Commander X16

Good morning (afternoon, evening or night) you fine ladies and gentlemen,

Long short, like most of us here, my first computer was a C64.  Sadly, I did not get the programming bug a lot of others had, instead I just ended up playing a lot of games.  

I've been recently watching more and more retro 8-bit videos (Jan Beta is my go to) and when I saw the x16 project, I wanted to be part of it.  I downloaded the emulator...and got immediately overwhelmed with the absolute mountain of data.  I want to learn to program and tinker with software, but I don't have that background.  I felt defeated.  But I'm still looking forward to learning, as long as many of you are OK with dumb questions.

I live in the USA (Fresno, California) if anyone is wondering, but I realize this is a very international community, so I don't assume everyone I'm talking to is American :)

Welcome. Feel free to ask all you like.

There are plenty of helpful people around.

Hi and welcome! Let us know how we can move you out from the defeated feeling

hey @Michael Westpy! Good to see people get into 8-bit computing, as it is sort of a new hobby for me, too.

I think C-X16 is a great project to get involved with, and the people 'round here are real nice ? Hope to see you around, and the the only "dumb" question there is, is the one that is not asked ?

Stay well

Welcome!

On 11/2/2022 at 9:28 AM, Michael Westpy said:

I want to learn to program and tinker with software

Then start by installing the emulator (Win,Linux,Mac) then following the users guide for the C64 (start with chapter 3)  - https://www.commodore.ca/manuals/c64_users_guide/c64-users_guide.htm

Some of the directions are specific to the C64 hardware (such as hitting the run stop key - use Ctrl-C)

The more you do and play, the more you'll learn. If you need help there are many who will point you in the right direction

On 11/2/2022 at 9:28 AM, Michael Westpy said:

I just ended up playing a lot of games.  

That's a fine thing to do - all work and no play makes a boring computer ?

Enjoy!





 

I've got the X16 emulator as well as VICE on my main computer.  I'm planning on using an older ITX box I built a few years ago as a stand alone "emulation" machine as my main computer is usually running 24/7 doing something or other (usually minecraft farming LOL).

I actually have a very ambitious plan, and I know it will take time, but I'd like to see if I can write a Dragon Quest like clone for the x16.  Maybe even start with a port of Dragon Quest to learn the format for those kind of games.  I had hoped to do something similar in the c64 environment, but I don't believe 64k (38.1k) of RAM is enough to support a game of that size.  However, I need to crawl before I can fly, so...

 

 

On 11/2/2022 at 8:02 PM, Edmond D said:

Some of the directions are specific to the C64 hardware (such as hitting the run stop key - use Ctrl-C)

Or Esc.

Yeah I use ESC for run stop

CTRL for the commodore key

Kittens for my lap warmers ?