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Some weeks ago, a friend of mine mentioned that he’d gotten hooked on the classic Minesweeper game. That reminded me that I wrote a clone of that game for the Commodore-64/128 home computer. My version ran under the GEOS operating system and was called GeoMines. I fired up my C-128 and shot a couple photos of the screens to share.
Here’s a photo of the GeoMines game screen after a quick loss. The game was compatible with the C-128 version of the GEOS operating system, which had a higher screen resolution. But you sacrificed color for that, so I preferred playing in C-64 mode. The number and the color of the squares gave clues to the number of adjacent mines. My version of the game let you customize the dimensions of the board, the mine density, and would open up a starting “hole” if you wanted one.
It may not look like much, but remember, the Commodore-64 only had 64K of memory and a bunch of that was taken up by the operating system. And if the graphics appear more than a little blocky, the resolution of the VIC II graphic chip is only 320 x 200 pixels and 16 colors.
Here’s a photo of the GeoMines game screen after a quick loss. The game was compatible with the C-128 version of the GEOS operating system, which had a higher screen resolution. But you sacrificed color for that, so I preferred playing in C-64 mode. The number and the color of the squares gave clues to the number of adjacent mines. My version of the game let you customize the dimensions of the board, the mine density, and would open up a starting “hole” if you wanted one.
It may not look like much, but remember, the Commodore-64 only had 64K of memory and a bunch of that was taken up by the operating system. And if the graphics appear more than a little blocky, the resolution of the VIC II graphic chip is only 320 x 200 pixels and 16 colors.
Category Photography / Miscellaneous
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 1280 x 853px
File Size 401.5 kB
Listed in Folders
It is my third game for GEOS and fourth GEOS program overall.
It probably wouldn't take much to port it to Apple II GEOS. But the disk format is an issue, as you mentioned. Also, this version does some direct VIC chip addressing to make the colors work. That code would have to be commented out. The good news is I own the source.
It probably wouldn't take much to port it to Apple II GEOS. But the disk format is an issue, as you mentioned. Also, this version does some direct VIC chip addressing to make the colors work. That code would have to be commented out. The good news is I own the source.
They are written in 6502 assembly language. Theoretically, any assembler can do the trick. But in this case, there is icon data embedded in the code.
If I remember correctly, I used GeoWrite to create the source files with the embedded icon images. It was assembled and linked using the geoProgrammer application. It has been a long time, so my memory is fuzzy on the details of the process. I assume geoProgrammer must have been available for the Apple II. You'd need a copy of that.
https://www.lyonlabs.org/commodore/.....rogrammer.html
If I remember correctly, I used GeoWrite to create the source files with the embedded icon images. It was assembled and linked using the geoProgrammer application. It has been a long time, so my memory is fuzzy on the details of the process. I assume geoProgrammer must have been available for the Apple II. You'd need a copy of that.
https://www.lyonlabs.org/commodore/.....rogrammer.html
I think there's actually something rather charming about the low resolution. Recently, I've been a little hooked on the song "SPACE MAN" by Sam Ryder, and the lyric video is animated as if it was done with Ceefax https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H5386XBr80
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