or:
Why is it so good to work on dead platforms?
As
a matter of fact: why is it so good indeed? For example, just
because I always love dead things. Besides, for those are not
„so” dead in real. (He who looks around a little bit, may see
that a surprisingly extensive and serious activity features the
C64 scene exactly; throughout the latest one or two years – and
particularly just this year – this activity has furthermore increased
to some whole startling proportions. Serving nice and worthy borders
to the thirtieth birthday of this micro computer this way.) It
is no accident that so many of us still like this piece of hardware
so much, even if already been finished and ready for such years
(oh… decades); on which just anything can be written today without
the risk of (further) growing obsolete; and which up to the present
day holds and hides some unexploited possibilities. The main prettiness
of programming on it is the 100% perfect, trustworthy manageability
and usability of the unchangeable, fix hardware environment. And,
of course, those several tight and reduced bounds and limits,
the exceeding of which remains such a professionally sweet delight
and challenge further on… That is why I decided to be going to
develop not only a single game program alone, but rather some
considerably much more: an entire operating system. (Or,
to be more exact, not a general purposed OS literally,
but a definitive IF scripting language running environment
instead.)
This
is what the second part of the name Rosetta refers to
(Ados – that is for the „Adventure Operating System”
here). By stepping over (and thus turning off) the built-in, factory
operating system, a very own code will be running, as far as handling
all important periferials and devices; which is therefore able
to be operated even on an „empty” stock machine (containing no
ROMs at all), e. g. being started from a cartridge; as also being
able to bring forth the maximum of everything. (Here and now
I won’t explain this question further on; he who is curious to
know some more, please read the previous sketchy description of
my Rosetta system already published here before – and linked below;
of which it is just a note and update now.) Today at this
nice symbolic date (the triple twelves, then spanning over to
the day of Lucia at 13th) I have „officially” confirmed the beginning
of the development by opening a Facebook page. This (and beside
my accessibility if anyone needed) can be seen below in the next
row (although being empty provisionally; but this will be changing
soon). Please simply click on them:
Update:
also added above is the link of Rosetta blog which will be used
for following the development (however, only in Hungarian, sorry!
– maybe later there will be a translation).
In
fact, of course, it rather takes a long time until my work (as
shallowly flowing in my mere sparetime) will yield any concretely
tangible (and demonstratable) results. For the moment, there are
only sketches and plans, and a list of my (possible) chosen developing
tools:
FASM
(Flat Assembler): a modern, comprehensive
x86 Assembler (which knows the entire x86-64 command set, and
of multiplatform nature), and capable of simply, quickly working
with. The nicest proof of its capabilities is that a complete
operating system was already made by that: e. g. the excellent
(and presently the most advanced) alternative PC operating system
MenuetOS (both its 32-bit and 64-bit variants).
ConGo:
a rare (and in our case a very useful) graphical application of
special functionality for transforming any PC gfx to C64 (Koala
or Art Studio) pictures (and vice versa), and also for editing.
It is easy to make a C64 „digitalized picture” even from a multi-coloured
and high-resolution photograph, comfortably and in good quality.
(Unfortunately, it is an abandoned and old Win98 beta version,
however, it can be used nowadays, too, of course.)
6510
Assembler:
there are very many of such things, for example that one written
by the Dutch chess-programmer Aart Bik is a pleasant one (albeit
having a few limits, too).
HxD
(Hex and Disk) Editor:
for inspecting the translated object codes and other files directly
(and for editing them as needed occasionally).
DOSBox
and VICE:
the best emulators for the DOS and the Commodore code running
environments nowadays.
And
so will I continue it later on…
Robert
Olessak (2012)
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Rosetta |
11/01/2012 |
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The
little Rosetta |
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The
Castle of IF |
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