Tiny PETSCII Compo 2020

Late last night I noticed a new compo on CSDb called the 'Tiny PETSCII Compo 2020' with the quite simple rules of producing a PETSCII no bigger than 8x8 chars (or smaller than 2x2 chars) and 2 colours (1 main colour and a background colour).  Rules and various entries can be found on the compo page here.

After noticing the compo, I decided to enter with a couple of images that were started last night and finished this morning.  The first 2 below are mine and the final is from my grandson, who I roped into doing one too!

The first above is called "That's No Moon" for, hopefully, obvious reasons?  The second, hopefully just as obvious, is called "Yodascii".  The final is called "PETendo", a portamento of PETSCII and Nintendo - it's a GameBoy if you can't tell!

The images were pixelled in my (still unreleased) screen editor, 'ChillED' and I wrote some quick and dirty code to display them.

If you want to download them as a bundle, click here.

Alternatively, you can download them individually on their respective CSDb pages using the following linkies:

That's No Moon

Yodascii

PETendo

Chiller 2 Demo Xmas 2019

I've been working on a game for the last few months and have produced a demo level for the Freeze64 fanzine.  The demo was emailed to Freeze64 subscribers on Christmas Eve, so I guess it's fine to post this here now, doubly so since it has appeared in 'cracked' form on CSDb!

The game is called 'Chiller 2' and is an unofficial sequel to the Mastertronic original by David and Richard Darling.

The demo was produced especially for Freeze64 for Christmas, thus it features some vaguely Xmas music and snow and holly on the title and game screens.  So as to not give too much of the game away, the demo features only the ghost enemy following simple horizontal paths and various other features of the full game disabled!

To find out more about this game-in-progress and more of it's features, you can visit my Chiller 2 development blog here...

In the meantime, if you would like to play the demo, you can download it here...

If you want to play a 'cracked' version by TRIAD, with some built-in cheats, you can grab that from CSDb here...

Arkrismas 2019

Happy Christmas!

I've spent the last three days coding, pixelling and composing a little C64 Christmas demo that was today released by Arkanix Labs.  It's cunningly called 'Arkrismas 2019'.

It's quite simple in nature with the main screen display being a PETSCII (albeit with a modified charset for the lettering).  However, there are some 'twinkles' with two chars being modified on the fly and snow sprites floating down the screen into the bottom border.

Pressing 'f' on the keyboard will switch screens to a 'roaring' fireplace, achieved simply be modifying the colour RAM.  I cannot tell a lie: the fireplace screen is Arkanix Labs having a direct dig at Stirring Dragon Games who have released their own Christmas demo with fireplace for the princely sum of $24.99!  The Arkanix Labs demo/fireplace is free!  We don't charge no $$$$$$$$!  ;)

This simple Christmas demo can be downloaded from CSDb here.  You can also download it from this blog here, complete with all the data files and ACME source code!

If you fancy warming yourself using a PETSCII fire, Moloch has created an animated gif of the roaring fire!  See below and click to enlarge!

ICC Anon

The 'Intro Creation Competition' over at CSDb is now in full swing and hot on the heels of my last entry, 'Funky Stars', comes another 16k entry from me that I've rather unimaginatively titled 'ICC Anon' which is designed with old 'Compunet' demos in mind.

This intro is thus called because of the simple PETSCII rendition of the 'Guy Fawkes' mask as used by the 'hactivist' group Anonymous.  The PETSCII was pixelled about 6 months ago when testing my screen editor 'ChillED' and ended up being repurposed for this intro.

The music is called 'tiny BONER' because it is a reworked and slightly remixed excerpt of a larger mod called 'Boner' composed by  Marx Marvelous/TPPI.  This SID is 'rare' in that is was composed with a 6581 in mind, rather than my usual 8580 choice, but should sound fine on either chip.

This intro includes my first use of sprites in the top/bottom borders and while there is absolutely nothing amazing going on code wise, it was an interesting exercise in finding out about the limitations of border use.

