# C64 Demo — Teletype Games slide show (Oscar64)

A Commodore 64 slide show written in C, built with the
[Oscar64](https://github.com/drmortalwombat/oscar64) compiler. A port of the
[c64-demo](../c64-demo) originally written in 6502 assembly (ACME): five slides
rotate automatically with per-slide transitions through black, and the show can
also be driven from the keyboard.

## The slides

1. **TTG logo + credits scroller** — giant TTG letters built from 8×8 bitmaps
   with a gold color wash running across them, a pulsing **TELETYPE GAMES**
   title, and a smooth pixel scroller with the crew credits.
2. **Our first game** — *DEFINITELY NOT AN IMPOSTOR* in big 3×5 block letters
   with the gold wash, "introduced on TIC-80".
3. **Our second game** — *IS COMING* in big letters with a drop shadow; raster
   bars run on the border only, so the text stays readable.
4. **Contact** — pulsing big *CONTACT* title, web / BBS / IRC lines, a 12-cell
   three-layer parallax starfield, and six hardware sprites (four-pointed
   stars) floating on sine-wave paths behind the text.
5. **The assembly confession** — a justified-text piece about how this slide
   show was written with a little help from an AI; the body types in live (one
   character per frame with a white block cursor), and a closing line appears
   and pulses when the typing is done.

Each slide is shown for 8 seconds (`SLIDE_TIME` in `src/defs.h`, PAL frames);
slide 5 gets 9 seconds (`S5_TIME`) to let the typewriter finish.

## Controls

| Key | Action |
|-----|--------|
| `SPACE` | next slide immediately |
| `INST/DEL` (backspace) | previous slide |
| `P` | pause toggle — the countdown freezes and a white `P` marker appears in the top-right corner; effects keep running, and SPACE/DEL still work while paused |
| `M` | mute/unmute — toggles the SID music on or off |

Keys are read directly from the CIA1 keyboard matrix (the KERNAL IRQ is
disabled).

## Build and run

```sh
make build       # compile -> build/demo.prg (builds the compiler too on first run)
make run         # build + launch in VICE (requires x64sc)
make rebuildrun  # clean rebuild + run
make clean       # remove the build directory
make deps        # on macOS: install VICE via Homebrew
```

The same targets are available as VS Code tasks from `.vscode/tasks.json`
(`build` is the default build task).

Loading the `.prg` on a real or emulated C64:

```
LOAD"*",8,1
RUN
```

## Source layout

| File | Contents |
|------|----------|
| `src/main.c` | main loop, slide sequencer, keyboard scanning (SPACE / DEL / P / M), slide tables |
| `src/defs.h` | hardware pointers, colors, layout/timing constants, the screen-code charmap |
| `src/transitions.c` | slide transition engine: show/hide, three transition types (fade, dissolve, wipe), `wait_frame` raster sync, color snapshot |
| `src/common.c` | shared routines (`clear_screen`, `print_text`, `draw_big`), shared tables (row×40 lookup, 3×5 block font, wash/pulse/fade color ramps) |
| `src/music.c` | SID music driver: three-voice pattern player (bass, drums, echo lead) with the note/pattern tables of the *Impostor* tune |
| `src/slide1.c` … `slide5.c` | one file per slide: `sN_init` (draws the screen), `sN_update` (runs once per frame), plus slide-local data |

The translation units are tied together by Oscar64's
`#pragma compile("file.c")` mechanism: every header pulls in its matching
`.c` file, so `make` only needs to pass `src/main.c` to the compiler.

## How it works

### Slide framework

Every slide consists of an **init** routine (draws the whole screen), an
**update** routine (called once per frame, runs exactly one frame) and a
duration in frames. The main loop in `main.c` calls the current update, counts
the frames down, and steps to the next slide when time runs out — or
immediately on SPACE/DEL.

### Timing

There are no interrupts: the code polls the raster register (`$D012`,
`vic.raster`) and does all screen updates while the beam is in the lower border
(`RAS_BOTTOM`). Slide 1 additionally splits the frame mid-screen to enable
horizontal fine scrolling (`vic.ctrl2`) for the scroller row only; slide 3
chases the beam down the frame, recoloring the border every 4 lines to draw
the raster bars.

### Transitions

Each slide has its own in-transition and out-transition, chosen from three
types via `tin_tbl` / `tout_tbl` in `main.c`:

- **Fade** — steps every color RAM cell through `fadetbl` (each color → one
  shade darker; every chain hits black within 4 steps). The new slide is drawn
  with the display off, its colors are snapshotted to the buffer at `$C000`
  and blanked, then the fade-in walks each cell back up to its snapshot color.
- **Dissolve** — a 10-bit Galois LFSR (period 1023) visits every screen cell
  exactly once in pseudo-random order. 25 cells per frame = 40-frame (~0.8 s)
  full reveal.
- **Wipe** — column-by-column sweep from left to right, one column per frame.

All transitions start with a short white-to-grey border flash.

### Music

`src/music.c` is a three-voice SID pattern player; the tune is track 0
("room work") of the *Impostor* TIC-80 cart, converted by hand into a 128-row
pattern grid (bass: 50% pulse, drums: noise, echo canon: decaying triangle
pluck 3 octaves up, delayed by 2 rows). Rows are one byte per voice:
`$00` = nothing, `$01` = key off, `$80|n` = play note *n*. `music_play` is
ticked once per frame: from the main loop and from `wait_frame`, so the music
keeps playing through transitions.

## Memory map

```
$0801 .. ...     BASIC stub + machine code (Oscar64 defaults)
$0340 .. $037E   sprite shape (cassette buffer, 64-aligned)
$0400 .. $07E7   screen RAM (written directly)
$C000 .. $C3E7   color RAM snapshot buffer for transitions
$D000 .. $D02E   VIC-II registers (display, sprites, raster)
$D400 .. $D418   SID registers (music)
$D800 ..         color RAM
$DC00 / $DC01    CIA1 keyboard matrix
```

## Differences from the original

- Texts are converted to screen codes at compile time via
  `#pragma charmap(97, 1, 26)`, so plain C string literals can be written
  straight to the screen.
- Self-modifying vectors and zero-page pointers are replaced by function
  pointers and ordinary C array indexing; the behavior (timing, effects,
  music) is unchanged.
- Compiled with `-n -O2` (fully native 6502 code) so the raster-polling parts
  are fast enough to fit in the frame.
