OK, I gotta hand it to CoPilot.
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The dubs keep coming. It's almost not terrible. At this rate, I'll have a reasonably functional sprite editor sometime this weekend. (Yes, I should just use Spritemate or one of the several other existing sprite editors, but I've been hankering to learn some modern C++ and also make small/fast/compact desktop apps and this is a fun way to do so, while building something I might actually use.)
And, it's 169k without putting any effort into shrinking it. It'd fit on a floppy, even a Commodore 1541 floppy (though only barely, and probably not actually, as there's probably some overhead). I was a little worried about Qt Quick, because they apparently added JavaScript and something like HTML to Qt to make QML work, and I was concerned that would lead to bloat, and I'm sure it did, but not much.
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And, it's 169k without putting any effort into shrinking it. It'd fit on a floppy, even a Commodore 1541 floppy (though only barely, and probably not actually, as there's probably some overhead). I was a little worried about Qt Quick, because they apparently added JavaScript and something like HTML to Qt to make QML work, and I was concerned that would lead to bloat, and I'm sure it did, but not much.
Now there's a little guy.
Multicolor sprite support is working (I think I understand the specs and limitations anyway), PNG export is working, switched to a palette that is closer to a real C64, cleaned up the UI. I'm trying to decide if I want to tackle animation or just make it export to KickAssembler byte strings next.
I should also probably give it the ability to save and reload in a native format so I don't lose my little guys when I exit.
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Now there's a little guy.
Multicolor sprite support is working (I think I understand the specs and limitations anyway), PNG export is working, switched to a palette that is closer to a real C64, cleaned up the UI. I'm trying to decide if I want to tackle animation or just make it export to KickAssembler byte strings next.
I should also probably give it the ability to save and reload in a native format so I don't lose my little guys when I exit.
I opened up Steam to see if any games were calling out to be played, and realized I bought AseSprite at some point, and it also became available on Linux (via Proton, I assume, as it's wrapped in a Windows looking window). But, I can't figure it out? It's complicated and clearly not designed for retro machine targets, though I've seen people talk about using it for making C64 sprites, I just can't see how. I reckon I'll keep plodding along with my editor that does only/exactly what I want.
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I opened up Steam to see if any games were calling out to be played, and realized I bought AseSprite at some point, and it also became available on Linux (via Proton, I assume, as it's wrapped in a Windows looking window). But, I can't figure it out? It's complicated and clearly not designed for retro machine targets, though I've seen people talk about using it for making C64 sprites, I just can't see how. I reckon I'll keep plodding along with my editor that does only/exactly what I want.
I'm getting cooked in the `clang-tidy` comments.
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I'm getting cooked in the `clang-tidy` comments.
Do I have to build everything from scratch to make a game for C64? I just want to draw some tiles to turn into a charset and Krita is just broke?
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Do I have to build everything from scratch to make a game for C64? I just want to draw some tiles to turn into a charset and Krita is just broke?
Good ol' GNU Image Manipulation Program to the rescue. But, now I'm tired of fucking around, so I just bought some tiles off of Itch.io to start with. I think somebody here on Mastodon posted them a while back. They're cute. Still need to get them into a format I can convert automatically to a charset... https://algernon3000.itch.io/minimal-8
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Good ol' GNU Image Manipulation Program to the rescue. But, now I'm tired of fucking around, so I just bought some tiles off of Itch.io to start with. I think somebody here on Mastodon posted them a while back. They're cute. Still need to get them into a format I can convert automatically to a charset... https://algernon3000.itch.io/minimal-8
He can't keep getting away with it. (Not going to bed, writing 6502 assembly, things of that nature.) #retrocomputing
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He can't keep getting away with it. (Not going to bed, writing 6502 assembly, things of that nature.) #retrocomputing
Is a dual grid system possible on a C64? Since I'm using sprites for the little guys, it seems like it would be, as they have pixel-precise movement. How to maintain the world map (not the visual one, the one that determines behaviors) is breaking my brain, though. Much to think about.
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Is a dual grid system possible on a C64? Since I'm using sprites for the little guys, it seems like it would be, as they have pixel-precise movement. How to maintain the world map (not the visual one, the one that determines behaviors) is breaking my brain, though. Much to think about.
OK, this is not as good as Web Developer Tools for apps in the browser, but I guess it'll have to do, because I'm not doing Electron or whatever. But, trying to figure out why things are rendered the way they are without "Inspect Element" is certainly not as much fun as one would hope.
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OK, this is not as good as Web Developer Tools for apps in the browser, but I guess it'll have to do, because I'm not doing Electron or whatever. But, trying to figure out why things are rendered the way they are without "Inspect Element" is certainly not as much fun as one would hope.
I think I need to learn Godot or something for the prototyping phase. Even if I end up writing the whole game twice, iterating on gameplay ideas in 6502 assembly does not seem at all like a more efficient use of time. I was so excited to get something running in VICE but now I'm overwhelmed enough by the high level concepts (proc gen maps and the dual grid stuff at the moment) that trying to think it through at a super low level just isn't working.
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Gli ultimi otto messaggi ricevuti dalla Federazione
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@paulschoe @nhok i don't think either one is the source though. 🤷🏼♂️
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@paulschoe @nhok here it is on Instagram. Still no credit!