If you would like to see the intro in action on an emulator or real hardware, it can be downloaded from CSDb here or direct from this blog here.  The download also contains the ACME source code and all work files, including the SID tune in it's Goattracker .sng format.

T.M.R has also written short pieces on his own blog here and on the main C64CD blog here, as well as recording a video of the intro in action.  The video should appear below, but if not can be found on YouTube here.

Funky Stars

There is an event on CSDb that has become almost annual now called the 'Intro Creation Competition'.  In this compo, entries must be created that could be an intro to something (such as a game crack) and must conform to a certain set of rules which I won't explain here, but if you're interested can be read here.

This competition is one of T.M.R's favourites and, since I've taken to coding on the C64 this past year, he suggested I take part.  I agreed but, not wanting to blacken the Cosine or Arkanix Labs names (C64 groups I'm a member of) in case I came last, I requested that it be released using T.M.R's other 'label', Commodore Crap Debunk (C64CD);  as a result, T.M.R has now made me a C64CD member!

Thus, after a few weeks of coding, pixelling and composing (yes, I did the lot!), C64CD has today released 'Funky Stars'.

This intro is so called because the music within it is a SID cover of an Impulse Tracker tune called 'Funky Stars' (but also know as 'Hybrid Song') by Quazar of Sanxion.

This little project has been quite interesting in the fact that one of the compo rules says that the intro must be 16K or under in the same block of memory.  This is not something I'm used to, so was an interesting challenge, particularly since my Goattracker SID ended up being over 3.5K in size.  Whoops!  To squeeze everything in to the same block, I ended up doing little tricks such as assembling the screen data straight to $0400, amongst other things.  Thanks to T.M.R for his guidance on this!

There was also some new learning here for me.  I've always been fascinated by the use of 'raster bars' on the C64 and although I knew it was something to do with writing colours values to each scanline, I've never previously attempted it until now!

Anyway, enough of the waffle!  If you would like to see the intro in action on an emulator or real hardware, it can be downloaded from CSDb here or direct from this blog here.  The download also contains the ACME source code and all work files, including the SID tune in it's Goattracker .sng format.

T.M.R has also written short pieces on his own blog here and on the main C64CD blog here, as well as recording a video of the intro in action.  The video should appear below, but if not can be found on YouTube here.

PETSCII Doctors

Arkanix Labs has just released a little graphics collection called 'PETSCII Doctors', which features (funnily enough) PETSCII versions of all, at time of writing, 13 Doctors from the BBC television program 'Doctor Who', as well as a PETSCII time vortex effect complete with TARDIS accompanied with a SID rendition of the famous theme tune.

On this occasion, I've handled the code and music, while helping my Grandson, w0rm, learn the ways of C64 by producing PETSCII block renderings of the Doctors in my soon to be released C64 cross-dev screen editor 'ChillED'.  Thanks go to Moloch for continued advice and suggestions.

The whole bundle has been dedicated to T.M.R as a thanks for all his patience while I continue to grapple with 6502 coding.

The graphics collection can be downloaded from CSDb here or direct from this blog here.  Both download locations supply a .zip file containing the collection itself to run on a real C64 or emulator, as well as the 6502 source, binaries and work files.  It is also available on GitHub here.

EDIT: 100bit^NiS has added PETSCII Doctors to Pouët.  Find it here... 

EDIT 2:  It seems someone has taken the time to make a video of this little PETSCII graphics collection and put it up on YouTube.  The video should appear below but if not, it's on the page here...

RapidFire BBS Graphics

I've been coding a cross-dev C64 screen editor called 'ChillED', mainly for producing levels for a little C64 game I'm working on.  While coding and testing the editor, I posted a few of the example screens I pixelled on my Twitter page and ended up being contacted by pcollins of the group Excess asking for some PETSCII logos for the RapidFire BBS, which he is sysop of.

