My tries at assembler

[+atari2600land]

OK, I got DASM, and tried something and it says "END not implemented yet."

Edited September 6, 2012 by atari2600land

[SeaGtGruff]

It's now at http://dasm-dillon.sourceforge.net/

 

But if you have batari Basic installed, then you already have DASM installed, too-- at least, DASM version 2.20.07, which seems to be the version preferred by most people due to some issues with the later versions.

[SeaGtGruff]

OK, I got DASM, and tried something and it says "END not implemented yet."

END should be okay as long as it isn't indented. But which version of DASM did you get?

[+atari2600land]

OK, I got DASM working, but after looking at some sample source code I'm a little bit surprised and frustrated at all the new stuff I have to learn if I want to try my hand at this. Why is Atari 2600 assembly way more complicated than Odyssey2 assembly? I learned Odyssey2 assembly pretty quickly, but apparently the Atari 2600 is a more complicated machine?

[SeaGtGruff]

I know nothing about assembly for the Odyssey2, but any console is going to have its own special stuff that has nothing to do with assembly. With the 2600 the biggest thing you need to deal with is that it has no screen memory as such, only graphics registers, so the "simple" act of drawing a screen display means you have to load new data into the graphics registers on just about every scan line. That isn't as bad as it sounds, because you just need to design a loop and read the graphics data from tables. There are already some code routines out there that you can use if they fit your needs (such as "skipdraw"), but it's usually best to create your own kernel based on the specific type of display you want to draw for your game.

[Prime_Suspect]

You posted you're familiar with 8084 assembly,making the jump to 6502 or any other 8 bit cpu instructions set shouldn't be difficult

If it's the vcs hardware thats confusing you,follow Andrew Davies tutorials

Edited September 7, 2012 by Prime_Suspect

[Mr SQL]

atari2600land,

I agree with Prime_Suspect, it's the unique hardware that is the learning curve, not 6502 Assembly, and Andrew's overview is excellent

[Omegamatrix]

Assembly is assembly. Whatever assembly language you learn picking up the next is much easier. Andrew's tutorials are what you need to read now. The 2600 is a unique beast, but learning how it works will give you a rich understanding that makes troubleshooting your assembly or BatariBasic much easier.