About Breadbox

BREADBOX is a retro computer simulator program.

It's also a project under development and nothing has been released yet.

Estimated to be available in Early access soon (Dec 2021?).

Objective

The aim of the project BREADBOX is to provide immersive and visual user experience of retro computers in a realistic simulation.

Desired characteristics

Visual look of retro machines.
Immersive First Person view experience, with animated objects, hardware mechanics and authentic sounds.
A fully working computers, with fluent emulator integration.

Why?

To preserve computer culture of course. We believe that preserving the authentic way of using retro computers and give people an opportunity to experience it, is a worthy project.

Different actions for computer culture preservation has already been done or started. And that is just great news!

But it looks like there is no simulator based solution, which emphasizes the visuals of a 8-bit computers and lets you see what you are actually using.

The Project

This will be a quite massive project and in reality, it will never end.

There will always be some computer model, additional peripheral, software feature or technical detail which is not yet implemented. Hence, the project will be developed iteratively, additional features and models will be added piece by piece.

Project status

Development of Early access version <- current state
Beta testing
Release of Early access version
Maturing product - stage 1 (some bugfix releases)
Release with some additional model
Maturing product - stage 2 (some bugfix releases)
Transition to 'Full' release version
Continual release iterations with additional models and features

Computer models included in current version

Commodore PET-2001-8
Commodore VIC-20
Commodore 64

State of visual look

Most relevant larger objects, like computers, disk-drives, etc, are 3D-modelled in excellent quality. Some smaller objects e.g. PET IEEE-488 cable plug is just a mockup. Missing details, mockups and other low quality models will be done in some point.

Scenes visual effects, e.g. lighting, shadows, materials, are still in early state. Some may think, that it is already very good, and yes, we are also quite happy with it. But honestly, expect a major improvements on this area, we aim for the photorealistic look!

State of emulation screen

streaming

Works just perfectly. Obviously, it will not be as fast as plain emulator, but a common user won't see any latency. Most gamers or other kind of heavy users will use a real machine or an emulator anyway. And still, you can play any game with Breabox just fine. So in our perspective, the current latency is sufficient for the simulator, but this is surely an area that will be constantly monitored and improved.

CRT shader

CRT shader is another early state version. It gives some look and feel of scanlines and pixels, but yeah, expect more later on.

State of user experience

Users interface in the simulator is basically a First Person view. User is stationary in an imaginary desk with all the necessary equipment available in front. Actions are done by point and click method. We know that there can be better ways to handle the user experience. But it's a long and laborous work even to prototype the other options. Current way is chosen because it will keep user in good control of everything and it's the easiest way to do this. We hope to prototype other methods in some point. In the mean time we keep improving the current option.

State of development

Development is continual, but with only one developer, it's a slow process.