Ron presents voice playback, the icon toolbar and FABULA's new features
Ron walks through the current state of the C64 adventure engine: optional voice playback via FunMP3, mouth animation, movement into depth, non-player characters, inventory and an icon toolbar. It also covers custom character sets, GoatTracker music, samples and a 109-rule validation pass before building.
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Right click, facing direction and remembered objects
The new short video shows three current building blocks of the FABULA Adventure Engine: right click as an additional control, a deliberate facing direction for the player character, and state that lets the engine remember a selected object.
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FABULA now supports rooms with up to 63 character columns. The camera follows the character, while the image scrolls character by character with double buffering. The 33-second video shows the current state from the emulator.
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An adventure editor on the Mac, an engine in 6502 assembler and the result on genuine Ultimate 64 hardware. FABULA remains a permanent project on this page and will be available later via itch.io.
C64
6502
Python/Qt
Ultimate 64
TC64
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FABULA combines a classic point-and-click engine on the C64 with a standalone editor for modern systems. Since 17 September 2026 the feature set of the first release has been frozen: since then it is being tested, bugs are being fixed and the handling is being polished. The only exception is the music part, which has grown considerably since.
01
On the Commodore 64
The Engine
Classic point-and-click adventure for the Commodore 64
Mouse (1351) or joystick, switchable in-game
Up to nine verbs, freely named, with command line and inventory
Inventory for twelve items, six per page, paged with arrows on the dividing line
Command bar with words or with symbols; with symbols, nine things in view at once
Carried items with scripts of their own: talk to them, combine them, start with them
Flags and eight counters from 0 to 255
Colored rooms with custom looks
Custom base colors per room
Two character sets per room: 256 characters for each half of the screen
Scrolling rooms wider than one screen width
Animated characters, 42 or 63 pixels tall, with custom pathfinding and a side standing image
Characters walk sideways, towards the viewer and away – and turn to things
The last thing you touched stays picked and shows in the sentence line
Right mouse button carries out a selectable verb, “Look at” by default
Up to four NPCs per room, in any number of rooms, character switching via script
Several player characters with their own bags, switched with W or by script, W can be turned off
Animations as image sequences or scrolling surfaces for rain and water
Conversations with selectable sentences, depending on knowledge level – the player character says the chosen line
Whoever speaks moves their mouth – player character, NPCs and narration in colours of their own
Title screen with its own script, cutscenes with camera pans, skippable with RUN/STOP, and credits
Custom SID soundtrack, sound effects and footsteps matching the floor
Samples from the cartridge: a blow, a scream, thunder
Speech and music via the FunMP3 player on the user port (add-on device)
One click advances the text
Save and load directly in the module, four slots, F5/F7
EasyFlash module as .crt
Runs on genuine hardware (EasyFlash, Kung Fu Flash, Ultimate 64) and in VICE; the Turbo Chameleon 64 is planned as an additional target path and still requires practical verification
10
On modern systems
The Editor
For Linux, macOS and Windows, native on Steam Deck
Unpack and start – no Java, no external assembler, no post-installation
Paint rooms with live C64 color rule checking
Set base colors per room
Image import with color moods (split-toning), palette search across all 16 colors and a character count per half of the room
Take over Koala files from C64 paint programs
Import characters from a picture, with a colour suggestion
Paint characters: walking, standing and action frames, steps from front and back, mirroring and a running preview, plus the mouth for speaking
Objects via mouse: hotspot, walk point, name, look text, door destination and “pickable”
