Oops, I realise I should post a bit of background, especially since there is a
version of the game already available for the C64.
I love the game. I wanted to be able to play it when I was travelling but it
costs $10 USD or so to purchase for the Android tablet. I wasn't prepared to
pay that much (I've bought it for an Android phone before and the PC already).
I wanted to have a
standard rule compliant game which I've found no version to actually be. There
are also no networked versions I know of that are worth playing.
I figured I'd give myself a programming challenge and write it. It had to be
for the Commodore 64, of course!
Initially, I wanted to make the game networked, multi-player. I looked into
how to use Contiki for this but once I realised it was too complex a task to
begin with, I decided to implement the game stand-alone first so that I could
see what might
actually be required to do it the other way.
It was a bigger challenge than I realised...
I wanted it to be fast and actually playable. The original C64 version was
neither, IMHO. I wanted a version that could challenge the PC version I have
for authenticity and desirability. It had to be standard rule compliant.
Also, the PC version I
have has the American place names which I really don't like so it had to have
the proper English ones. I think I've succeeded in all these goals.
If you enjoy the game, you should enjoy this version too.
I should mention that presently there is no CPU player. It wasn't a goal,
initially. I was going to write the server on the PC side only and have the
CPU player there. I feel that writing a decent CPU player on the C64 in
assembly may be a rather
difficult challenge. I have only about 7KB of memory left unless I switch out
the Kernal and do some tricky things. There are also some optimisations to be
done. It would possibly be enough (I think I know how to approach it) but I
will leave it for
another version. Help with this would be greatly appreciated.
I intend on writing the client/server version next and writing a Mega65 network
client as well. I no longer intend on making a C64 network client. I might be
persuaded to do this but I think I would also prefer some help with this as I'm
very
unfamiliar with Contiki and how to build it with cc65/ca65.
Daniel.
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