iPad / iPhone C64 emulator and adding custom games.

Having so much fun with the ZX Spectrum emulator ‘ZX Spectaculator’ for my ios devices I thought i’d give the Commodore 64 emulator a try and see if I could import a few additional games.

The principle of importing your own games into the emulator is the same as in ZX Spectaculator (see previous post https://stiggyblog.wordpress.com/2011/09/05/importing-zx-spectrum-games-onto-ipadiphone/ ) and isn’t too difficult once you get the hang of it. As with ZX Spectaculator, you do NOT require a jailbroken iPhone/Ipad 🙂 Bonus!

Go to the Apple App store and purchase the Commodore 64 iPhone app by Manomio. At present, it’s £1 more than ZX Spectaculator but still a bargain at £2.99 allowing to play all of your favorite c64 classic.

You will also need to download/install a copy of iExplorer onto your PC/Laptop. You can get this from here –

http://www.macroplant.com/iexplorer/

iExplorer is a program that allows you to access your ios device’s file directory for adding, amending and remove files. Probably best if you did an iTunes back up first in the event you delete a critical file.

Connect your ios device to your PC/laptop and launch iExplorer. You will be presented with a file directory similar to Windows Explorer with directories listed on the left and directory contents displayed on the right.

Browse to the following location – /Apps/com.manomio.C64/C64.app/games

Note that a few games are already listed as these are the ones that are preinstalled with the C64 app.

Highlight one of the folder names and drag/copy it to your PC desktop. In this example i’ll use the folder/game called LeMans.

Open the Lemans folder on your desktop and note the following files.

Lemans Cover.png – this is the cover artwork that will be displayed in the games list. The pictures have to be in .png format.

Gameinfo.plist – this is game configuration file

lemans.t64 – this is the game file.

All other files are unnessary unless you really want to customuise your game/specific keys etc. For now, you can delete these from the folder on your desktop.

I’ve renamed the folder Berzerk Redux

Delete the lemans.t64 game file and replace with your game file. Supported file types are .d64, .prg and .T64 and for the purpose of this post, i’m going to use Berzerk Redux because a) it’s Berzerk, b) it’s the best version of Berzerk for the C64 and c) I happen to like Berzerk 🙂

If you haven’t already played it, you can get this great Homebrew game from here –

http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?id=92977

You can leave the game with the Lemans artwork if you wish but as you can imagine, as your game collection begins to grow, you won’t know which games are which based on the artwork and it’ll get very confusing. As Berzerk Redux is a homebrew game there isn’t any cover art as such so i’ve created my own using MSpaint. I’ve used the Leman artwork as a guide.

I’ve also retained the 113×140 pixel size of the image but as this is quite small/low res, i’ll be experimenting with different sizes later on. I’ve named the file berzerk cover.png (you will need this name later on).

Next, open the file Gameinfo.plist with your favorite text editor. I’ve used MS Notepad.

Edit the following information

Game Title – enter the game folder name i.e Berzerk Redux

Game-Images – enter the name of your game i.e BerzerkRedux.d64

Cover Art Path – enter the name of the cover art picture i.e Berzerk Cover.png

It’s important to get the file names entered correctly into the plist configuration file.

If you wish, you can enter further game information like the game publither, game author and year etc.

Here’s a sample of my Gameinfo.plist for Berzerk Redux

Copy/Drag the Berzerk Redux folder over to your IOS device and you’re ready to play.

If your game doesn’t appear in the games list you will need to restart the C64 app (if the app was running in the background on your ios device).

Here’s the app running on my iPad and Berzerk is now listed.

Yay, it works and with the inclusion of the ‘turbo’ button, games load in seconds.

Kicking some metal ass. Have fun!