Best Emmulator for C64 version?

[owenblade]

What's the best emmulator and M.U.L.E file combo for Win32 system - using CCS64 v3.6 and the game time in development is too short and land grant is a bit quick too!

Any advice much appreciated

[piete]

It's not about the emulator, it is the actual game speed of the original game. Try out http://www.atarimule.com/downloads.htm, although my history is only with C64, I find the Atari version better with the exception of a few details that according to Intergalactic Mole are "bugs" in the C64 version

Actually, one detail I wonder if we could get a response from the original developers, why planetquake doesn't move mountains on C64? Was it too difficult to implement in the short time C64 version had to be published or was it taken away in purpose...?

[owenblade]

Thanks - played as the Flapper and development time just right - though now the AI has no chance against me, I always go for crystite and win - even with 2 visits from the pirates I'm always streets ahead , wish you could tweak the code so crystite price went down from $56-$144 to $12 to $122? Also perhaps 4 smithore per MULE?

Like the basic graphics on the C64 - think this is MULE at its best

[Chuckie Chuck]

CCS is in my top 2 emulators list for C64.  The other is Vice64.  Things to remember when setting up the emulator.  Which country is the software you are running written for?  The emulators will run both "PAL" and "NTSC" format.  I live in the U.S. my original floppies that I've pulled in are all in "NTSC" some stuff I download is "PAL"

I have noticed Vice64 defaults to PAL mode.  The NTSC runs at the wrong speed, but it runs, can't remember if it runs to fast or to slow, I think it runs to fast.  There is an option in one of the menus to switch to NTSC and you can save settings so it will default every time you run it so you don't have to switch it every time you boot up Vice.  I have saved mine to default to NTSC cause that is what I need most the time.

I haven't run CCS in quite a while, it actually has truer emulation than Vice in some areas, but Vice has better interfacing to genuine hardware, I can connect a real commodore floppy drive to a parallel port and load software in vice straight from the drive.  I keep thinking about actually porting a real joystick, but I haven't got around to that yet.  I've also played with printers a bit.  So far the best thing for printing has been to print to a graphic file, and then use an image editor to send it out to my ink jet, just like printing a photo.  Get the highest quality prints that way, but some programs take a little fiddling.  With newsroom, I wanted to print an old grade school newspaper archive, and I had to print a frame at a time, I couldn't successfully print a full layout, but then I just pasted the frames all together in an image program and got my full page layout that way.

Another cool thing about Vice, is it will emulator other 8 bit commodores too.  I have a collection of Vic20 software and I can run Vice in Vic20 mode and use it.  A favorite on vic20 of mine was Slither, I never found another version of the snake game that really felt the same.  I still enjoy it sometimes.  Dad wrote a lot of funny little quiz games too, they do run on the 64, but they were set for 22 column screen of the Vic 20, and color pokes had to be changed in some places too.  Just text games, but I had fun with them.  It really doesn't take that much to change over to the 64, but it's just fun to remember the Vic20.

[Chuckie Chuck]

The short of it, check to see if your emulator is running PAL or NTSC, and switch to the opposite of whatever it is and see if that fixes anything.  PAL runs 25 FPS and NTSC runs 29.97 FPS.  Running the wrong mode for a game will result in either slower or faster than desired performance.  When downloading stuff that is online on a site like c64.com or gb64.com, you may end up downloading something that is written for the other standard.  (PAL is used widely throughout Europe and Austrailia I believe, NTSC is used in the Western Hemisphere and parts of Asia, in particular, Japan.)

[mikman]

Chuckie Chuck, I'm curious how did you manage to get stuff off your old 5 1/4 floppies and onto a PC?  I'd liek to transfer some of my stuff over that I programmed back in high school :-)

[Chuckie Chuck]

There is a special cable called the x1541 cable that hooks a commodore floppy to a parallel printer port (I have such a cable, cost about $30, from some places online, or you can make your own, there are a few different versions, the most basic works mainly on older legacy machines (286, 386, 486, basic printer ports, DOS os)  The more sophisticated ones work on ports that support EPP and ECP bi-directional transfers and newer OS's.  I have one that is multi mode, not the best version, but not the basic either.

There is software that you can download free that will talk to the cable.  CBM2DOS, I think is what it's called, I have it.  It will run under Dos, Windows, WinXP, I haven't tried it in anything newer.  Vice64 will interface with CBM2DOS, and be able to use the real drive just like you used it with the real C64.

There are other apps you can get that will allow you to image your floppies into D64 image files without even running the emulator.

I have archived my favorite floppies this way, I still have to use the cable to run my newsroom software, I haven't successfully gotten past the timing issues inherent to some copy protection algorithms that emulated disk images tend to have.  (The copy protection on my original newsroom floppies are very timing dependent, literally looking for physical track position and tends to get scrambled in the emulated image, so the software won't load off the image, there are ways around it, I just haven't taken the time to crack it yet.  I can successfully nibble the disk to another real floppy, just not to an image.)

Most my software is already cracked so it doesn't matter.  That's the only program I haven't been able to image or find online.  Games are easy to find and download, other apps for the 64 are a little harder to locate.

Anyways, yeah, just google commodore 64 x1541 cable.  There is a wealth of info about it out there.

This is really the best source for info about it...

http://sta.c64.org/x1541.html

[C64 nostalgia]

For the Mac, Power64 is pretty good albeit it hasn't been updated in awhile.

[Chuckie Chuck]

Another extremely useful link for C64 Emulation and Disk Tools

http://www.fairlight.to/tools/pc.html

P.S.  The disk drive tool is called OpenCBM - There is a GUI interface version, called CBMXFER.  I've not used the latter yet, when I started playing with the x1541 cable, CBMXFER had not been released, I haven't had a computer set up with the drive in over two years because of my current living situation, my toys are in storage, and my laptop has no parallel port.