Programming Journey

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Learning 6502 Assembly and documenting my progress with demo programs from the book "Programming Games for the Atari 2600" by Oscar Toledo G.

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Product Unboxing

2600+ Unboxing

After a little over a decade of disinterest in Atari (and video games in general), my son rekindled my interest this past August with programming. Little did I know that it would be an interesting time period to get back into Atari (the VCS/2600 specifically). New games were being made, AtariAge was purchased, and a new 2600 would soon be released, among other things. It all seemed pretty exciting. I preordered the Atari 2600+ from Amazon on September 28th. Over the following w

arwanderer in Product Unboxing

November 23, 2023

Programming

Diamond Craze

Tonight, I finished the fifth and final example game from Oscar's book "Programming Games for Atari 2600", called "Diamond Craze". Additions to this last game are difficulty selection, game reset, lives, and multiple enemies chasing your player on screen. Like previous games I coded, I finished earlier, but spent a couple days working out bugs due to my typos. I really can't recommend this book enough. I went from knowing absolutely nothing about assembly language and only minimal experience

arwanderer in Programming

November 13, 2023

Programming

Adventures in Programming

Inspired by Adventure, this fourth example game from Oscar's book has been my favorite so far. Not only did I enjoy the increased complexity of the code, but this genre is one of my favorites on the 2600, with multiple rooms and treasure hunting. As with the others, there were multiple bugs that I had to go back and work out due to my typos, the main one being in the cemetery where the player could not move past a certain point. After a couple of days of looking over the code, I noticed that

arwanderer in Programming

October 30, 2023

Programming

Invaders!

Last Saturday, I completed the Udemy course "Learn Assembly Language by Making Games for Atari 2600". This was an excellent resource for beginners and I enjoyed it quite a lot. Much of what I covered in my programming books was reiterated and explained in a way the stuck with me better. Since finishing the course, I resumed work in Oscar's programming book and have come back to it with a better perspective and understanding. It's not that Oscar does not explain things well, this has to do wi

arwanderer in Programming

October 21, 2023

Programming

A Slight Detour

This week, I have decided to take a break from working from my book. The overall goal remains the same, so it's not really a "detour". A couple weeks ago, I happened upon a Udemy course on 6502 Assembly Language while searching for books and tutorials and decided to give it a try. The course is called "Learn Assembly Language by Making Games for the Atari 2600" and Gustavo Pezzi is the instructor. https://www.udemy.com/share/101EUW/ The course includes over 16 hours of

arwanderer in Programming

October 5, 2023

Programming

Wall Breaker

Today, I completed the second example game found in "Programming Games for Atari 2600". I was almost finished last night, but as usual, there were a few errors that crept in that resulted in the game functioning incorrectly. I examined the code more closely and fixed the errors (mostly typos on my part) and today the game plays as it should. I really enjoyed making this game and look forward to the next one...."Invaders"! wallbreaker.bin

arwanderer in Programming

September 30, 2023

Programming

Game of Ball (Pong)

Earlier this week, I worked through the sound and music demos and, on Friday night, I started work on the first example game in the book, "Game of Ball". I finished this Saturday evening. There's a glitch sometimes where the ball gets stuck at the bottom of the playfield, maybe I messed up something in the collision codes, I'm not sure. I've included the .bin. Other than typing the code myself, this is obviously NOT my work, but that of the original author, Oscar Toledo G!

arwanderer in Programming

September 24, 2023

Programming

More Demos and Movement

On Sunday evening, I worked through the NUSIZx and Missile demos and finally the playfield on Tuesday before moving on to Chapter 3: Movement. I didn't have too much difficulty with the last demos in the graphics chapter and only had a few errors to correct each time before the program compiled correctly. In Chapter 3, however, I am having some issues. The ship sprite is not positioned correctly and, when it moves, it messes up the screen. I've compared my code t

arwanderer in Programming

September 15, 2023

Programming

Adding Players

After displaying the ball, the next section of the book covers player sprites, but no movement yet. Since each demo builds upon the previous one, typing the code has become easier and some of the instruction sets are starting to make sense to me instead of just appearing to be a random set of three letters. I'd recommend that anyone doing this for the first time type up each program from beginning to end instead of just copy/pasting work from the previous one. This has helped me quite a bit.

arwanderer in Programming

September 10, 2023

Programming

The Beginning

My older brother gave me his Atari 2600 in 1996 when I was 8 years old, and it was my first gaming console. A Sega Genesis soon followed and a couple years later, I got a PlayStation. I still played my 2600 though, and within a few years, I had amassed quite a collection of games for it. Anytime my mother and I would visit a flea market or Good Will store, I'd pick up a few cartridges for about $0.25 a piece! I maintained a (mostly) casual interest in my Atari into adulthood. Sometime in 2

arwanderer in Programming

September 9, 2023

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