What Commodore 64 Development Articles Are on the nurpax Blog?

The nurpax blog, the personal site of Janne Hellsten, hosts a run of Commodore 64 development posts concentrated between 2018 and 2021. The most relevant entries for C64 work are the five-part BINTRIS series, a breakdown of a C64 demo effect, a piece on dirty tricks used by 6502 programmers, and tooling posts covering VICE, C64Debugger, and the author's own assembler, C64jasm. All of these are listed on the blog's home page under recent posts.

The BINTRIS C64 series

BINTRIS appears to be a C64 project documented in a multi-part series. The home page lists part 5, "BINTRIS C64: Bad lines and flexible line distance," dated June 19, 2018. That title points at two core VIC-II concerns: bad lines, the cycles the video chip steals from the CPU when it fetches character data, and flexible line distance, a technique for varying how far apart raster lines are drawn. Both are practical topics for anyone writing raster effects or split-screen routines.

Because only part 5 is named on the home page, readers looking for the earlier parts should open the "All posts..." link rather than assume the series is complete in the recent list.

Demo effects and 6502 technique

Two posts address low-level craft rather than a specific project:

• "Break down of a C64 demo effect" (June 7, 2018) — an analysis of how a demo effect is constructed, useful as a worked example of turning a visual result into raster and timing code.
• "Dirty tricks 6502 programmers use" (August 18, 2019) — a survey of unconventional 6502 coding techniques. This is the post to read if you want to understand why C64 code often departs from straightforward assembly.

Tooling: C64jasm, VICE, and C64Debugger

A cluster of posts covers the author's assembler and the debugging workflow around it:

The debugging post is the most recent C64 entry and the natural starting point if you are building with C64jasm and need to inspect running code. The asset-loading post is the companion piece for getting sprites, PETSCII, and SID music into a project.

How to find the full set

The home page shows only recent posts. To see everything, follow the "All posts..." link at the bottom of the list. The blog also notes a "A quick blog update" from January 1, 2024, which may explain any gaps in publishing. For questions or corrections, the author lists [email protected] and the @nurpax handle as contact points.

If your goal is learning C64 development rather than reading one specific post, a sensible order is: start with "Dirty tricks 6502 programmers use" for coding idiom, move to the C64jasm introduction and asset-loading posts to set up a build, then use the VICE/C64Debugger post when something misbehaves. The BINTRIS and demo-effect posts work best once you are comfortable with raster timing.