Hello from Brighton, UK
Posted: Fri May 31, 2024 9:35 am
Hi. I've been following this project with interest for a while now. I think if I wasn't already spread quite thin with hobby projects I'm already working on, then this would definitely be one that I'd jump onboard with. I grew up with a VIC 20, of which I own a few of now. It must be 10 years ago by now, I started reverse engineering the VIC video chip used in the VIC 20. There are a few threads in the Denial forums where I document some of my discoveries in that area. I did the same thing with the SAA5050 Teletext video chip as used in the BBC Micro and a few others (e.g. Polycorp Poly 1) and created a simulation of it on the circuitverse website. I also helped in an initiative to do similar reverse engineering of the custom chip used in the Oric computers.
Over the years, I've also written a few emulators, one for the VIC 20 called jvic, another for the Oric called joric, and a third one for the Vectrex called jectrex (I think you can see the unimaginative naming convention used there; they're all written in Java).
My other big interest, probably bigger than all the others in fact, is in reverse engineering Sierra On-Line's AGI interpreter. I was involved back in the 90s with the original activity to reverse engineer the interpreter and its data formats, and then in building some tools. One of those was called PICEDIT and was used by many people in the AGI fan-made game community to draw the pictures for their games.
Over the years, I've done more and more in that AGI space. Most recently, I released a web version of my own AGI interpreter called AGILE, which was a port of my earlier C# implementation of the AGI interpreter. Many years ago (over 25 years now), I wrote an AGI interpreter called MEKA.
This is actually how I first came to hear of the Commander X16. I was contacted by one of the users on this website (@Manannan) asking if he could use my MEKA source code in his project to create an AGI interpreter for the Commander X16. I thought, Wow! This is amazing!
I had thought many times in the past that an AGI interpreter for the Commodore 64 would be an interesting project. I think Sierra On-Line decided not to attempt it due to the limitations with the way the graphics work on a C64. They did, however, release almost all of their AGI games for the Apple II, which is obviously an older 6502 based machine. This got me thinking that an AGI interpreter should be possible on other 6502 machines, such as the Oric (whose graphics system might be better suited to the task), or perhaps even the BBC Micro. On that last one, someone is already working on it and the progress looks good.
Anyway, I thought I would sign up so that I can comment on a few things happening here that I'm very interested in, the work by @Manannan and @cosmicr on their AGI interpreters being of particular interest to me.
Over the years, I've also written a few emulators, one for the VIC 20 called jvic, another for the Oric called joric, and a third one for the Vectrex called jectrex (I think you can see the unimaginative naming convention used there; they're all written in Java).
My other big interest, probably bigger than all the others in fact, is in reverse engineering Sierra On-Line's AGI interpreter. I was involved back in the 90s with the original activity to reverse engineer the interpreter and its data formats, and then in building some tools. One of those was called PICEDIT and was used by many people in the AGI fan-made game community to draw the pictures for their games.
Over the years, I've done more and more in that AGI space. Most recently, I released a web version of my own AGI interpreter called AGILE, which was a port of my earlier C# implementation of the AGI interpreter. Many years ago (over 25 years now), I wrote an AGI interpreter called MEKA.
This is actually how I first came to hear of the Commander X16. I was contacted by one of the users on this website (@Manannan) asking if he could use my MEKA source code in his project to create an AGI interpreter for the Commander X16. I thought, Wow! This is amazing!
I had thought many times in the past that an AGI interpreter for the Commodore 64 would be an interesting project. I think Sierra On-Line decided not to attempt it due to the limitations with the way the graphics work on a C64. They did, however, release almost all of their AGI games for the Apple II, which is obviously an older 6502 based machine. This got me thinking that an AGI interpreter should be possible on other 6502 machines, such as the Oric (whose graphics system might be better suited to the task), or perhaps even the BBC Micro. On that last one, someone is already working on it and the progress looks good.
Anyway, I thought I would sign up so that I can comment on a few things happening here that I'm very interested in, the work by @Manannan and @cosmicr on their AGI interpreters being of particular interest to me.