Hello again fellow Commodore 64 fans.  I figured to get into the holiday spirit I might try to add to the holiday spirit by having a little contest here and offering a gift to the winner.

Perhaps I'll even give away multiple prizes if the entries are good enough!

The rules:  Let me know in the comments here that you're going to give it a go.  Then make a remix of one of the songs (SID tracks) listed below, and upload to Remix.Kwed.Org.  The rules for uploading can be found HERE.  The remixer who gets the best rating for his/her remix in its first week (7 days) at RKO will be able to choose from one of the games listed here (they allow "gifting" of downloads, so no hassles with shipping, etc. - should be good for anyone who can provide me with an E-mail address):

The prizes (choose 1):
Defender of the Crown
Empires and Dungeons
Gold Miner Vegas

You might notice an old school C64 theme there with the games.  It's intentional! 

If you have a Mac, Westward III: Gold Rush can be substituted.

Tentatively the deadline is January 1st, 2010, but if you have a work in progress to share I may extend the deadline, depending on how many entries there are.  If there are no entries (*sniffle*) then by 1/1/10 I'll call it off. 

If you want to polish your song up a bit or are not confident in uploading to RKO yet by the deadline, then you can submit the song to...me!  And I'll judge the winner.  But ultimately I'd prefer it go up on RKO for all to enjoy.

Most of the SID tunes can be found already converted into MIDI format HERE - see my previous post SID 2 MIDI - And a little present for the holidays

To find the original SIDs, use SID Find.

The tunes (subtune 1 unless otherwise noted):

Adventure Construction Set, Subtunes 1 and/or 2.
Below the Root
Mail Order Monsters, Subtunes 1 and 2
Realm of Impossibility
Spelunker
Winter Holidays (just threw this one in for the season!)

I chose these SIDs mainly because they have not been remixed to death (or at all), and a few are from pretty well known games.

If you prefer, you can also use one of the listed SID subtunes from the following previous C64 Walkabout Podcast episodes here:



Just please make sure it's not something you've already done and submitted to RKO - only new remixes please (a "version 2" is acceptable though).

Happy Remixing!  The winner (or any entries for that matter) will be featured prominently in an upcoming podcast, given your written consent, of course.

        

I recently discovered SID2MIDI , the GUI version, up on the Remix64 forums.  It's a great little tool that takes SID songs and converts them to MIDI format.

While the SIDs of course sound better in their natural form, if one has a tune converted into MIDI format it opens up all sorts of possibilities including playback on any MIDI compatible device, making sheet music, or using as a basis for remixing.  Years ago I used some tool that shipped with a Sound Blaster to make actual sheet music from the Ultima III - Wander tune, subtune 1 that someone had composed as a MIDI -- pretty sure that was pre SID2MIDI and manually composed by an Ultima fan as it was in the early 1990's.  Now I can do that for nearly any SID that I like!

A present for a family member this year is going to be Yamaha YPT-220, a keyboard capable of MIDI playback...and I look forward to hearing some C64 tunes come out of it!

I used the tool to make several MIDI versions of some of my favorite SID tunes.  You can download the file (compressed with WinRAR) here on my account at the file sharing site Media Fire:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/01b3quoztwt/C64MIDI.rar

SID2MIDI works best when the melody is simple and does not involve a lot of oscillating or otherwise uniquely SID-ish sounds.  I've found it to be extremely accurate on most of the songs I selected, though the "walking" sound in M.U.L.E., for example is clearly missing.  As an example of a little SID-ish strangeness, I included Winter Holiday by Matthais Hartung, a tune from my last podcast, converted to MIDI.  It could be cleaned up of course, and the foundation for a good remix is stiil there.  Some other SIDs like Ben Daglish's Switchblade were nearly beyond recognition.

Check it out and convert some for yourself, or at least give the SID files I converted to MIDI a try as they'll play on any soundcard that is MIDI capable, which should be standard.

        

Welcome again to the C64 Walkabout podcast!  This time I'm making it all about the SIDs.  That is, music composed on the Commodore 64 computer in the .sid format available on the HVSC and played using an application called XM Play with the SID plugin and some added reverb.

The songs include a mix of stand alone tunes and SID tracks from games.  I tried to break up the feel between songs to add variety.  I've been listening to the HVSC quite a bit recently and the songs on this podcast are just a few I've added to my playlist. 

