There was a post a few months ago of someone developing a utility that you can run alongside a running C64 program in an emulator and watch literally everything going behind the scenes. What memory was being used, viewing/editing individual sprites, but one thing that sticks out was the ability to zoom in and out of the actual code. Does anyone know what I am talking about or was I just dreaming this up one night? It wasn't available for the public at the time, and I'd like to know if it is now...
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Ah, here it is. ICU64. Still cant find it anywhere


Link

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The comments on youtube suggest that it's still under development. Which is too bad, I could use a tool like this right now.
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Yes, this could be quite helpful with any project. Can't wait to see a working release!

It's quite impressive, needs to be for VICE though. No one seriously bothers with Frodo anymore...

Wow I could have so much fun with that.
I can't see there being much problem integrating with VICE instead of Frodo. The Hacking program just reads and modifies wherever the game is stored in the emulator memory so it should be easy to change the address it looks for.

That is seriously cool. I'm thinking it would be as useful as an educational aide as it would be for development. Can you imagine how much easier would it be for someone to learn machine language if they could see what the computer was doing at any given moment? Freaky.

Too bad mathfigure isn't a member here. I'd love to hear more about ICE64 directly from them.
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I imagined this kind of thing when I first saw the poke finder in AR cart. Would love to see this project completed.
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If it will let me change the sprites in Green Beret from the original karate thugs to the guys in International Karate ][, I will bow to the creator.

BTW, I invited mathfigure to Lemon. Hopefully we'll see him around.
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Now that ICE64 program is neat. I WANT A COPY!!

Hello guys, I'm mathfigure.

- Sorry in advance about my English -

I appreciate your interest about the tool ICU64 ('I see you 64').

Although the idea was from 2000, the project started at Nov 2006.
Initially, it was for specific binary versions of VICE and CCS64.
To support Frodo, I took a different approach modifying its source code.
That gave me much more possibilities, so I put aside the others.

For two years, only minor improvements made.
I decided to make it public (on YouTube) to see the reaction of people,
hoping for a push to proceed the development.

Now, my effort is to make it available to anyone this summer,
and to re-establish the original meaning of 'HACKER' and 'HACKING'.

Thanks.

(BTW: I enjoyed your description about the tool, gyro)

Great to have you here. mathfigure. Why isn't it just as compatible with VICE? Doesn't it mirror a certain string of bytes from the emulator?

Great to have you with us mathfigure
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Welcome mathfigure. Anyway this could ever be modified to work on the C64, or is it far to sofisticated for the 8-bit system? If I understand what is happening here, the program is actually working on the emulator, and not what is being emulated?
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Wow!

Very impressive, I hope you get it all working to your satisfaction mathfigure.
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- My English still need work -

A little about how it works:

Currently, ICU64 works more like the 'Cheat Engine' (as a debugger), but with a value help from the debugged application, which is a modified version of Frodo emulator (called 'Frodo Redpill').
Frodo redpill can report useful events (like memory accesses, new frames, raster interrupts, bad lines, clock cycles, etc) and can be instrcucted to get snapshots of the whole state (as an example, when ICU64 enables the raster effects, Frodo Redpill takes 15600 snapshots/sec). Thus, ICU64 has full access both to the current state of the virtual machine and to every event that occur inside it. Then is just a matter to interface this information to the user.

I choose Frodo instead of VICE because Frodo has much simpler source code. Frodo Redpill can already be used by other applications like ICU64.
I'm not so proud for this framework, as it is right now; it could be better.

So, let me illustrate my vision:

An emulator can easily expose every bit and every event of the machine that emulates. Using such an emulator as a platform many applications could extend the capabilities of the emulated machine (and any software that it runs), working either as wrappers, editors, or just as monitor tools (which are all hacking tools). A user application with such a tool would be a 'HACK'.

As an example of a hack, see this video which uses a new feature of ICU64:


Link

This is 'Boulder Dash 4' for Commodore 64. What you see is the off-screen where the full world of the game remains. Normally the game shows only a small window of this world and scrolls horizontally and vertically when it is necessary. ICU64 simulating a customizable display is able to show the full world of the game. Instead of reading from the temporary video RAM, as VIC-II do, ICU64 reads from the memory where the off-screen is located. The particular display you see is 4 times bigger than C64's.
(No borders was tough, but no screen limits... that was impossible!)

