Stunning New Games for the Commodore 64
Welcome to the online home of Commodore 64 games programmer, Jon Woods (aka "Kodiak"), where you will find news and detailed articles covering the ongloing development of the next generation
C64 games, Parallaxian and Deep Winter.
What does next generation mean? Both games are being built around an advanced parallaxed landscape scrolling engine and avail of colour management techniques that expand the standard C64
palette without epilepsy-inducing flickering. Dive into the ultra cool articles on this site to find out more!
Deep Winter Tech Demo
by Jon Woods
In the course of tweaking code for Parallaxian's title screen, I found myself sucked into building an NMI-powered sprite plexor system for its planned sequel, Deep Winter.
That was no bad thing, as it helped with Parallaxian's development, and besides, I had promised a tech demo for the sequel game anyway.
The upshot has been a novel snowfield effect overlaid on a parallaxed landscape and some refinements of the Luma-Driven Graphics concept. Enjoy!
Geo-Referenced Laterally Moving Sprites
by Jon Woods
Mapping a sprite to fixed location on a one-way scrolling landscape can be tricky enough; when it becomes a bi-directional scrolling scenario, things become a little more difficult.
But even that is nothing compared to when you want the sprite to move about laterally, i.e., horizontally back and forth in relation to a fixed point on the landscape,
which could possibly explain why this feature is lacking in some high profile bi-directionally scrolling games from the C64's golden age.
In developing Parallaxian, that bullet had to be bitten... you can read about the solution chosen and download some source code in this article.
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Bank-Switched Scrolling
by Jon Woods
In developing a CPU-crushing game like Parallaxian, finding ways to reduce the amount of time taken to execute frame-exact tasks within the raster interrupt becomes firstly an imperative,
and eventually something of an obsession.
Accordingly, one of the things on my "to-do" list for a long while was to find a way to reduce the time taken to perform the software scrolling on the distant mountains, aka layer 1.
That led to a protracted effort to distribute the software scroll burden across the hardware scroll, culminating in a game-changing optimisation of the code.
Kickstarter Statement
by Jon Woods
The Kickstarter campaign did not go as planned but the game has not
been cancelled, thanks to a stunning, timely turnaround behind the scenes.
In addition to expanding on that, I want to gain closure on some of the contentious matters that arose during the campaign.
In particular, it is important to address the dispute concerning novel methodologies / effects.
A Vertical Parallax Effect
by Jon Woods
I have long been an admirer of some of the slick little effects you see on 16-bit platforms, effects which we seldom if ever have seen replicated on our beloved Commodore 64.
One such effect is a vertical parallax within a horizontally scrolling parallaxed landscape, as it adds a sense of space and motion to the gameplay and thus enhances the player's
gaming experience.
So naturally, I thought it would be amazing to work this into Parallaxian, my C64 shoot-em-up-bombing-rescue-collect-em-up game in development.
Toggle-plexing Sprites
by Jon Woods
Unless you (as a C64 user) have been living in a cave, at some point you will have heard of multiplexing sprites on the Commodore 64, a method that enables the same sprite to be re-used further
down the screen after the first rendering of that sprite has been drawn.
But now I want to introduce you to another technique that enables the same sprite to be used to display two totally different and widely separated objects that are level with each other (or vertically
separated, it makes no difference).
I use this method in my game in development, Parallaxian, to display the afterburner flame and the plane's laser bolts pseudo-simultaneously; I call this technique, toggleplexing,
much to the annoyance of a shrill minority within the coding scene.
Luma-Driven Graphics
by Jon Woods
Ever since Mayhem in Monsterland blew me away with its application of non-standard colours, I have been intrigued with the possibilities an expanded palette on the Commodore 64 could yield.
Consequently, that fascination became a driving force in the graphics design approach for my original Colony prototypes back in the mid 1990s.
But now I feel it is possible to do so much more, expanding a rudimentary concept into a whole new design philosophy to lift modern C64 games above their legacy era peers.
Game Concept: Parallaxian (Colony)
by Jon Woods
Back in 1995 I released the last of the playable demos for what was, at the time, a very ambitious parallaxed scrolling shoot-em-up for the Commodore 64.
I called the game Colony, oblivious to the other C64 game of that name, and envisaged it as a massive upgrade on classic games such as Dropzone and Choplifter.
The game was aborted, but in the summer of 2018 I decided to revisit it with a view to a remake for a commercial release under the new name of Parallaxian.
Game Concept: Deep Winter
by Jon Woods
Having created what I consider to be a very powerful parallaxed landscape engine for my Commodore 64 game in development, Colony, I stumbled upon an idea for a wholly
different game built around the same engine.
The new game, Deep Winter, is being designed as a survival and problem-solving experience, with several components never seen before on the C64.
As with Colony, it features non-standard colours and is initially being developed for PAL machines only.
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Welcome to my Show!
by Jon Woods
Every blog has to have a first post, but some say it must by necessity be bland and perfunctory; I respectfully disagree.
With that in mind, I thought I should set the tone with an introductory primer on my two mega-games in development for the Commodore 64, Parallaxian and Deep Winter.