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An old symbol table, 46 frame names and a typo

A project log for Bruce Lee 1984 — Development Archaeology

A C64 RE Tools case study: rebuilding Bruce Lee uncovered source fragments, old symbols and traces of its 1984 development tools.

henrik-olssonHenrik Olsson • 14 hours ago•0 Comments

The block at $8B00–$8E7F preserves 896 bytes of an earlier symbol table: 88 complete entries and a partial one. Each entry holds a length/reference byte, a name and a two-byte value.

Names for 46 actor frames encode action, direction, animation phase and sprite layer. One group aligns with the final game after adding $E89; frame labels need $1462. The difference, $5D9, matches actor-frame data later inserted ahead of Bruce’s frames.

The unreferenced name ADWONL22 looks like a typo for ADOWNL22. An old frame survives at its recorded address, with a matching frame at the final location. A correction during development is a plausible explanation, rather than something the bytes prove on their own.

Tables and address comparisons: https://github.com/henols/c64_games/blob/main/bruce_lee/docs/development.md

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