Ran "Apache Canyon Deluxe" on a real Elk tonight to confirm the SWRAM detection code was working and also to see how if I really had as much "spare" CPU time available as the emulators were indicating. It looks like I have 1/3 of a screen of CPU spare in the worst (most busy) case so plenty of....

"If I had a pound for every time I've messed up Electron SWRAM bank selection latching I'd be a very wealthy man" 😅 Memo to self, your vsync polling needs to be in main memory, not SWRAM....

When you're moving some "old" code to run from SWRAM and while testing it crashes, when you then check your code and find that it was writing to ROM to simplify the logic in some cases - that's the moment I've just experienced 🤦‍♂️

@wokingperegrines.bsky.social , I think at least one of the eggs has hatched. I've not seen anything yet but you can definitely hear small peregrine noises 😄

@wokingperegrines.bsky.social I really hope I'm wrong but something doesn't look right with the nest, it looks like the female is upside down?

New "toy" arriving tomorrow, it's distantly related to my Acorn Electron and I'm going to use it to revisit my late 80s early 90s computing experience. Can you guess what it is? Clue #1 it has a proper keyboard

I'm still not sure what magic @snuggsy187.bsky.social worked to get the Electron's 1MHz 6502 to do this much work every 50th of a second! An incredible achievement, super addictive and a showcase for what is possible in a resource restricted environment. 👍

Play tested the new version of Apache Canyon up to a score of +200k on the real Elk tonight with no issues. I've also let the new demo mode test it on some emulated hardware, also with no issues so I think its time to release it :) V1.5 available here: github.com/rasto68/apac...

Really enjoying reading this at the moment, some fascinating insights into such an important time and the amazing team whose work touches all our lives. It's also helped me regain some retro coding mojo :)

How about Apache Canyon running on 6 different emulated hardware configurations ?

Time for a little stress testing

I've just watched my Apache Canyon "AI" play through to level 7 and beat the boss alien! A hi-score of 28150 too. I've got 16 bytes free to try and make it even better...

Making no progress on Astoraid, so I went back to Apache Canyon and got it building with the @0xc0de.bsky.social toolchain. Max65 helped me find 110 free bytes so I've added an attract/demo mode. It's not quite finished, but a new version coming soon. Its interesting watching your game play itself 😁

@snuggsy187.bsky.social , Chuckulous is proving a hit at ABUG 😀

If any data engineers with Databricks experience and an interest in AI are following me, then the company I work for are looking for someone like you 😄 Please DM me if interested.

Some beta testing on a new eagerly awaited Elk game this morning and this afternoon spending some time on Astoraid. Play area is 64 x 64 sectors containing 32 asteroids, but you don't know where they are to start with. The "scan" screen lets you find them :) Asteroids contain different things...

Some more "trying things out" 😀 The dev environment now has stars and the scan screen shows the locations of things. Plan is to get some of the gameplay elements tested out and then start porting the code over to 6502.

A day off work, so a little "fun" work instead :) Getting various plotting routines working in the dev mode and decided to go for a retro TV look ;) I've also worked on some more gameplay stuff including a map/scanner screen mock up that might make it in next. Oh and say hello to one of the aliens.

Another first for me - particle systems :) I wanted to see what the player jets would look like with particles instead of cycling sprites so used my dev system to try particles out. This is displaying a maximum of 16 particles at a time, I like the effect but wonder if it will be possible in 6502..

"Astoraid" but not running on an emulator/real hardware. I've created a mini dev environment using JavaScript + an HTML Canvas that lets me try things out much more quickly than writing lots of 6502. I have a library of routines that mimic the real hardware so the code is close to what it will be...

Great day at the ABUG south meet yesterday, nice to meet @colinhoad.com and to experience a game loading from a real tape! Lots of great chats and I even managed a bit of coding on Astoraid. Looking forward to the next one now.

Phew :) Algorithm for horizontal sprite clipping finally worked out in my JavaScript dev environment. Right side clipping was easy but for some reason my brain refused to co-operate for the left side clip and it took far too much head scratching. Next up vertical clipping which should be "easy"....

An afternoon of retro coding using JavaScript... 🤔 Working out the clipped sprite plotting was putting me off making progress so I decided to poc it using JavaScript and a canvas element. Not finished yet but it's certainly easier than trying to work it out in 6502 😄

How many people remember BT Wireplay - Wikipedia share.google/k0nr9No1TSI9... I remember using this for some great link up sessions playing EF2000 on the PC using a 56k modem in the late 90s. The thrill of getting a stable connection and having fun dog fights.

