· Commodore 64A C64 game, written on a Mac
A question that comes up often when talking about Ruote Fumanti: do you write it on a Commodore 64? No. Today a C64 game is written on the Mac, tested in an emulator, and the real C64, if there is one, is the final check. The tools needed are few, free, and nearly all install with a single command. I've lined them up in a new tutorial: how to make a Commodore 64 game on a Mac.
It's split into three levels. To start, four things are enough: VS Code to write, ACME to assemble, Exomizer to crunch and VICE to test. For a real game you add Python to generate data, make and Git, and editors for sprites, characters and music. To know it works, and not just that it seems to, you need a 6502 CPU running inside Python, a script-driven emulator that plays the game and counts dropped frames, and finally a second emulator and a real C64.
The screenshots are the real ones from working on Ruote Fumanti: the source open at the routine that scrolls the road, the build where 61 KB of game become a 24 KB file, the jump sprites in Spritemate, the automated tests of the keys and engines, and VICE's monitor halting the game mid-race.