iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Just got to the airport heading to GCAP. I think I have finally got all the content and slides sorted for my talk on Tuesday. All I need to do now is read it a few times.

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

GCAP people! I'm heading to Boatbuilders for pre-GCAP drinks if anyone wants to meet up there. I should be there from 6 on Sunday evening. It closes at 9, but if there's interest we can kick on somewhere else after that. Everyone is welcome, of course. Don't make me cure my jetlag alone.

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

GCAP next week. I'm presenting a talk on Tuesday. I've still not finished my rough draft. Why am I like this?

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I just picked up my first smart telescope (well, first real telescope of any form) and snapped a shot of the only star I could see at that moment, wistfully thinking about tonight. Now the clouds have rolled out and are likely to stay for the next few days. Typical.

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Hey people heading to GCAP/MIGW! What's happening on the Sunday night? There used to be a Fortress party - is that still on? If not, is anything happening that first Sunday?

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I am looking forward to GCAP (again) this year. It's my favourite conference.

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

The Wife and I went to see Skindred last night. Such a great show - awesome old school entertainment. The lead singer really knows how to work a crowd - and he came out to meet us afterwards too. I'll definitely be seeing them again in the future.

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Stupid Youtube algorithm made me order a smart telescope. I'd better use it a lot, otherwise I'm going to complain. I don't know who to, but someone other than me has to be to blame.

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

I've been busily (and happily) working on my #C64 Ultimate Debugging tool, implementing a full 6510 emulator, one instruction at a time. This is not just "do the instruction" but "do the instruction, cycle by cycle and compare it against the debug stream".

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Just grabbed tickets for Good Times in Sydney! Limp Bizkit, Ministry (final tour?), P.O.D. (still reminds me of Amplitude), House of Protection, Mudvayne plus a few Aussie bands. I do love a good Metal Festival! After last weeks horrendous Melbourne trip the Wife and I deserve this.

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Guess who's just ordered a totally unnecessarily gaudy joystick?

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

It's almost GCAP time again! The talks are up (registration.crowdcomms.com/gcap2026/sch...) and I'll be speaking again this year, following up on last year's talk on refactoring League's Particle System. I suspect this might be part 2 of 3 as we're still not finished yet!

Title: Refactoring League's Particle System, Part 2

Twelve months ago I presented a talk on Refactoring League's Particle System at GCAP 2025. I looked at the design stage and how we wanted to rebuild this complex, evolving, highly functional Particle System in our custom League Engine. I shared our hopes and dreams for this new particle system that would do more, run faster and with less memory. This year I'll be following up on our progress - where are we now? How far do we have left to go? What worked? What failed? Which choices were horrible, horrible mistakes? Who thought this would ever be a good idea?

So join me for a dive into what it is like to refactor a complex critical system for a live service game with millions of players that ships every 2 weeks. You'll leave with a better understanding of what is important in system design with respect to refactoring live code. We'll look at what is really important, what's not and how to tell the difference. This is real, in the trenches experience, not theory. There will be blood and gore.

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

I was inspired by that explainer video for the Ghost bytes demo so I just had to get ghost bytes working in my #C64 Debug Tool. Turned out to be much easier that I thought it would be! I've also been working on getting it user friendly so I can do a restricted release to any keen C64 coders.

youtu.be

Ghost bytes in the Ultimate Debug Tool!

YouTube video by Tony Albrecht

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

For my international friends, this is a very accurate simulation of what it feels like to play Aussie Rules Football.

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

I finally got my cable so I can experience C64 graphics the way they were designed to be seen.

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

I have a first pass of my SID visualiser working on my C64U debug tool! It's constructing the frequency graph by reading the CPU write events in the Debug Stream to the appropriate SID registers. It's cycle correct and handles multiple changes to a given register per frame. Turn your audio on!

youtu.be

SID visualiser working on C64U Debug Tool (turn audio on!)

YouTube video by Tony Albrecht

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

C64U Debug Tool update: Added zooming in the screen view as well as an overlay for VIC behaviour (like sprite data and ptr fetches, bad lines etc) Also made it easier to find the instructions that perform the writes to registers. The Stream view now colours cycles- Red for bad lines, Grn for stack

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

I've rewritten the sprite emulation for my C64U debug tool. I'm now (more) correctly processing sprites like the VICII does - reading the data at the correct cycles, handling when they are dawn more accurately. I've been stress testing it with some of the latest demos:

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

More work on my #c64 Tool. This video is of data captured live from the C64U. Sprite info moved to above the screen view. I've now got better visualisation of VIC and SID changes in the activity view to the right of the screen view - hover to show the raster line and even cycle of the change.

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

Last weekend I saw a guy in a wheelchair leading a circle mosh at the Fear Factory concert. It was one of the most Metal things I've ever seen.

