iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 3h

A break away from everything, lots going on at the moment not all good so luckily we have a "long weekend" away to distract us. Down on the south coast for some nature time to recharge our batteries.

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

More experimenting with Claude, I got it to add an mcp server to the emulator then hooked it up to my "disassemble Guardian" project. It's done a great job of filling in some of the missing gaps 😄 Next step, I want to see if it can learn how to play Guardian...

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

More work with Claude eventually resulted in disc loading working, so I was finally able to see if Apache Canyon would run on it.... It looks much better in the browser, for some reason I can't get OBS to capture nicely from the browser

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

I have a running Electron emulator 😀 Claude eventually got there, after going off and looking at Stardot threads, Elkulator source code and the Electron FPGA project! @0xc0de.bsky.social, at one point it even mentioned Electroniq The CPU is also passing all of Thomas Harte's 6502 tests

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

Yet another retro project started (must try finishing 1 at some point!) While on holiday I didn't have my laptop so I thought I would test Claude via my phone browser. I've been working with it to try and create (yet another!) Electron emulator. Its an interesting exercise, I'm leaving it entirely..

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

It's a lovely sunny day, summer seems to have arrived at last so what better way to spend it than to start dipping my toes into the world of 8bit game disassembly 😅 Guardian on the Acorn Electron was one of my favourites back in the day, so I'm going to (hopefully!) find out how it works...

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

Ran "Apache Canyon Deluxe" on a real Elk tonight to confirm the SWRAM detection code was working and also to see how if I really had as much "spare" CPU time available as the emulators were indicating. It looks like I have 1/3 of a screen of CPU spare in the worst (most busy) case so plenty of....

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

"If I had a pound for every time I've messed up Electron SWRAM bank selection latching I'd be a very wealthy man" 😅 Memo to self, your vsync polling needs to be in main memory, not SWRAM....

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

When you're moving some "old" code to run from SWRAM and while testing it crashes, when you then check your code and find that it was writing to ROM to simplify the logic in some cases - that's the moment I've just experienced 🤦‍♂️

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

@wokingperegrines.bsky.social , I think at least one of the eggs has hatched. I've not seen anything yet but you can definitely hear small peregrine noises 😄

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

@wokingperegrines.bsky.social I really hope I'm wrong but something doesn't look right with the nest, it looks like the female is upside down?

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

New "toy" arriving tomorrow, it's distantly related to my Acorn Electron and I'm going to use it to revisit my late 80s early 90s computing experience. Can you guess what it is? Clue #1 it has a proper keyboard

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

I'm still not sure what magic @snuggsy187.bsky.social worked to get the Electron's 1MHz 6502 to do this much work every 50th of a second! An incredible achievement, super addictive and a showcase for what is possible in a resource restricted environment. 👍

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

Play tested the new version of Apache Canyon up to a score of +200k on the real Elk tonight with no issues. I've also let the new demo mode test it on some emulated hardware, also with no issues so I think its time to release it :) V1.5 available here: github.com/rasto68/apac...

github.com

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

Really enjoying reading this at the moment, some fascinating insights into such an important time and the amazing team whose work touches all our lives. It's also helped me regain some retro coding mojo :)

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

How about Apache Canyon running on 6 different emulated hardware configurations ?

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

Time for a little stress testing

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

I've just watched my Apache Canyon "AI" play through to level 7 and beat the boss alien! A hi-score of 28150 too. I've got 16 bytes free to try and make it even better...

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

Making no progress on Astoraid, so I went back to Apache Canyon and got it building with the @0xc0de.bsky.social toolchain. Max65 helped me find 110 free bytes so I've added an attract/demo mode. It's not quite finished, but a new version coming soon. Its interesting watching your game play itself 😁

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

@snuggsy187.bsky.social , Chuckulous is proving a hit at ABUG 😀

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

If any data engineers with Databricks experience and an interest in AI are following me, then the company I work for are looking for someone like you 😄 Please DM me if interested.

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 22/11/2025

Some beta testing on a new eagerly awaited Elk game this morning and this afternoon spending some time on Astoraid. Play area is 64 x 64 sectors containing 32 asteroids, but you don't know where they are to start with. The "scan" screen lets you find them :) Asteroids contain different things...

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

Some more "trying things out" 😀 The dev environment now has stars and the scan screen shows the locations of things. Plan is to get some of the gameplay elements tested out and then start porting the code over to 6502.

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 03/11/2025

A day off work, so a little "fun" work instead :) Getting various plotting routines working in the dev mode and decided to go for a retro TV look ;) I've also worked on some more gameplay stuff including a map/scanner screen mock up that might make it in next. Oh and say hello to one of the aliens.

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 01/11/2025

Another first for me - particle systems :) I wanted to see what the player jets would look like with particles instead of cycling sprites so used my dev system to try particles out. This is displaying a maximum of 16 particles at a time, I like the effect but wonder if it will be possible in 6502..

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 19/10/2025

"Astoraid" but not running on an emulator/real hardware. I've created a mini dev environment using JavaScript + an HTML Canvas that lets me try things out much more quickly than writing lots of 6502. I have a library of routines that mimic the real hardware so the code is close to what it will be...

