Quoting: SamsaiThe concepts are fairly easy to learn and at least with TIS-100 the architecture of the machine is so foreign, I think you will not have a massive skill gap between someone who knows programming and someone coming in with no prior experience.

The puzzles really are *puzzles* first, and programming challenges second; Zach says as much in several (very interesting & fun) talks and interviews on youtube. To that, I'd add that in trying to solve the puzzle (how do I get this outcome, given these limitations) you get to figure out basic programming concepts *for yourself*, while thinking MECHANICALLY (like 'The Incredible Machine', but with numbers) about how 'things' come in, how they're pushed out, etc. I think this partly accounts for the appeal of the games -- to give a really simple example, in Shenzhen I/O, you need not have a prior understanding of the concept of a stack, before coming up with the idea of an expanse of RAM that works like a stack, as you're trying to capture the input of a wire and send it in the reverse order over another wire. Similarly for various datatypes, etc.

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I was expecting this to be like the 'Bible Games' of old; but then it turned out to be a homage to Terry Gilliam. I'm definitely interested.

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Quoting: callciferMass Effect: Andromeda. I've been holding off on this due to horrendous first impressions from people whose opinion I respect, but out of sheer boredom (and longing for the original trilogy) I've decided to give it a shot. 4-5 hours in, the game is... ok, I guess. It doesn't have that Mass Effect soul but it's not completely horrible either.

It's nowhere as bad as people made it out to be (and I'm saying this as one of the rioters in the aftermath of ME3); I'm glad it runs well under wine.

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I found a tiny package of games released specifically for the Commodore 128, so I'll try out some of those on VICE x128.

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Quoting: xavi

Quoting: ElectricPrismI also dig the Vortex Race 3, but I'm not sure if I want to get a keyboard without the Insert key as it's handy in VIM

On vim press 'i' and you don't need Insert.

Yeah in *insert* mode, 'Home' and 'End' can be 'handy' when you're too lazy to switch to normal mode to jump to the start/end of the line and continue insterting from there (I put 'handy' in scare quotes, because it's pretty much the same amount of finger work as Ctrl+[+"I" or "A" -- fewer keystrokes, but requires stretching the pinky) ; though it's never even occurred to me to use the 'Insert' key in Vim.

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Quoting: TcheyMy keyboard is excellent for typing, a little less for playing as too many people think "qwerty" is mandatory, but i manage in most game by simply rebinding keys, or switch to US layout...

It's a TypeMatrix french bépo :

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I usually play with PIUE to move, and other keys depending on what is needed. Most of the special french keys don't work in games, such as éàçè....

I'm really curious to try out one of these 'orthogonal' keyboards.

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Yes, but does it feature spontaneously combusting drummers?
How about the option to get second billing to a puppet show at a kids' fair?

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Is there an option to buy formerly successful studios, make them wither, and then shut them down? Infuse games with microtransactions? It would be cool if such features were released in a first-day DLC called 'Shady Practices' or something.

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Quoting: razing32I am surprised how much love these machines get even today. I have seen videos of games that came out last year for them. Have you heard of the 8-bit-guy and his game Planet X2 ?

Absolutely; check out these new releases as well.
http://www.homebrewlegends.com/ [External Link]
https://www.protovision.games/development/development.php?language=en [External Link]
http://www.psytronik.net/newsite/index.php/releases [External Link]
http://pondsoft.uk/ [External Link]

There's also quite a bit of activity on the hardware front. A German company produces new motherboards for the C64 (soon the Amiga as well) for use with the original chips; in the Netherlands a fellow has a one-man company that produces an FPGA based disk drive cartridge; another German company makes high quality new C64C cases using Commodore's original molds that they rescued from a trash heap; a guy from Denmark is getting ready to mass produce replacement keyboards; another person made a sound chip clone that he's producing to order & selling over facebook, etc. etc.

In the case of the C64, though, I think the 'retro' fascination has to do less with 'gaming' nostalgia, but rather the 'making' aspect of things. So it's more of a retro-'maker'scene, rather than a retro-gaming scene. Figuring out how to do things by pushing individual bytes around is its own reward (similarly for tinkering with the electronics). I've been experimenting with 6510 Assembly myself; while I've yet to make anything particularly interesting (still trying to wrap my head around timing & interrupts etc.), it's the little puzzles that I'm enjoying along the way. It's also worth mentioning that there exist really cool cross-development tools for the C64. They're mostly native to windoze, though some of them play nice under wine -- I'm talking about fully featured IDEs, or character & sprite editors, etc. They make asset creation & code editing a lot less painful. I don't think I'd be experimenting with Assembly if not for the ability to write it under vim (with custom syntax coloring, etc.)

... talk about hijacking a thread, though.

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: wvstolzingI kept seeing screenshots of the Amiga version of this game in Commodore magazines -- a huge source of frustration for a poor C64 owner like myself.

My experience mirrors yours in its entirety. :D

The funny thing is that in retrospect all gaming on floppy disks feels like an unbearable chore. A few years back I bought the Cloanto 'Amiga Forever' pack to get clean working ROM images & Kickstart disks, so that I could revisit all those games & software (I used to spend hours in the school lab making Deluxe Paint animations) that was out of my reach as a kid. Unless you go through the trouble of setting up complete fliplists, or learn the trick to install floppy games on a virtual Amiga harddrive, the constant disk swapping gets old pretty quickly.

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