Press play below or click to download:

Played: 1448 | Download | Duration: 00:27:37

Tracks:

Winter Holiday - Matthias Hartung    
Crystal Cave -  Magic Disk 64/CP-Verlag
Angels for Wolfen - Alain Hertenstein (Iron Cat)
Dark Space - Ari Yliaho (Agemixer)
Super Huey - Paul Norman
Avengers - Alain Hertenstein (Iron Cat)
Kangarudy (tracks 2,3) - Albin Oswald
Temple of Apshai Trilogy (tracks 1,2) - Epyx
Time Puzzle - Ralf Kober
Karateka (1,2,13) - Francis Mechner
Dawn of Time - Siegfried Rudzynski (Crome)
Tass Times in Tonetown (track 9) - Dave Warhol & Russell Lieblich
Easy - Bekir Ogurlu (Slowhand)
Sword of Honour (track 2) - John Carehag

        

I fondly remember using EA's Adventure Construction Set to build custom character tiles within the small number of pixels allowed in each.  It forced a certain type of creativity that is no longer needed with modern PC games.  To be certain, the Commodore 64 was not the only platform that forced game creators and artists to find ways to make convincing "pixel art".  And unlike some of those, like the Atari 2600 or Intellivision, C64 based pixel art advanced by leaps and bounds over the decade plus that it thrived in the marketplace, and when it came to "demos", artists were capable of making almost photo-realistic images.

Early C64 pixel art and art for C64 games had a unique flavor, though, and I often wondered if there were some "rules" that C64 artists followed.  In the image above from Knight Games, for example, a man is holding a bow with a quiver on his hip.  An arrangement of no more than 6 simple beige dots make up his face, and strategically placed dots in his hair give it the appearance of being long and unkempt or wavy.  Note the all-white bow, a color choice based no doubt on the fact that a brown bow would not stand out or contrast well against the character.

I doubt many young people today will spend the hours I did on the original C64 in their emulators trying to make something convincing out of a grid of less than 100 pixels in height or width given a limited color template.  However, a new toy in my own home did remind me quite a bit of those days - my daughter's new Lite Brite Flat Screen.  I decided to give it a try and buy it for her despite some borderline negative reviews out there that are generally unfair to the product like "my kid leaves the pegs all over the house!"  (hey, my 4 year old knows how to keep them in the tray, people), and was pleasantly surprised. 

My own review result for the new Lite Brite product here?  My daughter loves it and it seems sturdy enough.  The use of 3 "D" batteries is a bit unusual - I prefer rechargeable AA's and Lite Brites of the past were plug-in, but it does make the Lite Brite portable and bright.  And having "D" batteries around the house is good in a storm, I guess.  Every time my daughter finishes a picture she brings it to us rather than screaming for us to come into some other part of the home to see her art.  Thumbs up on that!

Lite Brite art works on a very similar concept of pegs in place of pixels, but instead of being limited by tile size (though there is limited space) the limitation of the templates included is by the number of certain colors of pegs included with the toy.  This leads to some equally creative and interesting color choices in the templates. 

If you miss C64 style pixel art, you might pick up the ~10 dollar Lite Brite Flat Screen for a kid you know this Christmas.  Perhaps you can even do a little C64 logo, a Bruce Lee, or a Giana Sister with it for kicks.  If you want to get serious and use a lot of one color to achieve a more authentic C64 pixel art look, though, you'll need to break out of the limitations of what comes with the Lite Brite kit and spring for an extra peg and template kit like the inexpensive Transformers Picture Refill + Bonus Pegs - though even then there are complaints that there aren't enough of one color.  My daughter will often substitute one color for another, though - like the green for yellow - leave it to a 4-year old to figure it out!

        

It is probably safe to assume that those who never owned a Commodore 64 look back on it as either a game machine, a music maker, a crude programming tool, or some mixture of those things.  The C64 had its share of productivity, business and art tools, however, and one major platform for more "serious" C64 owners was GEOS, the Graphic Environment Operating System from Berkeley Softworks, released in 1986.


Prior to GEOS there was a Commodore cartridge called "Magic Desk" that was a rather crude but serviceable attempt at an all-around productivity suite GUI that resembled a real office with a desk, typewriter, filing cabinets and more.  Prior to owning GEOS, I used Magic Desk for typing documents, but it was hardly the sort of snappy text entry we take for granted today.

Instead of the almost comical design of Commodore's Magic Desk, GEOS looked very much like the desktop GUI of a Macintosh, and was designed as a modern OS to be a platform for running many applications, not a limited handful.

The redesigned C64c was often bundled with GEOS, making it a viable, if much cheaper, alternative to computers like the Macintosh.

While the Commodore 1351 mouse was supported by GEOS, I suspect many C64 owners used their joysticks instead, as I did.

GEOS was a fantastic achievement when one considers the limitations of the hardware, but it was not without its flaws.  The slow processor speed and load times made long term survivability of the platform an issue.  The C128 also had a version of GEOS that should have been snappier, perhaps a key reason for owning a C128 back in the day as C128 specific games were few compared to the thousands made for the C64.

