aug 05, 2006 6:38 pm

Thomas Hechelhammer wrote:Why putting memory in I/O2 and I/O3?
I'm using this area for my mmu (memory-management-unit) for my 128k expansion.

Thomas, do you have any details about how you are doing your memory mapping with your 128K expansion?

I'm interested in adding more RAM to the VIC, but would like to use the most common MMU style, so that any software that I develop is compatible with the most common MMU technique.

I put a post about this some time ago, asking how the various RAM banking techniques work, but got no replies.

Mike.

Thomas Hechelhammer · Post by **Thomas Hechelhammer** » Sun Aug 06, 2006 1:47 am

The 128k Expansion was my very own project I did in 1999.

It was a memory-expansion incl. SID card.

In a folder I have a bunch of timing diagrams, layouts and even more; but nowhere online (nobody showed any interest any time

).

The RAM I used is a 681000.

Data-Lines a going to the Databus D0-D7, Adresslines are going to the Adressbus A0-A12.

I've built a strange kind of mmu, out of a two Priority-Encoder 74148, an inverter (1/4 7402) and a latch (74573).

For not wasting too much I/O space I used a 3/8 Decoder (74138) to adress the mmu and the SID (8580 or 6581, jumperselect) on I/O2.
And another 1/4 7402 to provide the correct CS-signal to the mmu.

Some of the RAM is selected with a dip-switch (BLK1, BLK2, BLK3 and BLK5), the rest can live everywhere you like, you can also switch-off the preselected RAM and software-replace it with other RAM.

And last but not least I've converted some SID-tunes from the C64 that they could be played (IRQ-Player) on my VIC20.

Bad news: At the end of the project there were still problems with the voltage (making 9V / 12V out of 5 V) which resulted in some interferences on the screen.

This part of the expansion-card needs to be redesigned but the rest is working wonderful.

SID lives at $9800 (full register-access)
MMU lives at $9900 (1 Byte write-only)

Looking back the MMU has a strange layout.

Writing the following in the MMU gives you access to the following banks:

0xxx.0xxx = Bank Segment 0.0000 - 0.1FFF Bank 0
0xxx.10xx = Bank Segment 0.2000 - 0.3FFF Bank 1
...
1110.1110 = Bank Segment 1.E000 - 1.FFFF Bank F

Only one prototype of the card is existing because there was no need to build another one.

Sorry, we have no empty boards left.

Looking over the layout I would prefer a GAL or PAL if I had to do this jobs again these days ...

Let's see it as it is : A proof of concept.(Who will need 128k RAM on a vic20???)

-- Thomas

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Sun Aug 06, 2006 6:24 am

I thought the VIC chip already could address the memory range $0400-$0FFF if you have onboard RAM (e.g. piggy-backed), just that it can not access memory on a cartridge expansion?

But back to the issue. With e.g. a multi-part loader or other boot, you can reconfigure the memory map to your needs, e.g. if you want two (small) character sets for graphical double banking. A M.U.L.E. like game would not be too difficult (I already converted the music somewhat in VIMM). Elite probably more difficult, although it has been done on 1 MHz 6502 machines. But it would take a lot of work, and I doubt even Cronosoft could get a license to sell it, under than name at least.

eslapion · Post by **eslapion** » Sun Aug 06, 2006 8:31 pm

Thomas Hechelhammer wrote:In a folder I have a bunch of timing diagrams, layouts and even more; but nowhere online (nobody showed any interest any time ).

This project is just plain FANTASTIC!

The lack of interest surely comes from the fact no application were ever developed in the past for such an expander.

That, however, doesn't mean it doesn't have any interesting spin-offs. For example, on another thread, I discussed a method I would choose to put 63 16k games in a multicart using an 8mbit OTP EPROM and a 74SL273 on IO2.

Are you for hire?

Thomas Hechelhammer · Mon Aug 07, 2006 12:47 am

Some last words to the project:

We have calculated about 50 Euro / 50 US$ for the pcb with all components for memory, voltage and audio but not inclusive the SID.
This would slightly cover the costs.

The most people I've offered the expansion seemed to be interested, but missed an application the expansion could be used with.

At present I'm doing some basic-research for two things:

1. Another hardware-project I would like to see on the VIC20

2. Soft-sprite-control I'll need for a game conversion

@eslapion : I cannot find the tread you are talking about (74273)

-- Thomas