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

I'm still working on my C64 too. I've been getting per cycle processing of video and memory so I can handle sprites in the border etc. I've got the basics working now, but I've also improved the VIC view (green and purple view). I'm also showing the entire processing space including overscan

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

Now I’m all set up for proper programming.

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

So, Google's AI Search thing. Why would you use a search engine that might be lying to you? I was using Gemini last night to ask it questions about a 60 page ASCII document on the VICII chip. It seemed pretty useful. At least until I asked it to diagram the screen layout.

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

My precious code for my C64 tool was a little naive, so I’m rewriting it to be cycle accurate. The intent is to get the cool VICII demo abuses like open borders and FLI and DMA delay working. This is where I am now, counting pixels between my old and new code and C64 and Vice.

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

I've just spent a couple weeks refactoring my #C64U Tool code. Save files are now 35% of the previous size and code is much nicer. Added register view to the activity, showing which VIC (green) and SID (blue) registers have been written to on which scan line. And, even better....

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Holy shit! This wasn't on my expected releases list.

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

I think I just hit my Ballmer Peak.

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

I used AI this morning to debug why my Spa temperature settings weren't doing what I thought they should. AI's answer was exactly, confidently, 100% wrong. It did give me the correct link to documentation which is subsequently read and figured it out for myself.

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

One of the things that really struck me when visiting Berlin and Belfast earlier this year was how important art is as a form of resistance.

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

I’m almost home from the US. While I was trying to sleep on the plane last night, I had an idea about my #C64 tool. What if I could construct a flow chart of the assembly being run? That would be great for understanding what code is run when and for what. Anyone have any good examples of this?

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

#C64 Tool - I've managed to get some Hotel programming time in. Added sprite details including a sprite view of the memory. Next thing I want to do is add the ability to step through the code, instruction at a time and to set breakpoints in code and on memory read/writes.

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

This is the best thing about America.

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

I made it to the US. But for the second time in a row CBP took me aside and questioned me. I asked about it and it’s because I had a visa refused once so that brings up a red flag. However, I’m definitely getting more questions and having to provide more proof of reason for travel.

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

I'm heading to the States next week, and I wanted to be able to keep working on this while I'm there. So I made a way to save and load a couple minutes of gameplay. As I side effect, I can now scrub backwards and forwards! Great for hunting down those one frame glitches!

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 05/04/2026

To be clear, I have spent WAY too much time programming this Easter weekend. My #C64 Ultimate tool now does a lot more - it shows sprites, toggles the different view modes, shows interrupts, reads(green)/writes(red) and VIC 2(blue) access in the memory view. Testing it on Demos now...

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

Good Friday is a Good Day for C64 programming! Added raster interrupts and sprites to my #C64 Ultimate Tool! I can connect to the C64U with this from my PC and inspect games and demos in realtime. It's still a little flakey but it works!

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

I am having way too much fun. Screen view in text and bitmap modes is working. Added a disassembly mode which syncs with all the views. So, you can click on the memory map and see the hex and disasm, or click on the screen view and see the memory in the hex and disasm views.

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

My C64 Ultimate tool now has a screen view mode. It shows whatever is on the C64's screen (well, almost). Colour is wrong but its definitely close. Runs in realtime (Karateka is crazy slow).

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

I went and saw The Pogues last night. I didn't expect much from them, but bloody hell they were good! I can only describe the show as joyous. There was even a little mosh for us youngsters.

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

I keep trying to use AI as a programmer because all the hype can't be wrong, right? Wrong. 9 times out of 10, AI gives me the worst possible solution to a problem. It will probably work, but its not extensible, ignores all context and is overly verbose. It makes my Coder's soul hurt.

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

I now have realtime views of the full memory map of my C64U! In this video you can see the memory map (mono hires), VICII view and Hex View memory, all running async. I'm using the Debug stream functionality - consuming UDP output of every instruction on the C64 and decoding it in realtime.

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

On the weekend I saw Bloodywood supporting BABYMETAL. So much fun. Good to see a younger, more diverse crowd too.

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

I miss content like this - I still have my Zzap64! magazines from the late 80s, and they are a pleasure to browse through. A snapshot in time. But this... this sounds like a snapshot of current videogame culture. And I'm here for it.

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Reposted by Tony Albrecht

Jake Simpson @justjakesimpson.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

I'd like to announce I have a new(ish) Podcast! It's called GameDev Unsung Heroes, and it's basically interviewing all the names in games you don't know about what they do, their career path, a few stories along the way. All free. Here's the link gamedevunsungheroes.com I could use re-posting :)

gamedevunsungheroes.com

Gamedev Unsung Heroes

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Tony Albrecht @tonyalbrecht.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

Friday night. Beer and C64 coding.

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