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.