How to run PETSCII

Jammer · Post by **Jammer** » Sun Apr 11, 2021 4:57 pm

I'm new and wanted to try out the PETSCII game. I downloaded the x16 emulator and the X16Robots-shareware. Now what? After searching for several hours, I can't find any instructions how to get the game to run. Can anyone advise me on how to get the PETSCII game to load and run? Thank you.

(Sorry in advance for being the annoying noob, asking a dumb question, not knowing where to look for the obvious answer and not knowing the proper place to post my question.)

AndyMt · Post by **AndyMt** » Sun Apr 11, 2021 5:14 pm

Just press the "Try it now" button on the download page of the program ?. This will run it in the web based emulator in your browser.

Ender · Post by **Ender** » Sun Apr 11, 2021 7:42 pm

In addition to what AndyMt said, you can also run it within the emulator by running with "-prg X16ROBOTS.PRG -run" as arguments from the command line. Or you could type 'LOAD "X16ROBOTS.PRG"' within emulator. These are assuming you have the Petscii Robots files in the same directory as the emulator.

vthyng · Post by **vthyng** » Mon May 23, 2022 4:15 pm

I also have not found the magic combination of commands to run petscii robots on the x16 emulator.

Perhaps something has changed since the last post, but the x16 version of petscii robots does not have .prg. LOAD "X16ROBOTS.PRG" give a not found error, while "X16ROBOTS" tries to load. I have attached pictures of what I am seeing.

kelli217 · Post by **kelli217** » Mon May 23, 2022 6:49 pm

Make sure that you are using the correct version of the emulator for the program. I seem to recall there being a thread elsewhere on this site about which version it was written for — subsequent versions have changes to the ROM and changes to the hardware addressing that break the game.

TomXP411 · Post by **TomXP411** » Mon May 23, 2022 8:43 pm

On 5/23/2022 at 9:15 AM, vthyng said:

I also have not found the magic combination of commands to run petscii robots on the x16 emulator.

Perhaps something has changed since the last post, but the x16 version of petscii robots does not have .prg. LOAD "X16ROBOTS.PRG" give a not found error, while "X16ROBOTS" tries to load. I have attached pictures of what I am seeing.

You appear to be running R41 of the emulator. You need R38. Over the last few releases, things have been moving around, and the graphics and memory bank registers aren't in the same place on R38 and R41.

Here's how I got it to run on my system:

1. Install R38 of the CX16 emulator from https://github.com/commanderx16/x16-emulator/releases/tag/r38

2. Extract the Commodore Robots ZIP file to somewhere on your hard drive

3. Look in the extracted files and copy the contents of X16 into your emulator directory. level-a, level-b, and so on should go directly in the emulator directory.

4. start the emulator (double-click on the emulator icon)

5. LOAD "X16ROBOTS",8,1

6. RUN

vthyng · Post by **vthyng** » Sat May 28, 2022 4:31 am

Thank you, that fixed it ?