Brief update on the new football management project

A quick update. I am currently converting the original PM source from 68000 to C. To do this I am using a bit awk script. Currently I have translated BALL.ASM and CONTROL.ASM (the ball code and the game state machine). I am working on KEEPER.ASM right now… the goal keeper code.

Awk is parsing the original assembler code and performing assembler macro expansions as well. It outputs each of the opcodes as a C macro call, so that I can emulate the 68000 directly as c source. This way I am actually recompiling the original game in C. When I am done, it will allow porting to many platforms easily. This approach also allows me to replace any emulated 68000 with more readable C code at any time. It should also allow me to port Kick Off 2 and GOAL! later, and update them… so if this approach works it should be a big win.

This was not the approach I was taking when I announced the project last summer… a few months ago I changed plan when I located the original source code to the games. It will take a while to complete the conversion (quite a bit of debugging to do even when the conversion is completed!), and I can’t give an ETA. It will be done when it’s done.

Cheers,

-Dino