The Commander X16 VERA graphics chip has several layers. Any part of Layer 0 which is Transparent (denoted by the palette #0 position) will let the Background show through. Any part of Layer 1 which is Transparent (palette #0 position) will let Layer 0 and/or the Background show through. Sprites can be interleaved between or …
Continue reading Developing for Commander X16 in Prog8 – Part 6
Author:Jason Oakley
Developing for Commander X16 in Prog8 – Part 5
8bitCoding.com has a great description of the layers in the Commander X16: VERA supports two independent layers to be used. Layer 1 is the default text mode that is active at startup. Layer 0 is placed underneath it and it is disabled by default. They can each have different sizes, point to different tilesets, have …
Continue reading Developing for Commander X16 in Prog8 – Part 5
Developing for Commander X16 in Prog8 – Part 4
Bitmap graphics You may now want to draw a bitmap graphic to the screen for your funky title-screen. There’s a sample image in the Tutorial Assets downloadable. Here’s how to do that: You can use Aseprite (free if you build it from source) or Paint.Net (also free) to create the image sized 320×240 in 256 …
Continue reading Developing for Commander X16 in Prog8 – Part 4
Developing for Commander X16 in Prog8 – Part 3
Redefining the Commander X16’s character set The font can be created in a graphics editor like Paint.Net or Aseprite. Both are available for Windows, OSX and Linux. Paint DotNet is available for OSX and Linux as Pinta. We need the font in a format we can add to our Prog8 PRG file. You can download …
Continue reading Developing for Commander X16 in Prog8 – Part 3
Developing for Commander X16 in Prog8 – Part 2
Prog8 source code files are saved with the extension .p8 A simple setup for your program will be structured as such: You can name the file whatever.p8 you want. The main file will need a ‘main’ code block along with a ‘start()’ codeblock. Comments are denoted with a semicolon ; and longer comments are /* …
Continue reading Developing for Commander X16 in Prog8 – Part 2
Developing for Commander X16 in Prog8 – Part 1
Prog8 is a compiled programming language targeting the 8-bit 6502 CPU family. The language looks like a mix of Python and C. I have been looking for a new platform to develop games for and Old Skool Coder has begun developing games for the Commander X16 (CX16) retro-style modern computer. It’s kind of a souped-up …
Continue reading Developing for Commander X16 in Prog8 – Part 1