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Atari 5200 Programming Tutorial Series


Ryan Witmer

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I thought it would be fun to do a live 5200 programming thing on my twitch channel, where I start from scratch and put together a simple game.  It would be an educational thing for anyone who's interested in this sort of stuff.  I'll also post the videos to youtube after the broadcasts.

 

I'm planning to run these sessions on Fridays at 4PM US Pacific time.  The first episode will be this week on my twitch channel at https://www.twitch.tv/phasercatgames

 

Just wanted to give a heads-up to anyone who might be interested.

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2 minutes ago, Ryan Witmer said:

I thought it would be fun to do a live 5200 programming thing on my twitch channel, where I start from scratch and put together a simple game.  It would be an educational thing for anyone who's interested in this sort of stuff.  I'll also post the videos to youtube after the broadcasts.

 

I'm planning to run these sessions on Fridays at 4PM US Pacific time.  The first episode will be this week on my twitch channel at https://www.twitch.tv/phasercatgames

 

Just wanted to give a heads-up to anyone who might be interested.

Very cool, and thank you!

 

Do you have any plans to subsequently make them available via YouTube or similar?  I'm interested in following along, but with the time that the stream goes live at there's not much chance of that being possible.

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This is very generous.  Like others have said, I hope they will be available for later viewing.  I'm in the middle of a move and won't be able to unpack the 5200 for some time.  I have been meaning to make a 5200 game, but programming down on the metal like that is new to me.

 

I haven't found any resources that have made it digestible.  Maybe there's just not a way to do it and learning 6502 is just going to be a dog no matter.  I did watch that session where you fixed the doors, though (sadly have not gotten to try any release since), and that was pretty followable.

 

Hopefully this enables a renaissance of 5200 homebrews like the 7800 seems to be experiencing right now.

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That would be wonderful, have always been interested in wanting to do some kind of programming for the console, and just like MrTrust said, never could come up with the right resources to get started. Had actually learned a very little 6502 stuff from books roughly 15 to 20 years ago, but could never find the info on how to get started with it.

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Ran the first stream last night.  Had some issues, but got a lot of useful information in there.

 

Unfortunately, I made a dumb mistake and wasn't able to completely get the system going.  Later last night I figured out what I did and the next stream will have a full breakdown and explanation of my stupid error.

 

Here's the full recording for anyone who missed it:

 

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On 9/24/2022 at 11:04 AM, Ryan Witmer said:

Ran the first stream last night.  Had some issues, but got a lot of useful information in there.

 

Unfortunately, I made a dumb mistake and wasn't able to completely get the system going.  Later last night I figured out what I did and the next stream will have a full breakdown and explanation of my stupid error.

 

Here's the full recording for anyone who missed it:

 

Learning from mistakes is part of the process and I see this being a learning opportunity for those of us following along with the series.

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Here's a link to last night's video:

 

 

This time around, the most exciting thing was getting a hardware sprite on the screen and using the joystick to move it around.

 

Also, I'm attaching the code from this video, so if you want to screw around with it you can.

5200lesson2code.zip

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Also appreciate these greatly, and thank you for making them.  They're helping to awaken some long-dormant sections of my brain, which in turn is giving me some ideas.

 

One big thing: the fact that you're using a symbolic assembler makes this so much easier to understand.  Seeing seemingly-infinite repetitions of loading a value into the accumulator and/or registers followed by having an opcode do something with it doesn't make clear why a program is doing what it's doing.  However, the practices you're showing, naming conventions you're using, etc. really do help tremendously in that regard.  You also explain well at every step.

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You know, @Traxx PMed me and invited me to join him on Discord and wanted to step me through stuff like this, I'll bet that with enough training and studying that I could perhaps learn and eventually master how to convert both A8 (those games that work within the 5200's limitations) and 2600 games to Big Sexy, hey just think of it, I won't have to bother most of you with requests anymore as I already have the entire A8/XL/XE library of titles as of 2020.

 

I've said for years here on AA that titles like Carnival, Bug Attack, Planetary Defense, and others that fit in within  the 5200's limitations just SCREAM to be brought over our console too, we've seen Paul Lay's and @glurk's brilliant works it's time for me to jump in!!!

 

BTW, I'll be watching @Ryan Witmer's series of tutorials on YouTube and downloading the videos so I watch them as I am at hand with the process of making Big Sexy great again on my Windows 7 laptop!!! 

 

I tried to accept the invitation and it (the link on Discord) told me that it wasn't valid, but since I'm thinking about resigning from my work at the end of the calendar year (due to both the added stress caused on me from having to pay a higher rent as a result of working while everyone else at my apartment complex lives off the system and gets tons of perks) that maybe it'll help relax me a whole lot more, and all of my fans have known for decades once I start to learn something it becomes easier to master on my own after that. The possibilities are endless after that, I just need to be stepped through the first few tidbits, then THE GLOVES ARE OFF after that.

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12 hours ago, BIGHMW said:

You know, @Traxx PMed me and invited me to join him on Discord and wanted to step me through stuff like this, I'll bet that with enough training and studying that I could perhaps learn and eventually master how to convert both A8 (those games that work within the 5200's limitations) and 2600 games to Big Sexy, hey just think of it, I won't have to bother most of you with requests anymore as I already have the entire A8/XL/XE library of titles as of 2020.

You know what you have that others don't?determination to succeed,every programmer has that quality,I'm learning 5200 for you.

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On 10/16/2022 at 6:11 PM, BIGHMW said:

but since I'm thinking about resigning from my work at the end of the calendar year (due to both the added stress caused on me

Sure wish we all had that luxury!  Always nice to read stuff like this after busting my ass for 11 hours at work today.  Yeah - if only I could grift off people around me and stay home all day and still get paid.  That would be awesome.  As an added benefit, I could probably stop having to take drug tests and get background checks to maintain a security clearance, all for the privilege of working for a living. 

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