I fondly recall perhaps the best feature of GEOS, which was the WYSIWYG word processor "geoWrite".  Up until geoWrite, typing on the C64 and producing decently formatted rows of readable text was a chore.  I was a bit shocked when years later I found an expensive Fujitsu FM-Towns word processor ("Word Star"?) that was actually not WYSIWYG!

I also recall one of my teachers marking my documents full of red text because the printer I used with my C64 was a dot matrix type that did not have descending lines in "y" characters --- the educator docked me points for the way the printer displayed characters!  So much for being on the cutting edge of home computer use, apparently I was supposed to use a typewriter, or perhaps an expensive Apple printer that GEOS actually did support.

Several versions of GEOS were released over more than 10 years, each improving on the last in what would be considered major ways today (adding essential driver support for popular devices, color, resizable windows, etc.).

GEOS is not lost and forgotten and can be downloaded and even bought today.  It is likely that the GEOS users of today beyond those who just "like it" include people who made extensive use of it in the past and still have many documents and CG "paintings" in a GEOS readable format.  It is also possible to use emulation to speed up GEOS so it overcomes the limitations of the old hardware.

One more novel use of GEOS is on the Nintendo DS.  Watch the video below and I think you'll agree that GEOS may have found its niche (and a reason to survive) on handheld devices like this.

To read more about GEOS, check out the GEOS FAQ.

To download GEOS and try it out, go HERE.

        

This is it, the conclusion of my much-downloaded audio book-style podcast here at the 'Walkabout.  If you enjoyed it, please leave a comment below, and I may do more in the future, perhaps with the permission of other remixers in the C64 community to add background music.

This time in addition to C64Audio.com music tracks from the last two parts, Andreas "Amok" Janke has given permission to use some of his excellent remixes as background music in this podcast.  I've used his tracks Spellbound (two remixes) and Star Paws.  You can download them here at Remix.Kwed.Org (Amok).  Also check out Amok's World of Sound HERE.

The spoken word on the track is from the story "The Burrowing of Fort Nadus".  If there are parts you have difficulty hearing, or if you want to learn more about the World of Hadanus, go HERE.

Again, thanks to Chris Abbott for allowing the use of music tracks from C64Audio.com, from album Back in Time 2 as a "soundtrack" for the spoken track. 

To listen to part 3 (the conclusion) of the audio, click the "play" icon below:

Played: 4720 | Download | Duration: 00:26:38

Content copyright © 2009 by W. Robinson Mason III / Background music tracks are Copyright of C64Audio.com and property of Andreas "Amok" Janke.

        

It's been a while since I introduced something quick and casual, so today's C64 program will be just that sort of game.

Quadpawn by David M. Moorman from Loadstar/Softdisk Publishing, Inc.  is a simple strategy game that uses a 4x4 board and only the pawns from chess.

If you want to learn the basics of chess, or just want to enjoy one aspect of chess in a quick-playing game, Quadpawn is a good choice for a diversion in a busy day.  The games take only a few minutes each. 

Gameplay is just like chess for pawns.  Your basic move is a forward move.  However, if an enemy pawn is diagonally one square forward and to the left or right., then you can capture the enemy pawn and move into that pawn's square. 

Use your cursor keys to select a pawn, then hit enter when on the highlighted pawn (yellow) to move it forward or capture an enemy pawn.

The goal is to get a single pawn to the other side of the board. 

If you think the AI is too easy (even if you use "remember what I know?"), try choosing "(y)es" for "random moves".  In this mode you choose your pawn as normal, but the pawn then decides on its own whether to move forward or capture a diagonal pawn.  Random moves adds an element of surprise that I enjoy, though it is harder to win when your pawns have minds of their own!

If you've watched many Monty Python movies, you'll catch the reference in the name of the enemy pawns.

To DOWNLOAD the file for Quadpawn go HERE.

If you are new to Commodore 64 Emulation follow my tutorial here: Step by Step - How to Play Commodore 64 Games on a PC

Enjoy!

        

As I mentioned in an earlier post Ultima Fan? A Better Way to Play Ultimas 5 and 6, while living in Japan during the 1990's I owned few models of the Fujitsu FM-Towns, a very advanced proprietary Japan-market only PC that was capable of booting its Windows-style OS or games off of  a CD-ROM with no hard drive from as early as 1989, long before Windows was even capable of booting from a CD just to install the OS.

I became a big fan of the FM-Towns computers and software after owning them and wish I still had one of those rugged, well-built PCs today.  Thankfully emulation makes it possible to enjoy the FM-Towns almost 20 years later!

