JVIC: New web-based Commodore VIC 20 emulator(vic20.games)
28 pointsby lance_ewing7 hours ago9 comments
  • p0w3n3d14 minutes ago
    So everything is web-based today I guess? But why? Is this about programming language? Packaging?
  • davepdotorg3 hours ago
    Guess it’s time to finally type this out again: https://www.davep.org/misc/grid-bike/
  • Eggpants2 hours ago
    Young me remembers fondly poking and peeking system memory locations to see what happens. The manual, if I remember right, had a table of memory locations to system settings. Things like font and background colors.

    I made a “punch out like” boxing game in basic where the background color blocks was the opponent and the font lines was your character via poking memory locations.

    It was slow but I was just a kid at the time. It definitely told me what I wanted to do for a living at an early age.

    • lance_ewing2 hours ago
      Exactly the same story with me. I got my VIC 20 when I was about 10, in the mid 80s, and that is how I learnt how to program and how I knew what I wanted to do as a career.
      • mixmastamyk42 minutes ago
        Interesting, did similar. But there was no information available to me about working on them for a living in the early 80s. Only the movie Wargames, which while cool didn’t seem like a realistic path, nor did it pay. Didn’t figure it out until a full decade later.
        • lance_ewing34 minutes ago
          Maybe at 10 years old, I wasn't thinking much about working, but the VIC 20 started me on the programming path, with an IBM PC being our next home computer a few years later.
      • technothrasheran hour ago
        Add me to that list, though my Commodore machine was a PET 2000. In fact, I was young enough at first that all I could do was remove lines from other people's basic programs and see what happened. It all grew from there.
        • lance_ewing31 minutes ago
          I probably started the same way. I remember spending forever typing in BASIC games from magazines and books from the local library. They never worked straight off, so a bit of "debugging" was usually required, i.e. spot the typos.
      • Eggpants31 minutes ago
        Definitely helped that I just missed the punch card era. I know young me would have dropped my stack of cards many times…
  • B1FIDO2 hours ago

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  B1FF
    ...B1FF ... B1FF ?!

   ... ... B1FF B1FF B1FF BB0ARDZ!1

   B1FF ... ... ... B1FF!

  D0EZ THI5 MEAN MY BR0THER CAN KEEP HIZ OWN Vic-20 NOW??!?!????!!!


   ... BIFF B1FF B1FF D00DZ!!1!
  • pipo2342 hours ago
    Nice to have this, though I personally find Matt Godbolt's web-based BBC emulator more exciting (and useful)

    https://bbc.xania.org/

    • lance_ewingan hour ago
      Yeah, that one is a great online emulator. I've played around a bit with that one. I have fond memories of the BBC Micro from my school days, especially the game Castle Quest.

      How does it handle being run on a mobile phone? My main focus with JVIC was to try making it as easy as possible to use on mobile devices, although I'll admit that my testing has only been on Android so far. I haven't tried it on iOS yet.

      • pipo23411 minutes ago
        Castle Quest - an impossibly hard game (to modern standards). I spent so many hours only to die and start al over once more. Great fun!

        My Android phone is way too old and slow to load jvic, unfortunately. Let alone jsbeeb.

        But works great on my 2013 laptop when plugged into a wall socket!

  • pjmlpan hour ago
    In LibGDX, that is great!
    • lance_ewing42 minutes ago
      Yeah, libGDX is my go to now for web-based emulators and interpreters. JVIC is the third one I've written now. The other two are JOric and AGILE:

      https://oric.games/

      https://agi.sierra.games/

      They all use the GWT html target. I realise that there is now also a TeaVM target. I might try converting JVIC to use TeaVM at some point.

      • pjmlp23 minutes ago
        I still remember when it used to be all the rage before Unity and Unreal took off, especially in Android indie games.
        • lance_ewing17 minutes ago
          JVIC (the libGDX version of JVIC) actually started out as mainly an Android project 10 years ago, but I didn't release it at that time. It was only a few months ago that I decided to add the html platform as a target, tidied it up in general, and thought it was time to release it. Given that this html version can be installed as an app on android phones, I'm not sure I need the android target anymore :D. It avoids the whole play store / app store process.
  • waldrews5 hours ago
    That's one maxed out RAM configuration. Back in my day, we had 4k RAM, about 3500 bytes usable from BASIC, and that was enough, unless you were rich enough to have a 3k memory expansion cartridge. But really, if you need that extra 3k, you're just not writing code efficiently enough, right.
    • lance_ewingan hour ago
      Back in the 80s, I was lucky that my father was an electronics design engineer, so he built a 24K expansion cartridge for us. I agree that there were some great games for the unexpanded VIC 20 though, such as Rockman. I loved that game. So many levels for a small game.
  • lance_ewing7 hours ago
    The code and instructions on how to use it are here: https://github.com/lanceewing/jvic
  • empressplay3 hours ago
    Neat, but crashed when I tried to load Frogger
    • lance_ewing2 hours ago
      In what way did it crash? What browser and device did you try running it on? - There might be an issue where its possible to start typing before the program load sequence has finished, e.g. where it has queued a "RUN" command for when the disk load has finished, but if you start typing before that, it might interfere with that RUN. I have an idea on how to fix that, if this is the issue. Just need to ignore key presses until all program load commands have been processed.
    • drzaiusx112 hours ago
      Sounds authentic
      • lance_ewing23 minutes ago
        Do you mean specifically the Frogger game? Or in general? - If you mean in general, it hopefully does sound very close to the original VIC 20. I actually reversed engineered the VIC chip schematic from photos of the silicon chip, so the sound emulation is based on what I worked out from the reversed engineered schematic. Some of my discussion on that is covered here:

        https://sleepingelephant.com/ipw-web/bulletin/bb/viewtopic.p...