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 19/10/2025

Great day at the ABUG south meet yesterday, nice to meet @colinhoad.com and to experience a game loading from a real tape! Lots of great chats and I even managed a bit of coding on Astoraid. Looking forward to the next one now.

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

Phew :) Algorithm for horizontal sprite clipping finally worked out in my JavaScript dev environment. Right side clipping was easy but for some reason my brain refused to co-operate for the left side clip and it took far too much head scratching. Next up vertical clipping which should be "easy"....

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 12/10/2025

An afternoon of retro coding using JavaScript... 🤔 Working out the clipped sprite plotting was putting me off making progress so I decided to poc it using JavaScript and a canvas element. Not finished yet but it's certainly easier than trying to work it out in 6502 😄

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

How many people remember BT Wireplay - Wikipedia share.google/k0nr9No1TSI9... I remember using this for some great link up sessions playing EF2000 on the PC using a 56k modem in the late 90s. The thrill of getting a stable connection and having fun dog fights.

share.google

Wireplay - Wikipedia

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

Culture and hobbies day at work, so the Elk came in to demonstrate what a 40 year old computer could do :) Highscore challenge running with Apache Canyon and Astoraid demo'ing the dev environment featuring Electroniq from @0xc0de.bsky.social

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 05/09/2025

Retro film time tonight - Jaws at the cinema with my youngest and her boyfriend. I saw Jaws 2 when it was first released, but was too young for Jaws so I'm looking forward to finally seeing it on the big screen 🦈

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

Guess who ran into the "joys of multiplexed interrupt clear & ROM selection" fun this afternoon whilst creating a version of Astoraid that would work on real hardware? My original code (running on Electroniq) always used bank 0. The moment I tried to use anything else *STUFF BROKE*

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 25/08/2025

We've got a "culture & hobbies" day coming up at work again, I took the Elk in last year and it was quite popular so it will be going in again this year but will be featuring Apache Canyon :)

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 25/08/2025

Experimenting with SWRAM use for "Astoraid". Video 1 shows normal mode, you can see I've almost run out of CPU for drawing anything more by the position of the "red" debug background colour.

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 23/08/2025

No retro for me today, a trip down to West Wittering to enjoy the sun and the sea.

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 17/08/2025

Some more "Astoraid" time this afternoon - the stars now move in the appropriate direction :) I'm not sure about the speed yet, it feels a little too fast at "maximum speed" but this can be tweaked later on. The code is *very* un-optimized at the moment so I might need to spend some time here soon.

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 12/08/2025

And starfield part 1 is working, a few "smoke & mirrors" here as it always moves at the moment, I wanted to test the effect though :) It might not move this fast eventually - it will depend on what it looks like when other things are also moving.

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

A busy coding day at work today, but I wanted to do some work on Astoraid this evening. Time for some more "concept art", I wanted to see if I could get a nice layout for the bits of status text that will be needed. Quite happy with this :) This also reveals the font I designed a few weeks ago.

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 03/08/2025

More progress on Astoraid (formerly known as "Game 2") I was meant to be working on a starfield and/or asteroid plotting so heres a video showing the game logo and playing area borders 😆 The playing area may end up shrinking depending on whether I can fit the various bits of status text it will need

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 19/07/2025

A little more progress on "Game 2". I have the drawing and animation of player "jet exhausts" and "scans" working and added the asteroid plotting routine today. Currently have 4 separate sprite routines, you can never have too many 😜

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

A tech free week for me as I will be enjoying this view instead. I have bought my notebook and pen with me so I might be jotting thoughts about "game 2" down. I've been coming here since I was 14 and used to use pen and paper back then to think about programs I wanted to write :)

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 09/06/2025

Finally some progress with "game #2". I've spent a lot of time (2 months!) drawing/re-drawing the player sprite and just not getting anything that I was happy with so I went back to my original (from April) and am going with that for now. Testing keyboard rotation of the player ship.

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

The amazing Electroniq from @0xc0de.bsky.social just keeps getting better and better. Here you can see the secrets of Apache Canyons 50fps gameplay (double buffering) via Electroniq's new "view RAM as pixels feature"

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 24/05/2025

1. Power on laptop 2. Start VSCode 3. Types ".draw_player_sprite" To be continued 😉 Small steps, but I'm hoping to build some momentum and get some work done on "game 2" after some time away due to work based coding fatigue.

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

Really pleased at work today to see a web app created by one of our other teams.At first I thought it was created using our old React component library but when I looked at the code it was a React 19 app using the shiny "new" Lit based components I've been putting together over the last 2 years 😀

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 21/04/2025

Small steps 🙂 Setting up the dev environment for "game 2" and getting some initial code running. I'm switching to @0xc0de.bsky.social 's Max65 assembler to allow me to use the debug mode of Electroniq. TIL all about how the "export" directive can help my workflow. No videos yet, maybe soon.

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

Thanks to @merman1974.bsky.social for a great review of Apache Canyon in this month's issue (#171) of Retro Gamer magazine 😀 Having a print review of my own game feels amazing.

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Rob Stone @rasto1968.bsky.social · 31/03/2025

Checking the Electron works before the ABUG south meet this weekend - gave Apache Canyon a go (I haven't played it for a while) and got my best score and level reached ever :)

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