The list I was given included logos for various pages such as 'Disk Mag', 'Best of...' and 'Request' as well as some logos for group pages.  Here is what I came up with, which hopefully should be included on the BBS soon...

Although the PETSCII's were pixelled in my own 'work in progress' editor, they were needed in a format called 'SEQ', a sequence of screen characters.  Unfortunately, my editor cannot export this format yet, so they were imported into the excellent online screen editor, 'PETSCII Editor' and then saved off as SEQ's ready for the BBS.

The PETSCII's can be downloaded and viewed on a D64 image here, that also contains a viewer that runs on both a real C64 and in WinVICE.

If you have CGTerm installed on your computer or can access BBS's using your real C64, the images should hopefully be on the RapidFire BBS soon, which can be accessed by following:

rapidfire.hopto.org:64128

Stardust Music

Arkanix Labs has released my small collection of C64 8580 SID tunes called 'Stardust Music' which are covers of music from the Amiga game 'Stardust'.  The original Amiga tunes were written by Risto Vuori.  The SID's have been released within a little music selector featuring a C64 version of the Stardust logo, that I pixelled years ago, and a new charset font in the scroller.

The C64 code to display this was originally provided by T.M.R and was used for some earlier, simple releases.  On this occasion however, I've actually pulled my finger out, learned some 6502 assembler and added code to detect machine type the music is running on (PAL/NTSC/Drean), key detection to be able to select the tunes and sprite display to show various pieces of information.

The machine detection alters the display and the music played, since PAL and NTSC machines run at slightly different speeds.  It was a nice coding challenge.

Special thanks must go to T.M.R and Moloch for their ongoing 6502 coding mentoring, help and support!

The music collection can be downloaded from CSDb here or direct from this blog here.  Both downloads offer a .d64 disk image for C64, both PAL and NTSC SID 8580 files and the music in it's original SNG Goattracker format.  The download from this blog also contains the graphic files in their original formats.

EDIT: Rudi has added an entry for Stardust Music on Pouët here...

EDIT 2:  It seems someone has taken the time to make a video of this little music selector and put it up on YouTube.  The video should appear below but if not, it's on the page here...

MD201603

MD201603 is a C64 demo released by Cosine, part of a monthly demo series.  I have contributed the music and the Cosine logo.  This demo marks my becoming a member Cosine.

The logo was pixelled in Pixcen and the music written in Goattracker.  The music is a 8580 SID cover of Amiga module called 'Lost in Time' by The Judge. The Amiga version was originally featured on an Amiga music disk called 'Amazing Tunes II', but is probably more known for being used as the title track on the Amiga conversion of the arcade game 'Final Fight'.

The demo can be downloaded from CSDb here or from the Cosine website here.

If you are so inclined, you can watch the demo on YouTube below.  If the player doesn't appear, you can view the video here...

Mastertronic Retouch 2

Continuing the retouching theme from my previous blog post is another 'rescued' loading screen from my old tape archive.  Read the post 'Mastertronic Retouch 1' first to understand why these images were pixelled back in the 1980's.

After retouching the loading screens for 'Action Biker' and 'The Captive', it seems next on my list was 'Excaliba', also from Mastertronic.  I've screen grabbed both my 'retouch' as well as the original image and compiled them into an animated GIF below to easier see the changes.

Again, I would like to send an apology to whoever pixelled the original; modifying someone else's work is something I would never do today unless with express permission or by request.  As with previous attempts, 12-year-old me was continuing his experimentation with shading/dithering/antialiasing based on observations of images pixelled by Paul 'Dokk' Docherty and Robin Levy.

I seem to remember (as much as memory will allow) my main beef with the original (shading, or lack thereof aside) was the logo down the left hand side.  In no way did it resemble the logo on the Mastertronic box art in my posession.  This was the first thing I 'corrected', albeit in a vertical direction.  Once complete, I was satisfied that the new logo looked similar to the box art but was a little disappointed that the letters 'l' and 'i' looked a bit 'squiffy', even though I *knew* through magnification that they were 'centred' with the other letters.  Ho-hum.  It was my choice to do it vertical I suppose...