A more impressive possibility with diverse range of applicability would be what I call "GAME WORLD TRANSFORM" (although some other term could be better). Most C64's games build their worlds using custom charsets where every text character is a block of graphics (the same is valid for sprites). Imagine replacing the whole charset with a new one that may have even bigger blocks and even more colors (true color). What you get?
The same C64 retro game with grand new graphics, almost so good as current PC graphics.
Retro gamers will have new experiences of their favorite games (if they want of course).

Would even be possible to transform the whole world from flat to 3D and insert lights and cameras. And to push this to the limits, combine it with Virtual Reality technology and... you are inside a C64's world!
Or combine this with Holography Technology or 3D-Displays and... the sprites are escape to the real world!
And guess what, it is still the original C64 from the '80, since neither software nor hardware is altered! It is just a new view of the same thing.

There are also other possibilities as "GAME MIXES" (AI and worlds from different games, all together). Imagine a battle between the AI (not just the sprites) Karatekas taken from different games (Int. Karate, Exploding Fist, etc). This could happen mapping the attacks from one game to the attacks of the other game and vice versa.

Parallel execution of synchronized C64s. Imagine a video-wall (eg: 4x4=16) of C64s, each of which running a part of a special designed application which exploit more power: speed x16 (16MHz), memory x16 (1MB), screen x16 (1280x800), voices x16 (48!). What is needed to operate all these is only a maestro that will keep them synchronized. (Demo Sceners will have new challenges!)

Education tools about programming or hardware (imagine labels and full text descriptions everywhere).

There is a diverge range of visualizations. Who knows what someone can think. As you have the full control of the system there are no limmits.

The 'HACKING TECHNOLOGY' designed for Hackers (the most skilled persons on what they do). As they hack only machines (and not people), you couldn't imagine what they could do.

I just made a start to this direction with "Frodo Redpill" and "ICU64", but it is not an easy task for only one person. More people must involve, and all these ideas are free for implementation.

VICE and CCS64 is the best C64's Emulators and would be good if the their developers expose a programming interface with full access to every bit end every event of C64. Immediately, will be transformed to platforms for a new era of software technologies and applications (that will have started using just a C64).
This, of course, could be happen with any virtual machine (so harry-up!).

People inside C64 community still loves Commodore 64. Why?
Are you expecting something more from Commodore 64?
I hope that I live in a universe where this is the case.

(the whole project is dedicated to the Commodore 64 community)

-mathfigure 2009.07.27

Anybody else saying to themselves "I can see the Matrix"?

That is pretty crazy. As neat as revamping the C64 games graphics sound, I'd be more into putting cameos of other game characters in the games.... sort of like they did to Doom way back when with the modded characters. Remember Alien Doom? How about a game of Jumpman Mission 2?
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This is one heck of cool looking program!! I too hope you'll release it someday!

mathfigure wrote:

ICU64 simulating a customizable display is able to show the full world of the game. Instead of reading from the temporary video RAM, as VIC-II do, ICU64 reads from the memory where the off-screen is located. The particular display you see is 4 times bigger than C64's.

That is a really nice feature IMHO! You surely have put in a lot of work for this one!

mathfigure wrote:

A more impressive possibility with diverse range of applicability would be what I call "GAME WORLD TRANSFORM" (although some other term could be better). Most C64's games build their worlds using custom charsets where every text character is a block of graphics (the same is valid for sprites). Imagine replacing the whole charset with a new one that may have even bigger blocks and even more colors (true color). What you get? The same C64 retro game with grand new graphics, almost so good as current PC graphics. Retro gamers will have new experiences of their favorite games (if they want of course). Would even be possible to transform the whole world from flat to 3D and insert lights and cameras. And to push this to the limits, combine it with Virtual Reality technology and... you are inside a C64's world! Or combine this with Holography Technology or 3D-Displays and... the sprites are escape to the real world! And guess what, it is still the original C64 from the '80, since neither software nor hardware is altered! It is just a new view of the same thing. There are also other possibilities as "GAME MIXES" (AI and worlds from different games, all together). Imagine a battle between the AI (not just the sprites) Karatekas taken from different games (Int. Karate, Exploding Fist, etc). This could happen mapping the attacks from one game to the attacks of the other game and vice versa.

What a nice vision that is! Since there are so many coders out there (and many of us who have started coding pretty recently ), that dream probably will come true one day.

Anyway, congratulations again for a very nice-looking utility!
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