PDXCUG Meeting Highlights
Vol. 2, No. 1 - January 13, 2011 - Meeting Highlights
Turbo Master Demo
Member Goog showed off the Turbo Master 4.09 MHz Accelerator, on loan to us by Robert Bernardo of the Fresno Commodore Users Group. Thanks, Robert, for allowing us to use this and share it with everyone.
We loaded up some games and BASIC programs to try out with the Turbo Master and it worked nicely, greatly accelerating the programs to super-duper speeds!
Buddy Assembler Demo
Member Earl brought his Commodore 128D, and demoed Buddy Assembler. He showed a simple program that displays a message. This program is a sort of hybrid between BASIC and assembly language, making it super easy to write ML-based programs. An excellent presentation! Earl showed us how to output a message on the screen - there is great potential with this assembler package. Highly recommended to give it a try.
Guest Speaker Sandy Raddue from Atari
We were thrilled to have yet another guest speaker who worked in early video game development - this time, from Atari. Sandy Raddue shares her background from her software quality start at Tektronix to her management days at Atari. Some of the popular Atari titles she worked on were Ms. Pac-Man, Dig Dug, Robotron, Donkey Kong, Pole Position, and Centipede with much of her emphasis on testing ports for the Commodore 64 from the original stand-up arcades. She also worked on and led the testing & quality control for the Koala Pad.
Group Zork Preview
Agent Friday showed his pre-release of Group Zork. Group Zork is an online, multi-player game which uses CommodoreServer's new gaming service. Players can play their own game of Zork while others can watch and make suggestions along the way, just like in the old days when you played and had your friends in the same room looking over your shoulder. Players can chat with each other in the game at the same time the game is being played. This game was originally conceived at our May 2010 Meeting and is nearly a reality - Agent Friday will be releasing it into BETA in the next few days.
Agent Friday During Group Zork Demo
Megawinner in the background playing Group Zork equipped with a Comet64 (on the blue C64). His gameplay on that computer is shown on the other networked Commodore computer, also connected with a Comet64.
Comet64 in a Commodore 64
This is a close-up of the Comet64 on the second networked computer.
Group Zork Game Starting
This shot shows a game that was created in the game room called "Turbomaster". We called it that because we were seeing how it performed using Turbo Master. Since Group Zork is written in BASIC, you can imagine how fast it ran with Turbo Master (yeah - super fast).
Read Leaflet
After you open the mailbox and read the leaflet...
Games, Games, Games
Tron Maze-a-Tron on Intellivision
Amiga A600
We were pleased to have gencom and his wife come all the way from Seattle. They brought their Amiga 600 computer and we got to see and play some games (such as Budokan The Martial Spirit and Toobin') and see his cool setup - complete with a hard drive inside.
NFL Football on Intellivision
Got to play a little bit of NFL Football on the Intellivision, in preparation for the divisional playoffs coming up on the weekend. Go Steelers!!!
Other Games
A few other games that we played: Fort Apocalypse, Masters of the Lamp, and Pitfall
