RetroChallenge Winter 2010 Entry
News
-January 31th, 2010: After finetuning and fixing few problems the project was successfully completed. The final game takes 866 bytes. It has been good learning experience about writing desk accessories and 68k assembly code on Macintosh. Get the game and project files (sit or hqx) or read the code (text) and then go and write better and smaller desk accessories yourself.
That is all for now.
-January 29th, 2010: Some of the free bytes were spent on symbol character ascii table and related instructions. Earlier each symbol character was picked by '!' + n * 2 logic (if that makes any sense). The symbols are now more distinct and prettier (Image).
-January 27th, 2010: The redraw bug was fixed. Think C's unused extra code was manually removed from the code resource. After that the desk accessory code took 782 bytes. Time to invent something additional or the game will be 150 bytes too small :(
-January 26th, 2010: Desk accessory entry point offsets in desk accessory header were setted point to the game's own open, control and close functions. It is bypassing all Think C overhead code which can be removed then. It almost works but there is something with window redraw (Image).
The only decrement today was outside temperature which dropped to -22 C.
-January 25th, 2010: More assembly programming. Open and Control functions are now also working with register a0 and a1 parameters. The daily decrement was 44 bytes.
-January 24th, 2010: Remaining assembly functions were fixed. Open and Control (desk accessory entry points) functions should be modified for use a0 and a1 register parameters instead of stack parameters. Close function was already successfully modified. 22 bytes decrement in size today.
-January 23th, 2010: All functions were written in 68k assembly. Two of them are crashing the game for some unknown reason and have to be inspected. The game takes 896 bytes and with Think C overhead included 1704 bytes.
-January 21th, 2010: More optimization and few fixes and improvements. There is no longer global or static data. Window type was changed to the traditional round edged desk accessory window (Image).
-January 19th, 2010: There was battle over dCtlStorage field ownership with Think C. Eventually we managed to share the field until Think C and its belongings are hopefully dropped from the game. The game code takes 924 bytes and total size with overhead is 1742 bytes.
-January 18th, 2010: After few troubles the game was successfully converted to desk accessory form. Game logic takes now 972 bytes and with Think C overhead the final size is 1810 bytes. Still lot of work to do. We can use existing screenshot again because nothing has changed visually (Image).
-January 17th, 2010: The game logic code was optimized and cleaned to 916 bytes. Next all program code should be written and optimized using 68k assembly instead of C. No images today :(
-January 16th, 2010: First playable version. The game related machine code takes 1056 bytes at this point. Current version was compiled as a normal application (Image).
-January 14th, 2010: More game logic was written. The game creates and draws the board properly. One has to imagine what the game looks because the PowerBook is not yet connected to any network for file (screenshot) sharing (Imagination image).
-January 12th, 2010: HTML title tag was updated to year 2010. IGDA evening and the programmer is X-P
-January 10th, 2010: Some of the program was written. The game is going to be a traditional memory game where one tries to find pairs of symbols because I failed to invent something more unique for now. There is probably already enough adventure in trying to make it in 932 bytes and work as a desk accessory.
-January 8th, 2010: I found treasures. PowerBook 540 and its power supply were located and are going to be used for the challenge. Think C built dummy desk accessory in 886 bytes. There are generous 46 bytes remaining for the logic. Time to start looking for some other programming tools.
-January 4th, 2010: Nothing has been achieved yet. Almost everything is still in the red boxes. There is even no light for reading some related manual because the lights are in the boxes. If nothing else it was pretty day for a walk (Image).
-January 2nd, 2010: All this text was written. The project start is delayed for couple days because all my items are packed in big red boxes and waiting for move to my new apartament.
System Info
Macintosh PowerBook 540 with System 7.6 and enough memory and hard drive
The Project
Write a desk accessory game for Macintosh system in 932 bytes or less.
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