Because the CD-ROM was standard in every FM-Towns, the majority of games or other programs made use of the multimedia capabilities such as video or CDDA music tracks.  While typical Western PC-based games were still being installed or run from floppy disks, the FM-Towns enhanced versions of American games such as Dungeon Master filled the CD up with music tracks.  Even the Japanese equivalent of the PC, the long dominant NEC PC-9801, was limited to floppy disks for games while the FM-Towns multimedia rich games soared.  Ultimately the niche status of the Fujitsu computer did it in, but only after many years of valiantly fighting the competition.  Ironically it was not its largest competitor, the NEC PC-9801, but rather low-cost PC clones that contributed to ending the run of the unique FM-Towns computer and operating system (as well as the NEC proprietary computer series).

In those years while the FM-Towns still reigned supreme as an advanced line of unique PCs, many great games were made for it.  Getting your hands on many of the original CDs outside of Japan is nearly impossible and cost prohibitive.  Finding the ISO files for the CDs is not nearly as tough, but still takes a little looking.

I am not very concerned about the legality of sharing CD images from long abandoned, obscure games that can date back as far as 1989.  If you believe in the concept of "abandonware", most FM-Towns CD images (90%?) would fall under that classification.  The fact that the FM-Towns was a niche computer limited to sales in Japan make the software so rare that file sharing by collectors is the only way to preserve these games long term for others to enjoy.  If you are concerned with the legality of sharing certain FM-Towns images, stay away from big name games that have been re-released or clearly are being sold or offered somewhere. The Lucasarts games might be ones to avoid, for example.

Here's a quick FM Towns emulation "walkthru"of how to get your hands on ISOs and a working Emulator with the BIOS files.

1. This is only one option for obtaining game files, but google "pleasuredome uk roms" --- this is a ratio torrent download site, which means you need to know how to download torrents, and that your seeding must equal or exceed your leeching of files.  This is where you can find a massive 70+ Gigabyte archive of the FM-Towns CD-ROMs.  Why so large?  Like I wrote, these games included full "redbook" style CDDA audio, and to preserve the original ISOs meant keeping the large music files intact on full CD images.  To avoid getting banned from a ratio site, you may need to start with small files, or only portions of large torrents.  I suggest selecting "none" and choosing only a couple of FM-Towns ISOs to download first, and you may even be required to "seed" a smaller torrent to build your ratio first.

2. Download the "UNZ FM-Towns Emulator" HERE.  Unzip it and place the folder someplace obvious, like your desktop.

3. Download the FM Towns BIOS  drop the contents into the Unz emulator folder you just unzipped.
 
You may also want to download this FM Towns Help Document (Word Format)
4. Download DAEMON Tools Lite if you do not already have it.  This software allows you to read CD ISO images as a virtual CD drive without burning physical CDs.  Basically it will let you take the images of FM-Towns CD-ROMs and read them for use with Unz.

5. Run Unz.  If you are running Windows XP or Vista, set your CD settings up like this, choosing the drive letter of your virtual drive in Daemon Tools (you can check by right clicking the Daemon Tools icon in your systray):



6. Create a typical "Save" floppy disk image by clicking Drive 0, Insert.  Type a new filename to create a new disk image.  Say "yes" to create the disk.  Choose a 1.2MB floppy.  Some games will not recognize a 1.44MB floppy!

 

You are now ready to run most typical FM-Towns games!  Go to Pleasuredome UK or some other similar retro game site and find the ISO images for old FM-Towns games, mount the ISO of the game you want to play using Daemon Tools, and run or reset Unz.  It will boot the games off of CD as if you had the real thing in front of you.

Or if you can read Japanese like me, there are many obscure and forgotten game titles that are a wonder to re-discover.

Next time I'll introduce an actual FM-Towns game based on the stories of H.P. Lovecraft called Necronomicon...

        

I'm happy to report that the first part of my original fiction "audio book" and c64 remix background music hybrid podcast has nearly hit  500 downloads in just a few weeks!

Due to its popularity I made sure not to wait too long before releasing part 2.  To be honest I thought I'd be able to wrap it up in 2 parts, but it looks like it will be at least one more audio podcast before I can conclude the short story.

As to the spoken word on the track, it is from the story "The Burrowing of Fort Nadus".  If you don't want to wait for the third part of this series of podcasts or want to check out more of my fiction, you can read the conclusion HERE.  (start with Part 4 as this podcast contains Part 3)

Again, thanks to Chris Abbott for allowing the use of music tracks from C64Audio.com, from album Back in Time 2 as a "soundtrack" for the spoken track.

To listen to part 2 of the audio, click the "play" icon below:

Played: 4649 | Download | Duration: 00:20:40

Content copyright © 2009 by W. Robinson Mason III / Background music tracks are Copyright of C64Audio.com