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@paulschoe @nhok i found a copy of the video using Google image search here, but without any other credits
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@paulschoe @nhok BBC coverage here
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Hackaday Links: November 16, 2025
We make no claims to be an expert on anything, but we do know that rule number one of working with big, expensive, mission-critical equipment is: Don’t break the big, expensive, mission-critical equipment. Unfortunately, though, that’s just what happened to the Deep Space Network’s 70-meter dish antenna at Goldstone, California. NASA announced the outage this week, but the accident that damaged the dish occurred much earlier, in mid-September. DSS-14, as the antenna is known, is a vital part of the Deep Space Network, which uses huge antennas at three sites (Goldstone, Madrid, and Canberra) to stay in touch with satellites and probes from the Moon to the edge of the solar system. The three sites are located roughly 120 degrees apart on the globe, which gives the network full coverage of the sky regardless of the local time.
Losing the “Mars Antenna,” as DSS-14 is informally known, is a blow to the DSN, a network that was already stretched to the limit of its capabilities, and is likely to be further challenged as the race back to the Moon heats up. As for the cause of the accident, NASA explains that the antenna was “over-rotated, causing stress on the cabling and piping in the center of the structure.” It’s not clear which axis was over-rotated, but based on some specs we found that say the azimuth travel range is ±265 degrees “from wrap center,” we suspect it was the vertical axis in the base. It sounds like the azimuth went past that limit, which wrapped the swags of cables and hoses that run the antenna tightly, causing the damage. We’d have thought there would be a physical stop of some sort to prevent over-rotation, but then again, running a structure that big up against a stop would be very much an “irresistible force, immovable object” scenario. Here’s hoping they can get DSS-14 patched up quickly and back in service.
Speaking of having a bad day on the job, we have to take pity on these Russian engineers for the “demo hell” they went through while revealing the country’s first AI-powered humanoid robot. AIdol, as the bot is known, seemed to struggle from the start, doddering from behind some curtains like a nursing home patient with a couple of nervous-looking fellows flanking it. The bot paused briefly before continuing its drunk-walk, pausing again to deliver a somewhat feeble wave to the crowd before entering the terminal stumble and face-plant part of the demo. The bot’s attendants quickly dragged it away, leaving a pile of parts on the stage while more helpers tried — and failed — to deploy a curtain to hide the scene. It was a pretty sad scene to behold, made worse by the choice of walk-out music (Bill Conti’s iconic “Gonna Fly Now,” better known as the theme from Rocky).
youtube.com/embed/LyfCLRkXKYs?…
We just noticed that pretty much everything we have to write about this week has a “bad day at work” vibe to it, so to continue on with that theme, witness this absolutely disgusting restoration of a GPU that spent way too many years in a smoker’s house. The card, an Asus 9800GT Matrix, is from 2008, so it may have spent the last 17 years getting caked with tar and nicotine, along with a fair amount of dust and perhaps cat hair, from the look of it. Having spent way too much time cleaning TVs similarly caked with grossness most foul, we couldn’t stomach watching the video of the restoration process, but it’s available in the article if you dare.
And the final entry in our “So you think your job sucks?” roundup, behold the poor saps who have to generate training data for AI-powered domestic robots. The story details the travails of Naveen Kumar, who spends his workday on simple chores such as folding towels, with the twist of doing it with a GoPro strapped to his forehead to capture all the action. The videos are then sent to a U.S. client, who uses them to develop a training model so that humanoid robots can eventually copy the surprisingly complex physical movements needed to perform such a mundane task. Training a robot is all well and good, but how about training them how to move around inside a house made for humans? That’s where it gets really creepy, as an AI startup has partnered with a big real estate company to share video footage captured from those “walk-through” videos real estate agents are so fond of. So if your house has recently been on the market, there’s a non-zero chance that it’s being used to train an army of domestic robots.
And finally, we guess this one fits the rough-day-at-work theme, but only if your job is being a European astronaut, who may someday be chowing down on protein powder made from their own urine. The product is known as Solein — sorry, but have they never seen the movie Soylent Green? — and is made via a gas fermentation process using microbes, electricity, and air. The Earth-based process uses ammonia as a nitrogen source, but in orbit or on long-duration deep-space missions, urea harvested from astronaut pee would be used instead. There’s no word on what Solein tastes like, but from the look of it, and considering the source, we’d be a bit reluctant to dig in.
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@paulschoe @nhok there's a good article in Nature from this year showing discoveries of animal ecosystems at that depth. They are chemo synthetic -- they live off the energy from volcanic vents. Unfortunately, they don't look a lot like the animals in nhok's video.
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Computing Is Indeed a Discipline in Crisis – Communications of the ACM
https://cacm.acm.org/opinion/computing-is-indeed-a-discipline-in-crisis/
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I think I need to learn Godot or something for the prototyping phase. Even if I end up writing the whole game twice, iterating on gameplay ideas in 6502 assembly does not seem at all like a more efficient use of time. I was so excited to get something running in VICE but now I'm overwhelmed enough by the high level concepts (proc gen maps and the dual grid stuff at the moment) that trying to think it through at a super low level just isn't working.