While attempting to copy the logo, I found there wasn't enough room so I had to shift the entire image a few chars to the right to make more room.  As a result of this slide to the right, there was no longer room on the far right to give the room a 3D look as per the original, so this was lost and replaced by an entirely 'flat' 2D wall.  The picture frame was adjusted to 2D to account for this and the footstool and box also had to go in the process, again lack of space.

While shifting everything right, I also took the opportunity to switch out the Mastertronic logo with my improved version.  It should be noted that all these movements and changes were only possible because of the tools built into and the overall 'power' of OCP's 'Advanced Art Studio'!

Other changes?  Well, I think all the shading, dithering and anti-aliasing of just about, er, everything is just about noticeable?!  I realised part the way through that this was turning out to be more than a retouch.  Of the original image, just about all that remained was the 'outline' shapes of the knight, goose and door; even the floor, wall stones and flaming torch were completely pixelled from scratch.

I've converted my 'rescued' final-version Art Studio file to the more commonly used Koala format.  In the download below is the bitmap in Koala format, the bitmap in C64 executable format and the screen dumps which are pictured above, along with the game box art.

To download a zip file containing all this, click here...

I have yet more C15's with some other bitmaps on them and will convert these in time.

Mastertronic Retouch 1

After getting my hands on CRL's 'The Image System' and pixelling some loading screens that were sent to Mastertronic (see earlier posts about 'Space Loading Screen' and blah), I then got my hands on OCP's 'Advanced Art Studio' after reading the review in ZZAP!64.

I still wouldn't have a disk drive for a few more years yet, so had to get the cassette version hoping there was some work-around the 'advice' in the review about the tape version being 'unworkable'.  My solution was to use C15 cassettes to save out my images as they progressed, which I could keep track of easier than larger/longer cassettes.  And it's on these short-tape cassettes that I have found some more of my older pixels, from around the end of 1987.

To learn the new application, I decided to 'retouch' some existing loading screens of games I had in my collection, instead of pixelling anything new, starting with (it seems) Mastertronic's 'Action Biker' and 'The Captive'.

I screen grabbed both of my 'retouches' as well as the original images and compiled them into some animated GIF's below to easier see the changes.  Hopefully, it should be possible to see some improvements?!

Firstly, I would like to send a HUGE apology to Jim Wilson, wherever he may be.  He was the artist who pixelled the original 'The Captive' loading screen; I'm not sure who pixelled the 'Action Biker' screen although there is a chance it was also Jim Wilson since he pixelled many of the Mastertronic loading screens of this era.  The apology is for the fact that I obviously considered it fine to alter someone else's work all those years ago, something I would never do today unless with express permission or by request.  Hey!  I was only 12 going on 13 at the time!

I clearly remember being 'affected' by seeing Paul 'Dokk' Docherty's work in ZZAP!64 and on loading screens of other games I had in my collection.  I was really impressed by his clever use of colours and shading/dithering and even to this day I would have to admit my 'style' (even if I have one) is strongly based/influenced by his, along with Robin Levy and as a result of this influence, my retouches of the Mastertronic screens shown above contain similar shading/dithering techniques and use of colours.

I was happy at the time with my 'Captive' logo and the improvements to 'Clumsy Colin' himself; I was less happy with the 'Action Biker' logo itself, which was based on a smaller image on the inlay card of the game cover.  I just couldn't get the shape or colour to my liking.  I'm glad to see I was morally mature enough to leave Jim Wilson's signature on the Captive bitmap.  Both retouches include the 'improved' Mastertronic logos I had pixelled for my previous loading screen attempts.

I've converted my rescued final-version Art Studio files to the more commonly used Koala format.  In the download below are the bitmaps in Koala format, the bitmaps in C64 executable format and the screen dumps which are pictured above, along with the game box art on which the original artists based their work.

To download a zip file containing all this, click here...

