r/retrogamedev

(Document permalink at time of posting.)

A couple years ago I saw someone on 4chan /g/ writing a Tetris in 6502, and I was tinkering around with durexForth so I tried my hand at writing one myself. I start them sometimes but don't usually get that far. This one came together mostly fully-formed in a week or two and I've been picking at it to pass time ever since.

In recent months I've mostly been documenting it. Maybe I can upgrade one or two "Forth curious" persons dabbling in this subreddit into "Forth tinkerers" by way of a nontrivial thing to prod at. It's dense in the Tetris and C64 weeds, though, shrinking an already small audience!

For your perusal.

Many thanks to Svein Berge (the original Twintris programmer) for releasing the source code to the public, and to Dieter Mückter from former Digital Marketing for giving his permission to do so! Also a special thank you to Tor Bernhard Gausen for the music of the game! :)

More info about the game: https://kotaku.com/developers-of-moon-child-resurface-to-bask-in-all-the-shitposts-amiga-prototype-2000688827

MVG has created a port of the classic arcade game, very faithful to the original!

Developer m-cid has released an Open Source solution for Overclocking the PSP’s CPU. Which is now integrated into ARK-5.

Notes:

• While the plugin allows up to 555MHz, it is more than probable that these frequencies are unachievable by any PSP, the highest I’ve seen is my Go at 483. For safety, ARK-5 will not allow you to reach beyond that frequency.
• There was a previous developer claiming to have achieved overclock on the PSP up to 366MHz and videos showcasing it. While this plugin may have been real, it was never made open source and the code for this new overclock plugin is completely different and written from scratch, as well as battle tested by various users and many different PSPs.
• You can find the original source code of the plugin and stress tester here: https://github.com/mcidclan/psp-555mhz-plugin.
• You can find a beta pre-release of ARK-5 if you dig around, it’s not that hard.

Hi All

I've been working on a web-based graphics toolchain for Spectrum development. Looking for some feedback. No installation needed — runs in the browser.

https://zx-editor.vercel.app/sprite_editor

  Five integrated editors:

  - UDG Editor — Design your user-defined graphics with a pixel-perfect canvas,

  resizable up to the full UDG character budget

  - Player Sprite Editor — Create software sprites at 8x8, 16x16, 16x24 or 24x24

   pixels with full animation support (up to 32 frames), onion skinning, and

  real-time preview at 1–30 FPS

  - Scene Editor — Full 256×192 screen canvas (32×24 chars) for painting

  backgrounds and title screens

  - Tile Editor — Design reusable tiles at 8, 16 or 24 pixel sizes

  - Level Editor — Assemble levels from your tile library across multiple named

  screens

  Drawing tools throughout: pencil, line, flood fill, rubber, and pan

  (right-click drag works with any tool).

  Authentic Spectrum palette with per-character INK/PAPER/BRIGHT attribute

  control — it won't let you break the colour clash rules.

  Trace Image — load a reference PNG as a semi-transparent underlay to trace

  over. Drag, scale and adjust it independently of your artwork.

  Export to Z80 assembly directly. The sprite exporter has options for

  transparency masks (interleaved or separate blocks), all 8 pixel pre-shifts

  for smooth horizontal movement, and a lookup table for runtime frame/shift

  addressing.

  Save and load projects as JSON files between sessions.