c64 C64 Dreams (massive curated C64 collection)

Zombeaver · October 25, 2020

I had an interesting idea the other day while talking about text adventures on the Zomb's Lair Discord - many of them have no sound or music, so the thought occurred to me that maybe I could sortof pipe in my own appropriate background SID music to help set the mood a bit better. I found a nice tiny SID player that runs directly from CMD called libsidplayfp so I can basically start this as part of a game's .bat, tell it to start a specific SID track (which loops), use an AHK script to watch for Retroarch to close and then close it and the AHK script. I already have this working, at this point it's just a matter of getting tracks picked out. I've found four so far that I like and would be appropriate (below). I'll be looking for more and am open to suggestions. I want stuff that's 1) relatively slow and low-key/atmospheric and 2) are original compositions not from game soundtracks. If anyone wants to help look for more and make any suggestions, a good place to start is the Unepic SID Channel which has over 50,000 SID tracks (!) uploaded, which you can go through in a single playlist if you go here.

Stars Are Us by Jammer

Stolen Properties by TDM

Ghosts by SIDwave

Neon Haze by The Solution

mordroc · October 25, 2020

Thank you for the advice. I used Notepad++ to made those changes (not forgetting the space before " (web version).url", which worked successfully. I checked and double-checked the new .xml and everything was updated to the .vbs. Unfortunately in LB the launch link is still the URL. For some reason even though the .xml has been updated, LB still wants to point to the .url. I am going to just fix the link for each magazine manually one by one in LB, which I know will solve the problem. No big deal. A small amount of time to take compared to the 1000's of hours you've clearly spent setting this up. And I actually just finished. Took about 10min.

Zombeaver · October 25, 2020

On 10/25/2020 at 8:56 PM, mordroc said:

Thank you for the advice. I used Notepad++ to made those changes (not forgetting the space before " (web version).url", which worked successfully. I checked and double-checked the new .xml and everything was updated to the .vbs. Unfortunately in LB the launch link is still the URL. For some reason even though the .xml has been updated, LB still wants to point to the .url. I am going to just fix the link for each magazine manually one by one in LB, which I know will solve the problem. No big deal. A small amount of time to take compared to the 1000's of hours you've clearly spent setting this up. And I actually just finished. Took about 10min.

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That's strange because I tested it and it worked fine here. Glad you got it sorted at least.

mordroc · October 25, 2020

On 10/25/2020 at 9:04 PM, Zombeaver said:

That's strange because I tested it and it worked fine here. Glad you got it sorted at least.

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Thanks. Yeah I tried it three times with a fresh .xml. Checked and doublechecked after replacing the text. There were still other instances of "(web version)" left over in the xml (not with the .url part), so I wondered if that might have something to do with it. But it worked for you so who knows. Maybe in a future update you could include an extra .xml with the changes done (calling it something like "magazines.localvbs"), so someone could just rename the current one to ".old" and name "magazines.localvbs" to "magazines.xml".

Zombeaver · October 26, 2020

Found some more tracks that are appropriate for text adventure background music. It still doesn't quite cover everything I want, but between these and the previous ones it's a good start anyway.

Astral Travel by G-Fellow

Catalyst by Jammer

Downward by Kruthers

Illbient by Jammer (can't find a video of this one)

Lighthouse in a Storm by Mibri

Lost in the Night by MCH (I really love this one; added it to The Curse of Rabenstein and it's just so much better)

Street of My Soul by Jammer

dampchimp · October 28, 2020

Hi, I have an issue where everything is running really slowly when using your set-up. Standalone in a separate install, I get full speed without any problems. Isn't a performance limitation on my machine (I have a Ryzen 5 3600, so shouldn't be a problem running this). Any suggestions on any settings you are using in your emulators that might be causing my frame rate to run slowly?

Zombeaver · October 28, 2020

Read the performance section of the opening post.

ransom2211 · November 1, 2020

I have nothing but respect for the time & effort that went into this project. This is quality at its finest and will keep the c64 Alive for years to come.

I have come to the party late but intrigued and exciting for the times ahead with this project.

Thank you Zombeaver ?

Zombeaver · November 2, 2020

40 new games since the last batch. 2200 total.

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maschine · November 2, 2020

On 11/2/2020 at 1:36 AM, Zombeaver said:

40 new games since the last batch. 2200 total.

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Endless
Greystorm
Hall of the Things
Halley Mission, The
Halls of the Dwarven Kings, The
Happiest Days of Your Life, The
Helicopter Mission, The
Helm, The
Hermitage, The
Heroes of Karn, The
High Mountains, The
Holiday Games
Hollywood or Bust
Hollywood Squares
Holo
Holocaust
Hong Kong Phooey
Hook
Hopeless
Hopper Copper
Hopping Hoodlum, The
Hopto
Hostages
Hot Pop
Hot Shot
Hot Wheels
Hotel Alien
House Case
House of Usher
House, The
How to Be a Complete Bastard
Human Race, The
Humanoids
Hummdinger
Killed Until Dead
Metal Dust
Newcomer
Soko-Ban
Test Drive
Test Drive II - The Duel

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Thank you for all your efforts and for keeping us posted @Zombeaver

Looking forward to the next release. The latest version is still 0.20, or did I miss something?

Zombeaver · November 2, 2020

On 11/2/2020 at 8:27 PM, maschine said:

Thank you for all your efforts and for keeping us posted @Zombeaver

Looking forward to the next release. The latest version is still 0.20, or did I miss something?

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Yes, v0.20 is still the current version. The next update will be v0.25.

I'm in the process doing some auditing because a number of things changed with updates to the core, so that's slowed things down a bit but it needs to be done.

I'm also in the process of testing out and adding autowarp where applicable - the current core now has this as an option and it's essentially the core's implementation of CCS64's "Maximum 1541 Speed" feature, which warps when it a disk attempts to load data. It only works when TrueDrive is enabled but that's the only time you'd really need it anyway so that's okay. It's a great feature and was basically the only remaining thing that CCS64, up to this point, held as an advantage. With that said, it's not something you can just use across the board since there are times where it's problematic - some games are in an almost constant state of loading, so you can't use it there and in cases where a game has frequent short loads and music you don't want to use it because it mutes the game while it warps (so it makes it sound like the audio is skipping). That said, there are a lot of cases where it's immensely beneficial. For example, there are a number of text adventures that have still images for each area that tend to take several seconds to load each time you move to another area - games like The Brew for example - and they have no music or sound (other than the SID music which I'm now piping in in the background with libsidplayfp, which is unaffected because it's external to Retroarch) - in these cases you're talking about going from 5-10 seconds per screen change to it happening virtually instantaneously. There are of course plenty of other good use scenarios for it as well, but testing is needed in all cases to verify that it doesn't screw anything up or make the game behave oddly.

Zombeaver · November 6, 2020

Another 50 done:

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Mozzers101 · November 9, 2020

Hi @Zombeaver, I'm watching this collection come together and it is really amazing the work you are putting in. It's things like this that enrich this community and it is fantastic. I will be adding the project into my setup when it is further along but have used the standalone version and it is great. Many thanks for all your hard work.

I have a request for a game if I could be so forward? It is Andy Capp by Mirrorsoft.

Once more, bravo and thanks.

Zombeaver · November 9, 2020

On 11/9/2020 at 5:54 PM, Mozzers101 said:

Hi @Zombeaver, I'm watching this collection come together and it is really amazing the work you are putting in. It's things like this that enrich this community and it is fantastic. I will be adding the project into my setup when it is further along but have used the standalone version and it is great. Many thanks for all your hard work.

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You're very welcome!

On 11/9/2020 at 5:54 PM, Mozzers101 said:

I have a request for a game if I could be so forward? It is Andy Capp by Mirrorsoft.

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Absolutely! Things are moving along nicely with the next version but there's still room for requests (which I always encourage). I'll add it into the next batch.

Zombeaver · November 11, 2020

50 more done. That puts it at 2300 currently! I've made it through all of "I" as well.

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I've also made a new generic bezel (with a couple variations) which people might like.

I'm still making my way through and adding music to text adventures (and a few other games that just have no sound).

maschine · November 14, 2020

On 11/9/2020 at 9:46 PM, Zombeaver said:

You're very welcome!

Absolutely! Things are moving along nicely with the next version but there's still room for requests (which I always encourage). I'll add it into the next batch.

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Kaiser is one of my all time favorites:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiser_(video_game)

Thanks for considering

Zombeaver · November 14, 2020

On 11/14/2020 at 9:25 AM, maschine said:

Kaiser is one of my all time favorites:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiser_(video_game)

Thanks for considering

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Kaiser's actually in the collection already

Zombeaver · November 19, 2020

50 new games since the last batch:

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More significantly, however, is a lot of other work that's gone on since the last update.

All the audits are complete. New SID (+40 / total of 100), Demonscene (+10 / total of 60), Magazines (+19 / total of 110) and Diskmags (+25 / total of 25) are now complete.

I've also come up with a way to enable quick-swapping between the game and manuals with a key/button combo (numpad minus + numpad enter or back + R3) and navigate them with either keyboard or controller so that's pretty exciting. I have to enable this on a game by game basis one at a time though. I've gotten 150 manuals added so far. I'm not sure how many I'll do for the release but I'm sure it'll be at least 200. At the very least I want to get all the SSI, Origin, Infocom, and a few other outfits that tended to include fairly elaborate documentation. It wouldn't be quite as time consuming were it not for the fact that I'm parsing through about 5 different sources to find the best version of a manual available and then to make matters more difficult (because why wouldn't I?) I've been converting most of them from .pdf to .cbr (which involves extracting all the pages and then combining into an archive) because they look noticeably better in the reader (CDisplayEx) in the majority of cases. This also allows me to combine multiple docs like manual + reference card + story booklet etc. into a single doc. It's time-consuming but, as they say, anything worth doing...

You have to view these at full size to see the difference but it's clear as day if I have both open and alt-tab between the two. For some reason it just handles scaling a lot better with .cbrs and makes it much sharper.

PDF:
CBR:

Zombeaver · November 29, 2020

50 new games since the last batch, bringing the total to 3400. A lot of Origin stuff in this one.

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I've also spent a lot of hours over the last week improving the code for the manuals and custom music and adding more features. You can see a quick demonstration here:

I've also continued to convert, clean up, and add more manuals. 279 have been added so far. Thanks to @jophran I've got a couple new sources for these as well.

I also created an additional watchdog app which essentially functions as a failsafe in case something goes wrong with Retroarch's launch for any reason. It waits 15 seconds for Retroarch to start, and if it hasn't started by then it closes any running scripts/apps that were launched - I thought this was prudent since there are a number of scripts and apps that are launched in conjunction with Retroarch now to facilitate the manuals and music. These ordinarily close upon Retroarch closing but, in the event that something weird happens and for some reason Retroarch doesn't start to begin with, they don't have that trigger and will otherwise remain open; the watchdog acts as a failsafe for this so that you don't have a bunch of stuff still running in the event that Retroarch doesn't start correctly for whatever reason; if Retroarch is open once the 15 seconds are up (and it certainly should be, that's plenty of time) the watchdog closes itself; in case your PC is just an absolute potato and it takes it longer than 15 seconds for Retroarch to start, I've included an alternate version that waits 30 seconds in C64 Dreams\C64 Dreams\Retroarch\!Startup Watchdog - it takes about 2 seconds on my PC and it's about 7 years old now so I can't imagine many/any people needing this but you never know.

Mozzers101 · December 3, 2020

Another request for the list please, I would love it if you could add Hover Bovver by Llamasoft. It's a great, quirky, Jeff Minter game.

As always, many thanks for your efforts.

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