I have a few more C15's with some other retouched loading screens on them and will convert these soon, when I get a bit more time.

Mastertronic - Space Loading Screen

OK, a *real* blast from the past!

I've bought myself yet another C2N from eBay that looked in pretty decent shape and was confirmed working by the seller.  Reason?  I've been rummaging around some very old C64 tapes in the hope of finding some of my real old C64 bitmap work and I've managed to 'rescue' some loading screens!

The screens in question were originally drawn in CRL's 'The Image System', which I used before I got my hands on OCP's 'Advanced Art Studio'.

Here are some almost 30 year old bitmaps, pixelled sometime in 1986...

The bitmaps were pixelled with 'Mastertronic' logos on them because they were sent to said company in an effort to tout for work!  I seem to remember receiving a cheque for the space loading screens - I didn't have my own bank account at the time and had to pay it into my parents account!

The reason the loading screens have 'GAME NAME' on them was because I figured that they could be put on the front of any space type game that Mastertronic were going to publish and the game name could be inserted quite easily.

Although I was 'paid', I don't believe they were ever used; I've gone through every Mastertronic game from just about every archive over the years and have never seen them.  I'm guessing someone at Mastertronic kept them for possible future use, but they never saw the light of day.

They are quite basic in nature, but I'm quite proud of them considering I was around 12 years old at the time.  My sole aim was to produce something half decent since many Mastertronic titles around the time had very colourful, but often quite poorly pixelled loading screens, with no anti-aliasing or shading.

I've converted the Image System files to the more commonly used Koala format.  In the download are the bitmaps in Koala format, the bitmaps in C64 executable format and the screen dumps which are pictured above.  To download, click here...

There are more loading screens on the tapes and I'll post about those once I've had time to convert everything.

3 Colour Logos

Earlier this month, I was talking on IRC with Moloch and he asked about the possibility of doing some 3 colour Arkanix Labs logos for use in note files, intros or other.  I came up with these over the period of a couple of weeks.

Each of these, in theory, can be recoloured with a different set of 3 colours for a different look.  The titles for each logo are based on the original filename when saving.

"Greeny"

"GreyLogo"

(for white background intros/notes)

"ArkStars"

(inspired by very old Compunet demo logos)

"OldSkool"

(inspired by old Compunet demo logos)

"ArkMetal"

(favourite of some of the Arkanix Labs members)

"AnotherBlock"

(my favourite, because I *love* C64 greyscale!)

You can download these from this blog.  In the download are the Koala originals, C64 executables and screen dumps in PNG format.  Click here...

Old Pixels 2

A few years ago, I was digging thorough some old archive 3.5" disks and CD's and found the images I wrote about in the post Really Old Pixels.  I showed the guys over on the Arkanix Labs forum and they asked if I had any more old pixels.

After a visit to my parents, the collecting of some more old gear (including more disks and CD's) and an afternoon of perusal, I've uncovered some more old C64 art.  I'm guessing these are from around 1998 as well since they were saved on a .d64 image that was on a 3.5" disk I used when I backed-up everything from my old Compaq Presario 1230.

They were pixelled using OCP's Advanced Art Studio running using the C64 emulator CCS64 V2.0 on Windows 98.  At that time, these were my first attempts at C64 pixelling for over 8 years or so, so they're pretty bad.  Not wanting to throw out excuses (but I will) for the poor quality, but I was doing battle with the emulator (all new to me at the time), doing battle with pixelling using a damn keyboard instead of a joystick/mouse, doing battle with an awful LCD screen whose colour reproduction was abysmal and doing battle with my own inability to remember anything about how colours on the C64 worked together.

And I was probably doing battle with a new job at the time because I hadn't long finished University.

Anyway, onto the pixels which are all unfinished and were never shown to anyone (that I remember).

From memory, this image was pixelled following the SmackDown image in an effort to improve my skin tone shading.  Pretty awful use of colours here; as mentioned, it looked good on the poor laptop screen using whatever palette CCS64 was using at the time.  No idea why I used pink as highlights in the hair.  Maybe I was going to change it if the image had gotten any further?

