First demo on the z26!
I have spent the last 3 days reading up on the 2600 system and how its coded.
I have done z80 assembly about 10 years ago however my understanding is quite rusty and to be fair alot of the spesifics i did rember dont aply (WHAT NO INTERUPTS!) haha.
however the principles are the same so hopefully it will not be like starting from scratch again.
Well they say the journey of a 1000 miles starts with but a single step and i feel i have taken such a step today!
Spent the day reading through the files on the newbie 2600 programmers forum, also having a look at the commented files from the mini dig site.
At first it was a bit daunting but when i pulled myself togeather with "come on its just assembly..." the panic subsided and was replaced with a fasination, the TIA gives you so much scope to mess with the user, once i learn more about the control of the playfield there will be some flashing demos the like of which even the japanese fit enduceing games of the early 80s could not match hahaha... only kidding.
found a few other gems over at atariarchive, theres a nice presentation "Atari 2600: Stella Console Hardware & Combat Sample Game Software" that was realy usefull as i used the dissassembler and had a peak at combat, and bizarely the fog started to clear (alough i hasten to add i dont understand it completely).
Currently im dissembling all the roms i can find under 4k, hopefully by studying a number of simple roms (the 2k fellas) i can pick up a few tricks.
concreat progress was acheved today as i manged to get my first (copied demo) to load haha i was so happy i called my wife and she to was amazed i manged to get it first time without error lol. (admiditly copying a example into a editor isnt rocket science )
anyway onwards and upwards, after the mindfield that was PAL/NTSC calculations it can only get better oh wait no theres still SECAM and that random brazilian standard.
Hmmmmm i wonder how you code them.....
next on the todo list it to finish off the tutorials, read the opp code manual and work through properly somthing like combat (but i might do tic tac toe instead...)
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