73v3 - itch.io

73v3

"If I could only use one piece of software for the rest of my life, what would it be?" That’s the driving philosophy behind the Jet64 project.

Jet64 is my "trapped on a desert island with no internet" app. It is a retro game development environment containing everything you need to write a great retro game, reminiscent of the C64 and Amiga eras.

I think of Jet64 as an Amiga 5000.

The Virtual Hardware

Blazingly fast C carts with a tiny disk footprint.
Variable resolutions (1280x720 default).
64MB of WRAM available to each cartridge.
120 FPS fixed frame rate lock.
256-color palette with strong custom palette support.
24-bit Amiga-style Copper emulation.
8-bit and 16-bit synthesized sounds and Paula-style PCM support.

The Workstation

Built-in Editors: Sprite, map, and palette editors.
Audio Studio: MOD music authoring, tracker, and playback.
Code Editor: Native C editor with Intellisense, auto-complete, and stateful hot-reloading.
One-Click Export: Deploy to Web (HTML5), Windows, Mac, and Linux from the same source.
Interactive Fiction: A dedicated IF engine to create your own Infocom-style adventures.
CRT Overlays: Optional phosphor and anti-aliasing shader overlays.

The Philosophy: A Haven for Human Coding

I'm creating a space I could feasibly spend years inhabiting. Importantly, I'm creating a place where I can code completely AI-free.

I'm a great fan of AI and I love the ability unlock it brings. In fact, I am using an AI co-lead to help me architect and build Jet64 itself. Once I am satisfied with the environment, however, I will drop the AI assistance and write a showcase game myself entirely by hand.

I do this because it is a winding back of the clock for me, a reliving of my golden-era nostalgia. But more importantly, it is to keep my own coding skillset alive and to experience the whole gamut of emotions that used to be integral to programming: the frustration of a bug that eludes you for days, the elation when you finally fix it, and the deep satisfaction of knowing the codebase is entirely yours—built by you, warts and all.

AI coding is wonderful, but it can be a fast-food experience. As AI output becomes ubiquitous, I believe the high-effort arena of human-crafted work will only rise in value. We find meaning and authenticity in genuine effort.

My current plan is to release the Jet64 Workstation under the following creator license.

The Jet64 Creator License

1. The Workstation (The IDE)
Your purchase of Jet64 grants you a personal license to use the Workstation software. You may not redistribute, share, or resell the Workstation application itself.

2. Your Games (Exported Carts)
You own 100% of the games you create. You may sell your exported standalone games (Web, Windows, Mac, Linux) anywhere you like, for any price. No royalties are owed to @73v3.

3. Example Carts
The example C carts provided with the engine are open-source under the BSD-3-Clause license. You are free to copy, modify, and use their C code in your own commercial games, provided you follow the terms in their respective notice files.