Re: QIX for ProDOS

[BLuRry <brendan.robert@gmail.com>]

On Tuesday, October 30, 2012 1:29:45 PM UTC-5, Steve Nickolas wrote:
> On Tue, 30 Oct 2012, BLuRry wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> > A monster crack would be to recompile PoP to run off of Prodos using the 
> 
> > filesystem instead of the 18-sector format.  It would probably be next 
> 
> > to impossible though, but man it would rock.  Extra points: Restore 
> 
> > Mechner's original editor.  The source is bundled (in fact, intertwined) 
> 
> > with PoP's source.
> 
> >
> 
> > The best part is that you don't have to reverse engineer anything, and 
> 
> > thanks to Jac's work on Wudsn, you could use an IDE to manage the code 
> 
> > and build everything.
> 
> 
> 
> I'm not sure there's enough RAM for that.  (I'd have to make sure there's 
> 
> at least no use of the C083 language card memory in MAIN RAM, nor the BF 
> 
> page in MAIN RAM.)
> 
> 
> 
> In addition, I think he used Merlin and all my work is in CA65. 
> 
> Converting the ASM syntax to something I can use would be holy hell.
> 
> 
> 
> (Still, if Mr. Sid could make a 64K version, it's prolly not totally 
> 
> impossible...)
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> 
> 
> Would be nice though...
> 
> 
> 
> -uso.

This is totally not in keeping with your original topic but I think it's possible.

The source is very nicely segmented and since all the original source is intact, segments can be moved around.  Additionally, it should be doable to load in animations and tile sets as needed.  I believe that the original loads a bunch of sets in memory that are used for each level -- but it is possible to load a smaller subset I think.

I am slightly more concerned about the use of the aux zeropage and stack -- aren't those off-limits for Prodos apps?

-B