Culture and hobbies day at work, so the Elk came in to demonstrate what a 40 year old computer could do :) Highscore challenge running with Apache Canyon and Astoraid demo'ing the dev environment featuring Electroniq from @0xc0de.bsky.social

Retro film time tonight - Jaws at the cinema with my youngest and her boyfriend. I saw Jaws 2 when it was first released, but was too young for Jaws so I'm looking forward to finally seeing it on the big screen 🦈

Guess who ran into the "joys of multiplexed interrupt clear & ROM selection" fun this afternoon whilst creating a version of Astoraid that would work on real hardware? My original code (running on Electroniq) always used bank 0. The moment I tried to use anything else *STUFF BROKE*

We've got a "culture & hobbies" day coming up at work again, I took the Elk in last year and it was quite popular so it will be going in again this year but will be featuring Apache Canyon :)

Experimenting with SWRAM use for "Astoraid". Video 1 shows normal mode, you can see I've almost run out of CPU for drawing anything more by the position of the "red" debug background colour.

No retro for me today, a trip down to West Wittering to enjoy the sun and the sea.

Some more "Astoraid" time this afternoon - the stars now move in the appropriate direction :) I'm not sure about the speed yet, it feels a little too fast at "maximum speed" but this can be tweaked later on. The code is *very* un-optimized at the moment so I might need to spend some time here soon.

And starfield part 1 is working, a few "smoke & mirrors" here as it always moves at the moment, I wanted to test the effect though :) It might not move this fast eventually - it will depend on what it looks like when other things are also moving.

A busy coding day at work today, but I wanted to do some work on Astoraid this evening. Time for some more "concept art", I wanted to see if I could get a nice layout for the bits of status text that will be needed. Quite happy with this :) This also reveals the font I designed a few weeks ago.

50 years old - my first and favourite CPU 🍰 Happy Birthday 6502 | Hackaday share.google/o74EAb4C0Qw6...

More progress on Astoraid (formerly known as "Game 2") I was meant to be working on a starfield and/or asteroid plotting so heres a video showing the game logo and playing area borders 😆 The playing area may end up shrinking depending on whether I can fit the various bits of status text it will need

A little more progress on "Game 2". I have the drawing and animation of player "jet exhausts" and "scans" working and added the asteroid plotting routine today. Currently have 4 separate sprite routines, you can never have too many 😜

A tech free week for me as I will be enjoying this view instead. I have bought my notebook and pen with me so I might be jotting thoughts about "game 2" down. I've been coming here since I was 14 and used to use pen and paper back then to think about programs I wanted to write :)

Finally some progress with "game #2". I've spent a lot of time (2 months!) drawing/re-drawing the player sprite and just not getting anything that I was happy with so I went back to my original (from April) and am going with that for now. Testing keyboard rotation of the player ship.

The amazing Electroniq from @0xc0de.bsky.social just keeps getting better and better. Here you can see the secrets of Apache Canyons 50fps gameplay (double buffering) via Electroniq's new "view RAM as pixels feature"

1. Power on laptop 2. Start VSCode 3. Types ".draw_player_sprite" To be continued 😉 Small steps, but I'm hoping to build some momentum and get some work done on "game 2" after some time away due to work based coding fatigue.

Really pleased at work today to see a web app created by one of our other teams.At first I thought it was created using our old React component library but when I looked at the code it was a React 19 app using the shiny "new" Lit based components I've been putting together over the last 2 years 😀

Small steps 🙂 Setting up the dev environment for "game 2" and getting some initial code running. I'm switching to @0xc0de.bsky.social 's Max65 assembler to allow me to use the debug mode of Electroniq. TIL all about how the "export" directive can help my workflow. No videos yet, maybe soon.

Thanks to @merman1974.bsky.social for a great review of Apache Canyon in this month's issue (#171) of Retro Gamer magazine 😀 Having a print review of my own game feels amazing.

Checking the Electron works before the ABUG south meet this weekend - gave Apache Canyon a go (I haven't played it for a while) and got my best score and level reached ever :)

@nickpelling.bsky.social - someone's fixed a "feature" in the Electron version of Frank, thought this might interest you 😀 stardot.org.uk/forums/viewt...

I used to have an original copy of this book 40+ years ago, but didn't have the skills to really make use of it. I've spent the last year managing with a digital copy so decided to treat myself to a printed version. Still not sure I have the skills to make proper use of it, but will give it a shot 😉

The seeds of a new game 😀 An afternoon of pixel art and coming to terms with the "joy" of chunky Mode 5 pixels - I really want some colours in my next game and Mode 5 is really the only option with CPU limitations. Anyway, some concept art to see what things could like before any coding starts.

v1.0 of Apache Canyon released for the Acorn Electron & BBC Micro. This release should be bug free I've spent a lot of time playtesting it on emulators and real hardware. Its been a long and fun journey that I started last April, hopefully the next one won't take so long github.com/rasto68/apac...

Doing some benchmarking of Electron emulators against the real hardware. Of course this meant I had to get my Electron out and why not have a go on Apache Canyon on the real machine. This is the highest score I've ever managed, but still not good enough for an Elite rank 😔

Here's a video of a "boss battle" from Apache Canyon, these get progressively harder each time you meet a boss as its shields increase so although this one looks easy this isn't the case later on. Anyone who grew up in the 80s might recognise the fanfare from a 1980s helicopter themed TV show :)