Anyone care to check something for me. . . .

[Razzie.P]

I hate when I'm swiping/scrolling and accidentally click on someone's name and looks like I'm being nosey or doing the stalker thing 

[TrekkiesUnite118]

3 minutes ago, Razzie.P said:

I hate when I'm swiping/scrolling and accidentally click on someone's name and looks like I'm being nosey or doing the stalker thing 

Literally happens every time I try to open a thread and go to the latest post on my phone.

[+frankodragon]

It would be like women who thought Bob Saget would be clean during one of his standups like in Full House.  Until their jaws dropped what came out of his mouth.

[CPUWIZ]

34 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

Oh I know first hand what you're getting at having been in your position before with people this special.  It almost makes me wonder if that's a good reason this continues still as it's a free private comedy routine.

It is actually not cool to make fun of people who have issues, they either don't recognize that they have them, or are incapable of understanding they exist.

[WavyGravy]

Right. So, I got a little prickly when Kirk tried to paint Kulor as a bad teacher. Teachers and trainers get paid, and Kulor offered technical knowledge to him for free and he couldn't even feign gratitude. Anyway, as I suspected, Kulor's not a bad teacher, Kirk is just a shitty student. I did have some bumps along the way, but instead of giving up and then whining about it, I used that gooey thing in between my ears and figured out a solution. Here's my report on how this went.

PREFACE
I'm a total newbie when it comes to this stuff. This is the first time I've ever used a terminal like this, actually, so I think I'm starting out about as raw as one can.

HOW IT WENT
 

1. Install msys2: https://www.msys2.org/
So, pretty easy. It's exactly the same as installing any other Windows program.

Make sure you either have or also get the gcc and make packages in msys2. If you're on Linux you can skip this step.
Also pretty easy. If you read on the website that Msys2 comes from, they show you how to use pacman in the CLI to grab these things. I didn't know where to get make from, though, so I just went ahead and used pacman to grab the MinGW toolchain group. If you navigate to the Package Index tab, you can go to the Groups tab and grab multiple packages at once, and it has a really handy search function so you can see which groups have the tool you need in them. It even gives you a text box that has the pacman command already formatted for you, so you can just cut and paste! I like that, that's good design! You should also use pacman to install Git. You can do that by typing "pacman -S git"

2. Clone or download this repo: https://github.com/Optiroc/libSFX

OK, so here's where things went a little off the rails for me. I kept getting error 127 no matter what I did, and after googling for awhile, I was no closer to solving the issue. However, I remembered that AI exists. I copied the error output into the Bing Copilot, and it was able to walk me through getting things up and running, and it was actually really easy once I found out what was happening. LibSFX either didn't clone correctly for me or is missing some stuff. In order to "make" libSFX, I had use the "git init" command in the libSFX directory. Once that was done, it started throwing a different error, 128, once it got to trying to make cc65. This was because there was no makefile in the cc65 directory, and in fact, there was nothing at all in the cc65 directory or any of the other tool directories! However, all of these tools are available on Github, and you can either use the CLI to clone them into the appropriate directories, or download them as ZIP files and copy the contents into the appropriate folders. Once I had done that for all the tools, I ran the make command and it worked!

3. In msys2, navigate to the folder where the repo is, type make

As I said, once I'd gotten past the above hurdle, it worked!

4. Navigate to one of the examples in libsfx, type make - this is how you build a ROM.
Can confirm, it's as easy as that. I built the Hello test ROM and tried it out in an emulator and it worked. Navigating folders in Msys is a little different than what I'm used to, as I grew up on DOS, but just make sure you don't forget the slash in front of the drive letter, use forward slashes, and that you don't need the colon in front of the drive letter either. Otherwise it works just like cd on DOS, and use "ls" instead of "dir."

Aside from step 2 tripping me up for a good while before siccing the AI on it, this was pretty painless. I'm sure there's tons to learn about actually using this tool, but there's nothing wrong with what Kulor set out as steps. If I had to set this up on another machine, I think I could get it done in maybe 10 minutes, now that I've done it once. Now I just need to figure out how to use these tools beyond building pre-existing ROMs. Maybe I also just did something wrong in step 2, in which case, I'd love to know what I did so I can avoid the same mistakes in the future.

[Kirk_Johnston]

So, in order to get going for the non-programmers and/or people who are new to this, just put the shribble in the mcriver and base the colve with the polvic, turn it thricely if it doesn't pajib thusly. Then, once you've pucklipped the slanger--you might need to expel the spitlo before that will work mind you, which you can find by a Google search and using the lemson code attribute there--that will plunge the software onto your drive for future droning. At that point, calaspe the frollip again a couple of times, which most beginners have probably done a few times anyway, even those who've never buttled the klip before, and it should loge. Final step--and this part got me at first--wongle the plongle a few collometros down, which you do by dragging the mouse over to the santo ponko falis, and that's you done. Simple really. If anyone needs any further help--although I think you should be fine if you just put in the time and effort--just give me a shout. I'll get you sorted.

