Hi there. The Electron was my gateway to the world of computing.

[demrepofdave]

Hi there. How are you all today!

I remember my the first time I saw a computer was an local exhibition in the late 70, then my middle school got a few BBC micros and a Sinclair Z80. I really started to get into computing when my parents bought a family Acorn Electron in 1985, and I was away. Taught myself BASIC, then quickly realised if you wanted to do anything fast you had to program in Assembler, so I taught myself that. Never coded any games that were published, but did get the honour of some of my games being played by others at lunchtime in the computer room at school.

Many happy memories of playing games, all the normal favorites (Elite, Arcadians, etc). One of my major favorites was MrEE! - never released for the Electron but playable... if you turn the sound off, and if you run using the turbo board, and if you write a routine to run with the code to correct the colour (must have been interrupt based, can't remember how now).

Anyway got my first job in computing and bought an A3000. Been busy with life since. Became a Embedded Software Engineer (C/C++, etc). Now my son has left home and I find myself with time on my hands for the first time in many years, and it seems I've gravitated back into the 8 bit world (I always tinkered and ran a few games on various electron emulators).

So thought I would say hello. I started disassembling Mr.Ee with a view to understanding it's code (and any engineering techniques I can pick up that I would have missed as a child).. .and possible attempting a version of the code that can run at full speed on an Electron (maybe MODE 5). That's brought me into using and building elkulator and now I'm looking at possible updates to that (fixing build errors, etc). You can take as look at my fork here : https://github.com/demrepofdave/elkulator

Anyway that's me really. Good to meet you all!

Dave

[flaxcottage]

Welcome, Dave.

[0xC0DE]

Welcome! More (game) dev on the Electron is certainly welcomed. I started a disassembly once of the BBC Mr.Ee with the intent of porting it to the Elk. Abandoned for now, so I hope you can pull it off!

[davidb]

Welcome!

I always wondered whether Mr Ee! could have been ported given a bit of effort to optimise it for the Electron. More ports and new games are certainly welcome!

[Multiwizard]

Hi Dave,

welcome to this great Forum...


Greetings from my little Dutch Atomic Attic, Wim...

[daveejhitchins]

Welcome to the Forum, Dave . . . Enjoy . . .

But you can't beat a real Electron

Dave H.

[paulb]

That's brought me into using and building elkulator and now I'm looking at possible updates to that (fixing build errors, etc). You can take as look at my fork here : https://github.com/demrepofdave/elkulator

Welcome aboard! The Stardot version of Elkulator should have incorporated my improved keyboard redefinition dialogue (as opposed to showing the Beeb keyboard), along with other enhancements, so you might wish to synchronise your fork with that. If there is anything missing, I'll try and get pull requests made from my own fork.

[demrepofdave]

Welcome! More (game) dev on the Electron is certainly welcomed. I started a disassembly once of the BBC Mr.Ee with the intent of porting it to the Elk. Abandoned for now, so I hope you can pull it off!

Hi C0DE, I'm a fan of your work.

I'm still enjoying "discovery" phase at the moment. The main game code doesn't have any protection around it, although there is some self modifying code in the sprite routine that is more to do with efficiency and space than anything. I would like to keep the game MODE2 and wondered if any of the techniques used in Citadel would come in handy but I suspect ultimately a MODE5 conversion is viable. From what I have discovered so far it looks like the graphics routines may cause issues as they seem to use the 16 colour palette creatively to get the game close to the original Arcade version as possible.

Anyway first step is to finish discovery and get it byte for byte reassembling again from source.

Thanks,

Dave

[demrepofdave]

That's brought me into using and building elkulator and now I'm looking at possible updates to that (fixing build errors, etc). You can take as look at my fork here : https://github.com/demrepofdave/elkulator

Welcome aboard! The Stardot version of Elkulator should have incorporated my improved keyboard redefinition dialogue (as opposed to showing the Beeb keyboard), along with other enhancements, so you might wish to synchronise your fork with that. If there is anything missing, I'll try and get pull requests made from my own fork.

Hi there,

Thanks. I'll take a look.

Dave

[demrepofdave]

And thanks to everyone for welcoming me.

Dave

[0xC0DE]

Hi C0DE, I'm a fan of your work.

Thank you very much!

I would like to keep the game MODE2 and wondered if any of the techniques used in Citadel would come in handy but I suspect ultimately a MODE5 conversion is viable.

Yeah, if you go for MODE2, definitely switch to MODE6 during VBLANK for those much needed extra cycles. MODE2 is possible if you are not too worried about speed and sprite flicker. There can be quite a few sprites active on screen at any given time. MODE5 is also possible of course (I did something similar in my WIP Sabre Wulf conversion), but will be a little bland. Good luck!

[lovebug]

Welcome

[tricky]

Welcome, sounds like you are off to a good start.