{"id":828,"date":"2013-12-20T10:59:28","date_gmt":"2013-12-20T15:59:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.legeekretrogaming.com\/geekblog\/?p=828"},"modified":"2019-06-27T10:42:50","modified_gmt":"2019-06-27T14:42:50","slug":"my-childhood-commodore-64-tinkerings-on-youtube-and-how-they-got-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.legeekretrogaming.com\/geekblog\/?p=828","title":{"rendered":"My childhood Commodore 64 tinkerings on YouTube (and how they got there)."},"content":{"rendered":"

My PETSCII and Basic Programming projects that I made as a kid on a Commodore 64\u00a0<\/a> have been available on my site for awhile now, as \u2018disk images\u2019 for use in emulators, but outside of fellow Commodore fans, I doubt many folks found them or even knew what to do with them.<\/p>\n

I’ve now,\u00a0finally gotten around to setting up a YouTube channel<\/a>, and my animations from my BBS days in 1989 are available for viewing.\u00a0 The animations themselves were video captured in the VICE emulator, but I used more contemporary software to make the videos a little more polished.<\/p>\n

\"logo_c64version\"<\/a>First up, I de-made my Le Geek logo, first as something that could be displayed in bitmap mode on an actual C64, then as a version that could be potentially \u2018typed in\u2019 using the PETSCII character set. Both were laid out in Photoshop.\u00a0 For each one, I shrank the logo down and reduced the colors to the C64 16-color palette, and then cleaned them both up, pixel by pixel.\u00a0 Once the bitmap logo was ready, I imported it into After Effects and broke it down into individual scan lines using masks, and then animated each line with staggered delays to mimic the wavy effect of so many C64 demos and cracked intros.\u00a0 I adjusted the effect to the point that it could have been displayed on real hardware, but it was a little too jarring to watch, so I dialed it back to be smoother.<\/p>\n

\"keyboard-logo\"<\/a>I had two options with the character set version of the logo.\u00a0 I could either design a wipe in After Effects to replicate the look of characters being displayed one at a time, or I could actually type it in using VICE.\u00a0 Both would be time consuming, so I went the VICE route…I figured it would be more fun.\u00a0 With a real C64 on my desk (so I could reference the PETSCII keys), I tried using CG Animator first. It seemed the better choice with its handy \u2018undo\u2019 feature, but the disk image wasn\u2019t 100%. I kept getting junk characters when I replayed my work.\u00a0 So I went with Scroll Writer instead, but used save states to minimize my mistakes and typos.<\/p>\n

With the tricky logo work out of the way, the rest came together pretty quickly.\u00a0 I found SID music to add to the intros\u2014or to the whole thing in the case of animations not originally\u00a0created in Scroll Writer.\u00a0 Using the readily available Commodore True Type font, I laid out some text credits, making sure to create staccato fades using the few grays available on the Commodore.\u00a0\u00a0The last step was stitching it all together.<\/p>\n

I had a lot of fun editing these and I have some ideas for creating a new Scroll Writer \u2018ad\u2019 for my site.\u00a0 I hope to complete it early next year.<\/p>\n

Cheers,
\nBen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My PETSCII and Basic Programming projects that I made as a kid on a Commodore 64\u00a0 have been available on my site for awhile now, as \u2018disk images\u2019 for use in emulators, but outside of fellow Commodore fans, I doubt many folks found them or even knew what to do with them. I’ve now,\u00a0finally gotten …<\/p>\n

My childhood Commodore 64 tinkerings on YouTube (and how they got there).<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":829,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commodore"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.legeekretrogaming.com\/geekblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/petsciibanner.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2Gkjg-dm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.legeekretrogaming.com\/geekblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.legeekretrogaming.com\/geekblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.legeekretrogaming.com\/geekblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.legeekretrogaming.com\/geekblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.legeekretrogaming.com\/geekblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=828"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"http:\/\/www.legeekretrogaming.com\/geekblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1553,"href":"http:\/\/www.legeekretrogaming.com\/geekblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828\/revisions\/1553"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.legeekretrogaming.com\/geekblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.legeekretrogaming.com\/geekblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.legeekretrogaming.com\/geekblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.legeekretrogaming.com\/geekblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}