Commodore Free 21/Commodore_Free_Issue_21_2008_Commodore_Computer_Club.d64/t.c< comp club

Text File | 2023-02-26 | 6KB | 199 lines

u
http://www.commodorecomputerclub.co.uk/


Commodore Computer Club (UK) 1st
meeting, 26th to the 27th July 2008.
By Shaun Bebbington.

So, what really happened at our first
ever club meeting then? Well, we'll
start the night before, when I got a
text from Paul "Tr00per" Green, who
found out that, because of engineering
works on the railways, his train had
been put back some five hours, so
instead of arriving into Preston for
about 11:00 as agreed, he'd be getting
there more like 19:00. So,
unfortunately, he had to cancel, which
was a shame as he was eager to show
the demo of his shoot-em up, named
Part34, to Nigel and
Conrad/Onslaught/Samar Productions.
Fortunately, he'd send me over the
PRG, and I had it safely stored on
mylaptop.


Due to other commitments then, we were
down to just three attendees. Nigel
was hosting, with myself and Conrad.
Fortunately, my train was running on
time, and I got to Preston and waiting
a few minutes for Nigel. Conrad had
asked me to do some text for a scrolly
in a demo that he was going to release
at the meeting earlier in the week, so
I was therefore eager to see the final
results, but we also needed to get the
boring stuff out of the way first.

http://noname.c64.org/csdb/
 release/?id=68967

After a few refreshments at Nigels
place, we started quickly with the
agenda for the meeting. As no one had
protested to any of my suggestions
online, all of the rules and so on
were agreed. Members can read up on
the minutes in the google group and on
the forums.

http://groups.google.com/group/
 commodorecomputerclub

www.commodorecomputerclub.co.uk

As there was no Allan (the chair
person), I was acting chair. Lager was
offered, and it was time for some real
Commodore stuff.

Conrad was keen to see Metal Dust in
action, so I loaded it from my HD and
also fixed (I hope) his 1541-Mk II
with a decent head align program.
Conrad commented on some of the
effects found in Metal Dust, and then
he finished linking the text into his
one-filer demo. Nigel was reluctant to
actually type anything into the
scrolly, so we sort of spoke on his
behalf with him agreeing to the vague
statements.

(EDITOR ok what should I have said oh
I know dont forget the website
www.commodorecomputerclub.co.uk)

And it was finished and release.
Shortly after, Conrad uploaded it to
CSDb and also briefly detailed the
meeting.

There were several lager spillages in
the day (!!!) but Nigel's Commodore
room is rather cozy to say the least.
In a way, it was a good job there were
no more than three of us or people
would have been lining up on Nigel's
stairs to his room, with messages been
passed down to explain what was going
on, like a game of Chinese Whispers.

Nigel demonstrated the DC2N device for
preservation purposes, and loaded
Wizball, though we didn't enact the
high score competition as, needless to
say, I would have won it... well,
maybe anyway.

Various games were played on the
VIC-20 mega-cart from Francois
(eslapion), and it was decided that
Conrad was probably the best at
playing Jelly Monster (a PAC-Man game)
and indeed he had the high score for
the day.

Then it was down to Conrad to write
some example source code for Nigel and
myself to observe. He did a scroller
split at the bottom of the screen
demonstrating a basic interrupt, and
commented and saved the source code
for Nigel to have a play with. This
was done using TAS on his Retro Replay.

During the evening, we went to the
local Fish and Chip shop, with Conrad
having quite possibly the biggest
portion of chips that I've ever seen.
It was quite a feat to eat through
them, but then he had walked five
miles to Preston station in the
morning, so I guessed that he had
burnt up some calories. I had proper
chips and gravy, which they don't do
in Birmingham as far as I can tell.

Intermittently, we popped outside for
fresh air as Nigel's room was getting
too warm with all of the technology
running.As the night drew in, we went
on to play some DTV games after not
having the correct screw driver to
open up the unit to see how easy it
was to install an MMC2DTV. I looked
for the hidden files on the DTV and
found out that the PAL version didn't
have them. Oh well, that's cost
cutting for you.

All too soon, I was starting to tire
and needed sleep. I at least saw the
MMC Replay in action, which was good,
and Conrad saw something of the
SuperCPU too, albeit Metal Dust only.
I couldn't remember what I had on my
HD to show him, so that was left.

The next morning, we were all up
bright and early. It was naturally
drawing to a close, but I am eager for
the next meet up. Conrad again did
some example coding, demonstrating
flexible line distance on the C64,
which allows you to bounce the screen
around quite easily. Again, he wrote
some documented source code for us to
learn from. I suggested that Nigel
would have a full game or mega-demo
written in a years time, which he
laughed at.

The final action was Nigel tested big
file copying between a C64 and a PC.
He transferred a 5Mb file using a
stock system and the IDE64 + PCLink. I
was eager for this as I needed a way
to move big PostScript files from my
Commodore to the PC so that I could
convert them to PDF for the
newsletter, which is my next job.

All in all, despite being scant of
attendees, there were a lot of
positives from the weekend, and I'm
looking forward to the next meet up.
Members will be able to find the
minutes of the meeting online in
private member areas. For those of you
interested in joining our usergroup,
head over to:
www.CommodoreComputerClub.co.uk

or contact me at:
[e-mail].

We'll see you next time then.

COMMODORE FREE
www.commodorefree.com

THE END