C64 core issues

[kyods]

So I finally had some time to play with the C64 core, but I haven't had much success with it. Here's what I found:

1. The core uses JiffyDOS by default, and there's no possibility to add the actual C64 ROMs for a vanilla experience.
2. There is no way to load a game, since the keyboard layout is completely messed up (eg. typing LOAD returns R1HX. The emulator needs either some sort of an autoload/run hotkey or option, or a way to bind the keyboard to the emulation and back, like RetroArch does it.
3. Cartridges load fine, but due to point 2, it's next impossible to get past the initial screen.
4. The emulation at this stage seems very barebones, eg. no warp mode, no SID selection, no ability to specify multiple disk drives. In other words, there are no advantages over using the actual VirtualC64 or VICE.

[pmp174]

Thank you for sending me this feedback. It's really hard to do C64 for me simply because I have never played that system. I will see how we can improve it in the next build.

[kyods]

Of course it's tricky if you don't know the platform. I'd personally suggest putting the C64 emulation on backburner, since there are quite a few working and fully-featured alternatives available for Apple Silicon already. I dare say having the arcade emulation (some modern version of MAME or FBNeo) would be more important than that.

[pmp174]

I made some changes to C64 emulation. Please take a look and see if you have any notes.

[kyods]

Great news, thanks for that! I've tested the Last Ninja 2 cart and it worked fine.

I found the new options to select the SID model and enable the warp speed, but I couldn't really test them, since, at this moment, I can play only the cart games. I still can't load any disk/tape images, since, even though I can correctly enter 'load' now, I still can't locate the * symbol on the keyboard (you load the disk games by issuing the 'load "*",8,1' command) nor any hotkey allowing me to load the game automatically.

By the way, another thing: most C64 games assume that the joystick is plugged into port 2 (which translates to Player 2 in Bit), but not all of them. It might be a good idea to add a toggle allowing the user to quickly swap joysticks between ports 1 and 2.

Also, it would be a good idea to implement the ability to install the original system ROMs (basic, character, kernal and floppy drive) for the pure vanilla experience.