[WavyGravy]

I'm not a programmer and I am new to this. I figured it out by applying some effort, less than an hour of my time, and a few brain cells. The amount of effort you just put toward coming up with gibberish words for your latest pathetic excuse was probably more than it would have taken to get things running.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Honestly Kulors post was enough to get me off my lazy butt and playing around with MSU-1 FMV. I'll probably make a thread at some point going over how it stacks up against other systems and how accurate it is to what an actual SNES CD would be like for FMV.

Edited November 19, 2023 by TrekkiesUnite118

[Razzie.P]

1 hour ago, WavyGravy said:

I built the Hello test ROM and tried it out in an emulator and it worked. 

Congratulations!  In one evening, you've managed to officially create more actual, real content for SNES than...er... 🙄

[jeffythedragonslayer]

3 minutes ago, Razzie.P said:

Congratulations!  In one evening, you've managed to officially create more actual, real content for SNES than...er... 🙄

If you're talking about Kirk, this is hyperbole.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Just now, jeffythedragonslayer said:

If you're talking about Kirk, this is hyperbole.

What actual SNES content has Kirk made that actually ran on an SNES? And begging others to make it for him doesn't count.

[WavyGravy]

 

8 minutes ago, Razzie.P said:

Congratulations!  In one evening, you've managed to officially create more actual, real content for SNES than...er... 🙄

 This feeling welling up inside of me... is this...

✨ Authority? ✨

In all seriousness, I wouldn't say I've made anything, nor would I be so presumptuous as to call myself a developer. I also wouldn't say that Kirk has, either, though, so I guess there's that.

[KulorXL]

4 hours ago, WavyGravy said:

OK, so here's where things went a little off the rails for me. I kept getting error 127 no matter what I did, and after googling for awhile, I was no closer to solving the issue. However, I remembered that AI exists. I copied the error output into the Bing Copilot, and it was able to walk me through getting things up and running, and it was actually really easy once I found out what was happening. LibSFX either didn't clone correctly for me or is missing some stuff. In order to "make" libSFX, I had use the "git init" command in the libSFX directory. Once that was done, it started throwing a different error, 128, once it got to trying to make cc65. This was because there was no makefile in the cc65 directory, and in fact, there was nothing at all in the cc65 directory or any of the other tool directories! However, all of these tools are available on Github, and you can either use the CLI to clone them into the appropriate directories, or download them as ZIP files and copy the contents into the appropriate folders. Once I had done that for all the tools, I ran the make command and it worked!

I thiiiiink if you clone the repo with submodules, you can avoid that hassle? I'm not honestly super amazing at git magic myself, but cc65 being empty sounds like a missing submodule problem. I should've specified that part, since I think if you just grab it as a .zip on the link I provided (as opposed to either using CLI git or a frontend like Github Desktop, which is what I use) then you don't get submodules.

Here's what cloning looks like in Github Desktop...

And here's the cc65 folder with a bunch of stuff after that finishes:

Github Desktop is a pretty good program to have too, because you definitely want source control of some sort, and I personally can't stand CLI programs and avoid them when possible.

Anyway, glad you were able to get it going!

 

EDIT: It's probably also worth putting out there that I think some of the examples that come with libsfx actually don't build correctly, so for the record, if an example doesn't build, try a couple others. libsfx is far from perfect, there's actually a number of pretty serious flaws it has that you definitely run into once you start getting seriously into dev work. But, the Mouse example works, and puts a sprite on the screen that you can move around, and really that was all I needed to get started with SNES coding.

^This was my first graphics demo, which was basically a weekend project once I had libsfx going. Oh how far we've come...!

Edited November 19, 2023 by KulorXL
clarification

[WavyGravy]

Thanks for the guide! I always wondered how this stuff worked and now I get to play with it! I've got three days off starting tomorrow, so I think I know how a good chunk of it's getting spent now.

 

I tried cloning libSFX both ways (Zip and CLI) and got the same problem, but I probably missed an argument in the git command to include the submodules when using Msys. I'll look into a frontend, though, that sounds like it'll be harder to mess up since I'm still quite unfamiliar with the CLI. Not a huge issue, though, once I (well, the AI, really) figured out what the problem was, brute forcing it worked just fine and didn't take very long anyway.

 

I'm poking around in the tools now and there's some cool stuff in there, and the examples are annotated pretty well. Once I learn some more 6502 (I'm working through Easy6502 right now) I think these will be fun to play with!

[KulorXL]

1 minute ago, WavyGravy said:

Once I learn some more 6502 (I'm working through Easy6502 right now) I think these will be fun to play with!

