Problem with A-Machine C64 Interpreter

Authoring Dialog
1

this is an obscure issue (i’m may the only one on the planet right now compiling dialog games to C64 disk images) and probably only an issue Linus himself could address. but i’ll throw it out there.

games run great on the C64 A-machine interpreter except for this annoying brief artifactual square flash when the text scrolls a certain amount. it won’t do it for a simple ‘take…’ or ‘drop..’ but will do it reliably with a look (or with a room description).

i’ve attached a 10-second clip of this in action (change the .txt back to .mov) it’s not a huge deal but annoying since once you’ve seen it you can’t stop seeing it.

a_machine.txt (2.7 MB)

2

Yeah, unfortunately nobody currently working on the Dialog project is good with 6502 assembly, which is what the C64 interpreter is written in. So that part has to be considered unmaintained for the moment.

If a 6502 aficionado wants to join, though, we’d love to keep the C64 terp up to date with new developments and bugfixes!

3

Does this happen under emulation or only on real hardware?

4

emulation. same result using VICE on macos and windows. i don’t have access to actual hardware (have been debating splurging and buying one of the “new” C64s).