Been a while, been foreveeerrrr!

Not been updating as regularly as I'd like (nobody is reading anyway but it's nice as a kind of diary).

I've been constantly busy checking out the best of the best of Beeb games that don't already have A8 versions, dumping the files off the disks and including them in my code. I've now got the code down to 2 main files, a global "Beeb jacket" which handles all the gubbins and a game specific file that has the incbins, the execution address and a couple of macros called from the jacket file that allow pre-beeb setup (patching files etc) and a VBI routine.

I've probably got about 15-20 games running now and pretty much playable but they all still need the in-code hacks to make them draw nicely. Half of them I've found the graphics in the file dumps with my beeb graphics finder app (posted about last time) and fix those up pre-execution.

Over the last week, as well as taking a few days off coding due to burn out, I've written some custom SIO code for the A8 (basically disk loader) which means I can load files at beeb game runtime without upsetting the system too much by turning the ROMs back on and trashing over 1/2 the Beeb's lower area RAM. To go with that code I've written a commandline ATR creator that lets you specify the boot sector file, an autorun file (that the SIO code will boot), some other files (whatever else is needed for multi-load games etc) and the output filename. It's all working as expected so far it just needs additional A8 code to actually do file loading rather than just sector reading.

Once all the file stuff is done I'll go back and start hacking around with the Beeb games code and start fixing draw routines.

P.S. Yes the title of this post is a clue to one of the working games.

Pete