GoKawiilBack to Articles
15th Jul 2026
This post was first promised in early 2024 [0] Pongwars on the C64, @Two9A, Feb 22nd 2024 , but it got so long, I added a table of contents. That might be a first...
One day early in 2024, I was idly flipping through Mastodon when I came across this toot by Koen van Gilst [1] Pongwars recreated in JavaScript, @vnglst, Jan 2024 :
Figure 1: The toot by @vnglst that sparked the descent into madness currently under discussion
This is a depiction of an eternal battle between the "day" ball and the "night" ball, to reverse the colour of the opposite ball's field. Many were transfixed, judging by the thousands of faves; I was one of them, and the thought arose unbidden:
If van Gilst saw this online and had to recreate it in JavaScript, and now I've seen it online, I have to recreate it on the Commodore 64, right?
Is such a thing even possible?
"Yes it is!" Well, it seems like it should be. This is a relatively simple animation, with a random element thrown in at the point the balls contact a surface that makes them bounce; defining "a surface that makes them bounce" seems like the tricky part.
So we need to do some planning. And as the first step, there's some defining:
... continue reading