Notice the blank space along the bottom of the image?  When using Advanced Art Studio, some of the screen was taken up with a toolbar at the top of the screen and you had to scroll the image up and down to be able drawn on the whole screen.  I obviously wasn't scrolling far enough...

This image was pixelled because I was fond of the desktop wallpaper I had at the time, which featured a city skyline at night.  This is very rough because I lost interest part way through. The intention was to smooth out all the colour 'blobs' which are the result of my 'splashing' a brush around in Art Studio.

I'm fairly sure I did continue this at some point.  I have a vague recollection of showing it to MTR at some point and he coded the water reflections to sway back and forth.  I also seem to remember altering the colours so that some of the white in the buildings was red, green, yellow and so on, for more variation.  Alternatively, that may be a load of waffle I imagined.

Finally, this image is of a car!  The Audi TT had only just been launched and everyone was loving the sporty look, including obviously me because it became my latest subject at the time.  As with the other images, this is fairly rough and unfinished.  The Audi logo seems in desperate need of anti-aliasing, as do parts of the car.

No idea why this wasn't completed, but I seemed to have taken the trouble to slap my signature on it for some reason.

I've now converted the original Advanced Art Studio images to Koala, but left them untouched.  The Koala files (.kla), some ready-to-run C64 files (.prg) and the images above (.png) can be downloaded here...

Crimson Twilight Sprites

Not a 'release' as such, but the other day and on a few forums, Moloch posted some sprite sheets containing various monsters and non-playable characters from 'Crimson Twilight', an RPG for the C64 that is currently being produced by Arkanix Labs.  Since I pixelled the majority of the sprites (save 3 or 4), it would seem to be appropriate to post them here too.

Please note, these images intentionally have scanlines, CRT blurring and JPG 'artifacts' in them.  As Moloch explained in his forum post...

"In the past we posted clean images - no artifacting, scanlines, etc. Well that all changed last summer when I discovered someone in one of those gamemaker forums posting the sprite images as his own creations and offering them to others in their games."

Here are the monsters that you encounter during the game.  They are single C64 multicolour sprites with a hires overlay for extra definition.  Click image below to enlarge...

And here are some the non-playable characters that you encounter during the game.  Again, single C64 multicolour sprites with a hires overlay for extra definition.  Click image below to enlarge...

A V1 preview for 'Crimson Twilight', which also contains some of my background graphics, player sprites and character portraits can be downloaded from CSDB here...

Space Intro (Front End Demo)

Hot on the heels of last months blog about Monolith, comes an even older demo from 2001, again produced by 'FunkScientist Productions' and is called 'Space Intro' according to my archives, although on CSDb it seems to be uploaded as 'Front End Demo', the file name on the disk image.

If I remember correctly, around 1999 MTR1975 had asked on the old Lemon64 discussion board if someone was interested in pixelling some graphics for a game/demo and as I was getting into C64 again over the previous couple of years, I jumped at the chance.

After initial contact by email (and breaks of a few months between emails), I gathered that MTR wanted to make a game, possibly in the style of 'Asteroids'.  I ended up pixelling the spinning ship and a few other sprites (explosion, power-up, etc) and a couple of simple space backgrounds to get things going.  The idea seemed to die a death, until MTR surface again with this intro to the game (hence 'Space Intro').  The game was never made.

The intro can be downloaded from CSDb here.  However, this seems to be a slightly 'modified' version by the uploader with the disk name changed to 'G-Force'.  I'm not sure where the uploader got this demo since I'm not sure it was actually ever released as such.  The version on CSDb was only uploaded in 2013.

However, my original disk image called 'INTRO.D64' containing the demo with the name 'Front End Demo' with original disk name "CSS  CSS  CSS  CSS", along with the ship sprite, the unused space background image and an unused FunkScientist Productions logo in bitmap form (red and grey) can be downloaded directly here...