The nice thing about the SNES is the CPU is kinda like an expanded 16-bit 6502, so there's a lot of things it makes really easy that are a bit more verbose on a vanilla 6502. Figuring out the memory mapping (hirom, lorom etc.) is probably the biggest hurdle, but once you've got an idea how that works, I really think it's a lot easier than an 8-bit 6502 in a lot of ways.

If you decide to get serious about SNES stuff, I'll shoot you a link for the snesdev discord if you'd like, there's a lot of very experienced people there and we're always eager to help people get going with it.

[CPUWIZ]

5 hours ago, Kirk_Johnston said:

Nonsense 

 

[roots.genoa]

7 hours ago, Razzie.P said:

I hate when I'm swiping/scrolling and accidentally click on someone's name and looks like I'm being nosey or doing the stalker thing 

THIS. In particular, it often happens when I want to jump to the original post someone is replying to, since you have to click on the small arrow all to the right of the quoting header, and not on the header itself (which leads to the profile). 😒

 

 

Also, PVSnesLib's creator told me yesterday that the guy who created NESmaker is trying to do the same for the SNES. But maybe you already knew about it.

[+Biff Burgertime]

12 hours ago, CPUWIZ said:

You guys would laugh even harder, if you could see what I can, which is pages of editing for just this post.  Every iteration. 🤣

Yeah one day on NESdev I noticed the small text that indicates when a post has been edited, also includes the number of times it's been edited. I think the highest number of edits I saw on a post of Kirk's was 27.

[Tanooki]

13 hours ago, CPUWIZ said:

It is actually not cool to make fun of people who have issues, they either don't recognize that they have them, or are incapable of understanding they exist.

And I agree with that, but also reading as much as I have so far from this case, unless you have something in your view panel, it seems more like straight up attention seeking, narcissism, and something bordering between sheer laziness/entitlement/incomptence?  If he is on meds or whatever, or should be, then yeah totally.  Not that any latitude should be given, but the show should just be promptly shut down and ended as is as feeding it isn't good which has gone on too long.

[Tanooki]

Now that I've caught up, that's impressive someone could figure out how to go through those steps and get that going.  I have kind of a set way to figure out stuff that has been a problem going back to school.  Reading and just doing doesn't usually work depending on the subject, math and logic would be a pair of those don't work things.  I have to do, like sit with someone and use my hands and guidance to do it.  Reading what I have here, then seeing the issues about submodules failing, and having to grab this, or type this chain of letters, numbers, and symbols is where it falls apart.  I really really do not want to sound like i'm pulling a kirk which is why I'm not begging for help, demanding someone else do it, or the rest.

 

I would love nothing more than a SNES maker to pop up, a friend of mine some months ago registered a copy of NES maker for me because I wanted to have a solid tool to start making sprites and background tiles with -- and it confuses the shit out of me.  I can't even get that so called 'easy to use app' to cooperate enough to make let alone save something useable and I have no fucking clue why and thinking about it after a couple months is infuriating me at this rate again.  I detest when someone says it's easy and sure, maybe it is, if you're a coder, the same weirdness you can get in video game design.  A horribly challenging game comes out, developer has blinders to do due to all the in house people learning it over 100s of hours not realizing it's a bastard to a newbie and will drive people off, that's kind of where I set with such things.  I'm good with remembering the technical bits, the history definitely, other oddball trivia, but when it comes to the actual step by step workings train wreck ensues and then I get a mix of being pissed and depressed as the will is there, but some life long link to application is largely broken.

 

Perfect example of an early hang up, mysys is an easy download sure, but wtf is this clone stuff?  I went to the github website, there are no releases for whatever that is there.  And then what's this about adding more modules, that from my fuzzy memory seems to parrot linux a bit needing some make module to make files you want to compile I guess?  Ehh?!

 

Maybe in part my asshole of a CSCI101 college prof is to blame on this, no idea, but it freaks me the fuck out despite wanting to make something, I just seemingly can't.  That's why I defaulted to working on visuals, and now so called stupid easy nesmaker I can't even make a damn graphic in drives me up the wall.

 

I'd be happy learning 6502 if I could make heads or tails of it just seemingly since I think some could easily be applied to 65C16 on the SNES couldn't it?

Edited November 19, 2023 by Tanooki

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Ok Clone is a feature of git. Git is a source code version control system. It allows you to make a repository for your project, commit stuff to it, allow others to clone it, make branches, submit changes, etc. When KulorXL said clone the repo, he meant use git to effectively download it. So you need to have git installed on your system. Then on the github page near the upper right corner is a green button that says "Code" on it. Click that and in the first tab is the different ways you can clone it. You can simply copy the HTTPS url and do the following git command:

git clone <URL HERE>

 That will copy down the repository and put it in a folder with the repositories name.

[jeffythedragonslayer]

14 hours ago, