Seeking a Tutor

[pixelmischief]

I am a life-long programmer and professional application developer.  I'm looking for a tutor to learn game development on the Atari 8-Bit.  I only speak and understand English.  I am hoping for an arrangement that includes one or two 1-hour shared desktop sessions each week and assigned coding and reading in-between.  I will make myself available at whatever time the tutor can do it.  I'll pay by PayPal, Venmo, bank transfer, whatever; fees at my expense, of course.  Let's talk and come up with a rate.

[pixelmischief]

2 hours ago, pixelmischief said:

I only speak and understand English.

I should have made it clear that I state this with apology and some embarrassment; neither pride, nor demand.

[mellis]

7 hours ago, pixelmischief said:

I should have made it clear that I state this with apology and some embarrassment; neither pride, nor demand.

If it’s a fact that you only speak that particular language, I think a person would have to be looking for an excuse to be bothered by what you wrote.  There’s no need to apologize that I can see.  
 

Setting that aside, most of the fun you can have as an Atari programmer is the learning process. I would recommend that you read De Re Atari to familiarize yourself with the hardware’s design and capabilities. You can even play with the hardware registers in BASIC to see what they can do first hand. When you are comfortable with the hardware, move on to Machine Language for Beginners from Compute. It will ease you into 6502 assembly language. These books are available online as PDF files. Just do a little Googling. 
 

You’re a programmer already, so this should be fun for you. Good luck. 

[flashjazzcat]

Can I recommend Peter Dell's 'Programming the Atari XL/XE' videos:

 

https://www.youtube.com/user/jacofwudsn/videos

 

I can't say I have watched them all but if they are up to his usual standards, they will be an excellent resource.

 

 

[pixelmischief]

Thanks for the advice!  I am certain that the material you cite will be a major part of my learning experience!  That said, it is not learning how to program the hardware that I am looking for help with.  I am hoping to get instruction from someone who actually knows how to develop games on the platform.  I want to learn to go from concept to release for a few different classes of simple game.  I want help with tools and process, in addition to straight programming education.  Really hoping someone will also be interested in teaching and help me.

[Yaron Nir]

What type of game are you interested in?

there are many talented people here both developers and graphics persons who can help you learn step by step. But most work will be on your own to practice .

as they say - practice makes perfect 

[pixelmischief]

3 hours ago, Yaron Nir said:

What type of game are you interested in?

I think the right first project is a pong clone.  Then, I guess a single-screen maze.  Following that, perhaps a platformer.

 

3 hours ago, Yaron Nir said:

But most work will be on your own to practice .

as they say - practice makes perfect 

Yes!  I fully expect that.  But I do want to work with someone who has a proven workflow for developing games.  I'd like to work with someone who can guide me through things like choosing a graphics mode, designing sprites on graph paper, setting up a dev environment, creating data structures that become sound and graphics, etc.

[Yaron Nir]

My suggestion to you is to post your game thoughts and then people here can answer with their thoughts on what graphics mode you can use and why sprites (which good sprite tool to use )  and creating the data files 

maybe even add some screen shots of your desired game . Maybe some layouts you have drawn or an arcade game which you base your game on....

 

[Preppie]

There's been some decent Atari tutorials posted on this channel lately:

 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmyydM9_kZHk49GXC4r-FKw

[eugenetswong]

On 2/14/2020 at 8:00 AM, Preppie said:

There's been some decent Atari tutorials posted on this channel lately:

 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmyydM9_kZHk49GXC4r-FKw

I love that channel!!

 

Unfortunately, he doesn't respond much. I think that he doesn't know how the notifications work. A couple of times, he seemed surprised that I asked a question.

 

I think that on average, he has the best Atari YouTube channel.

 

Just so that everybody knows, he has plans to make a video to teach us how to make our own Atari power supplies, which should be a lot of fun...even though I don't have any Atari hardware. I'll probably make a power supply in case I do get an Atari.

 

###

 

Pixelmischief, I think that you won't need a tutor, but if you like what I freely offer, then send me money.

