Collecting material for handout for a workshop: my first VCS demo

[+SvOlli]

Hi there!

 

On the 2nd of November, there will be a three hour workshop in Hanover, Germany, called "My first own Atari 2600 VCS demo". The target audience is anyone who has some experience in a language like C or any assembler.

 

The basic idea is to give the people a very simple framework, that'll take care of the most crucial timing and setup stuff, leaving the newbie with a skeleton like:

; will be called every frame
main:
   ; put preparation code here
   jsr waitvblank
   ; put display code here
   jsr waitscreen
   ; put aftermath code here
   jmp waitoverscan

The code like this would produce a stable black picture of 312 lines (PAL). Additionally to the sourcecode of the framework and tools (like a precompiled dasm for all mayor platforms), there will be some kind of (digital) handout, where I want to include informations on stuff that I can't go in detail, like a full overview of the 6502 instruction set. I'd like to use this thread to collect and sort out, what to include.

 

What will be included:

- Tjoppen's VCS rasterpaper ( http://www.acc.umu.se/~tjoppen/derp/rp.pdf )

- Stella Programmer's Guide ( http://alienbill.com/2600/101/docs/stella.html )

- short overview about VCS registers (will be "pretty version" of my vcs.inc file, see attachment)

- charts with available VCS colors

 

What's still missing:

- 6502 overview

 

(both lists are incomplete)

vcs.inc

[Mr SQL]

Awesome SvOlli! Your talks are fantastic - looking forward to watching your workshop presentation

[Joe Musashi]

Andrew's newbie programming course is also available in PDF form:

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/27325-book/page-2?do=findComment&comment=450170

 

This document also contains the color charts, as well as an overview of 6502 instructions.

 

[+SpiceWare]

Need to finish up my presentation for PRGE so I'll check it out after I get back.

[+SvOlli]

Need to finish up my presentation for PRGE so I'll check it out after I get back.

No problem, thanks in advance.

 

I decided to divide the stuff into two sections: one the will be needed for the workshop at hand, and the second one is for "further reading".

 

Section one will also contain the tools like precompiled assembler (this will be the hardest part, since I'm using ca65, but for the ease of the participants when they get their hands on other stuff floatin' around, I'll want to use dasm in the workshop - also something to get myself prepared for), a self-written png to playfield graphics converter, some basic documentation, PAL colortable png, etc.

 

Section two will contain stuff like CPU opcode tables with clockcycles, the raster paper, the Stella Programmers Manual, etc.

 

Of cause, once it's compiled, it'll be released here and on my website.