Monolith

I've been meaning to add this for a while, since it's release predates this blog and I thought that the 10th anniversary of the release might be a good time!

Back in 2004, I was a member of a C64 group called 'FunkScientist Productions' with MTR1975.  Monolith was the third (and final) release of this group.

This one-file demo had a gestation period of at least a year as far as I remember, with date stamps on some of my archived pre-release builds dating to August 2003.  Work was held up on the 'Fletch' game to work on this demo and unfortunately the game was never resumed.

From memory, the sprites were pixelled in Spr-Eddi V1.3, the mountains and logo in Advanced Art Studio and the charset font in Ultrafont.

The demo can be downloaded from CSDb here...

However, a direct download here will also bag you around 30 odd pre-release builds showing the demo from it's very early stages, the graphics in their original formats and the source code.  The pre-release builds are quite interesting to run because they feature early versions of MTR1975's excellent tune that accompanied the demo.

ECCC '11

Arkanix Labs has released a demo at the 'Emergency Chicagoland Commodore Convention (ECCC) 2011'.  The demo contains various graphics that I have pixelled.

The demo is partly a tribute to saehn/Style who went missing in June of this year after a car accident.  At time of writing, he is still missing...

The demo can be downloaded from CSDb here or directly here...

Ramdiskbo

This August, there has been a competition running on CSDb called 'Rambo Revisited - GFX Compo'.

The point of the compo?  Well, I think it's easier for me to copy and paste what CreaMD (the organiser) posted on the CSDb compo page...


"Idea and concept: This compo is inspired by Rambo. A Chronicle Of.. (here) image released at LCP party (5-7 August 2011). It is almost pixel exact copy of the original Rambo First Blood - Part II - title pic. It was fairly and tediously repixelled by Twoflower to stir debate around value of pixel-craft, manual pixelling, originality etc. Read more in the comments and trivia under the pic.
Rules: Original image (title pic of Rambo First Blood - Part II) is your inspiration and reference. You go anywhere from that. You can try improve it (like STE’86 did here). You can redraw it using different technique or use other graphics mode. Even doublescreen! (pun inteded ;-) You can just take something (e.g. some detail) out of it an make it into whole new masterpiece. You can extend it, simplify, use other versions (like the one from ZX Spectrum here), or even original poster as reference...I’m sure you can come up with your own ideas. Anything goes."


After sifting through various, very entertaining entries and with some entries becoming increasingly silly, I decided to take part.  However, with little time left, I had to make a 'joke' entry.  In an 'attempt' to be original, I pixelled (using the term loosely) a PETSCII version of the original image and furthering the attempt to be different, the PETSCII exists in a C64 disk directory listing.

Ok, here we go... here is a screen dump of the directory listing...

If you *really* can't tell, it's supposed to be the face of Rambo.  A little (a lot) rough, but it's collected a few nice comments.  The name is supposed to be a play on the computer term 'RAM disk' and the name 'Rambo'.  Smash them together for the clumsily named 'Ramdiskbo'.  Furthering the painful name warping, the film/game name "First Blood, Part 2" becomes 'First Disk, Side Two'.  Groan...

The PETSCII was 'made' using DirMaster v2.2.009 by The Wiz/Style.

The 'Ramdiskbo' compo entry complete with a downloadable, er, empty disk image with PETSCII in the listing, is available on CSDb here...

You can view all the other compo entries on the CSDb compo page here...

UPDATE:

Voting has been completed and my joke entry has managed a respectable 30th out of 51 entries.  Not bad for a rubbish joke?

Further information along with jury ranks and thoughts is available on the 'C64 Portal' here...

Now, move along... nothing more to see here... ;)

ECCC 2011 Invite

Arkanix Labs has released a C64 invite to the 'Emergency Chicagoland Commodore Convention (ECCC) 2011'.  The invite contains various graphics that I have pixelled.

The demo can be downloaded from CSDb here or directly here...