 

I am intermediate on this system, so I'll give you an overview of what I picked up.

 

Q&A

 

1) Regarding numbers of colors and graphics modes: use as many as possible of each! The more colours you use, the more user friendly the game will be. The documentation, which I will show you, tells you how many colours each mode has access to, but they forget to remind you that you could combine graphics modes to get a variety of shapes and colours beyond 16. You can also have access to player missile graphics, which will give you an additional 4 [or is it more than 4?] colours.

 

For example, I'd love to make a game, where I use shades of grey to portray a story scene between the action packed gaming. I might be able to do this in graphics 9 to convey the movement of somebody approaching me in a dim alley, because there are many shades of grey, but maybe use graphics 8 to animate him chatting up close. I could use player missile graphics to illustrate a glowing cigarette, moving eyes, and maybe a mouth.

 

2) For a development environment, I suggest using a modern operating system and an emulator, but I don't have the experience to say either way. For the Atari800 emulator, I am able to save to and load from the H6 hard drive, which is the same as H1, but it allows the text file to be readable outside of the emulator, which comes in handy, when debugging, since modern text file readers can search and replace. This is especially helpful, when untangling goto-spaghetti.

 

 

 

HINTS & TIPS

 

1) If you are using Atari BASIC, then use line 0 to set up a few variables, including a fully contained for-loop, but at the end go to a high line number, like 32000, where you initialize and dimension all of your other variables. After that, go back to a line, like 1000 to begin the main loop; in here, include checks for flags, important changes, the joysticks, and keyboard [including function keys]. Some loops will be used the most, so put them closest to the beginning of the program, since Atari BASIC always checks the first line first, when finding the destination of a GOSUB or GOTO statement, and then goes to the next line, and so on.

 

 2) When you read magazines, copy any code of software that interests you. Debugging is a great way to learn about common errors, and great ideas. For example, when debugging the options screen of a program, I realized that the screen might appear to have no text there, but the truth is that there was something there. It was just invisible. The program needed invisible text there to be able to run a certain sub routine.

 

3) When displaying text, you can join them with commas and semicolons. The semicolons help to align text into columns. This will save you from having to position the cursor.

 

4) It is hard for me to remember all that Atari can do, and how to do it, so I created separate folders to store code samples for each graphics mode, plus folders just for games from magazines, and a MISC folder. I even have a folder just for utilities; most were obtained from free code listings from "Compute".

 

5) To make your programs small, make use of DATA statements, and where possible, use ATASCII instead of machine language numbers. 

 

6) When you need to create a loop to slow down the action and animation, consider giving Atari something to do, instead of getting Atari to just sit there.

 

###

 

SUGGESTED READING

 

There is a thread that lists stuff to read, but from my experience, I have found these extremely helpful.

 

https://archive.org/stream/1986-04-compute-magazine/Compute_Issue_071_1986_Apr#page/n126/mode/2up

Read that article, and let that be your first program. I think that most people here might find it too boring, but I think that it prepares you for articles and code snippets that you might like, and is useful for the development that you want to create.

 

https://archive.org/stream/1986-04-compute-magazine/Compute_Issue_071_1986_Apr#page/n121/mode/2up

I think that most will disagree with this recommendation, and I agree a little, but I found it satisfying, and it opens up opportunities to try machine language programs without understanding the tiny details. For me, I just wanted to see what Atari is capable of.

 

 

https://www.atariarchives.org/agagd/

This lists all the information that you need, with code snippets. I think that the forum should be able to answer any questions.

 

https://www.atariarchives.org/mapping/

This tells you what is where, and gives some fascinating examples. Did you know that you can make some text lines in graphics 0 appear upside down? This is great for card games.

 

https://www.atariarchives.org/adventure/

This gives you strategies to plan out how your text adventure game is going to work, if that is what you want.

 

 

 

https://www.atarimagazines.com/rom/index/

Start from the beginning, and enter any game/program that interests you. There are 2 4p games, and an educational game, that is worth trying.

 

https://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/index/issuelist.php

Take your pick of programs that interest you.