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🎱 HOT SHOT POOL (C64) 🎱

● HOT SHOT POOL ● The aim line is not an approximation of the shot. It is the shot. An original game for the Commodore 64, written in 6502 assembly.Sixteen live balls on a machine with eight sprites. All of them moving, all of them colliding. NEW IN 1.1 Three aim-line styles to choose from. A preview that knows a pocket when it sees one. An opponent that no longer plays itself in off. Sound effects you can keep with the music turned off, and a power bar you can actually stop where you meant to. Most of it came straight from the comments — see the full list below. ● THE PREVIEW CANNOT LIE TO YOU Most 8-bit pool games draw a straight guide and hope. This one traces the cue ball's actual path — the same direction tables, the same cushion mirroring and the same contact test the physics will use when you strike, stepped four pixels at a time. Where the trace meets a ball, a second line shows where that ball departs, worked out from the real collision normal rather than drawn to look plausible. Line up a two-cushion bank and the dots go exactly where the ball goes. IF THE LINE SAYS IT DROPS, IT DROPS. ○ A FULL RACK, ALL OF IT ALIVE Cue ball plus a fifteen-ball rack, every one of them a real object with real momentum, on hardware that offers eight sprites. They collide with each other, not just with you — a plant is a plant, and a break scatters because the math says so. Cushions rebound properly, the cue ball takes the angle it should off a thin cut, and balls that touch a pocket mouth go down whether you meant it or not. ◆ TWO RULE SETS, FOUR WAYS TO PLAY Classic — clear all fifteen against the shot clock, the eight last. Eight Ball — the real rules: the table is open after the break, the first clean pot picks your group, and you must strike your own first or it is a foul. Play it solo, against the CPU, two players at one keyboard, or set both sides to CPU and watch them play it out. ■ PLAYING FOR MONEY Set a stake and sit down with a bankroll. A rack is a game — more pots than your opponent takes the money. The set runs until one of you is cleaned out, and there is no credit at this table. ▲ AN OPPONENT THAT PLANS The CPU searches the angles using the same trace you see, follows the ghost line to find out whether the object ball reaches a pocket, and scores the shot by how straight the pot is. It will play a bank to get there. Set the skill and it plays the shot it found — or something near it. MORE ON YOUTUBE Trailers, full playthroughs in the J5 ON JOY2 series and Byte-Sized Devlog episodes on how the games are made. New J5 games appear there first. ▶ SUBSCRIBE TO J5 GAMES & TECH ON YOUTUBE CONTROLS Joystick in port 2, or the keyboard Aim — left/right, or A D , . Shoot — hold fire or space to charge the power bar, let go to strike RUN/STOP — leave a game for the menu SCORING 100 a ball, and another 100 for every ball past the first on one shot — so a plant beats two singles. Clearing a rack pays a bonus for every shot you had left. A scratch costs an extra shot, and in Classic the eight is last: pot it early and it goes back on the table and costs you a shot for the privilege. ALSO IN THERE Original SID soundtrack, a different tune per rule set Sound effects that borrow a voice from the music instead of stamping on it Shot-by-shot commentary — which ball, which pocket End-of-game statistics and a high score table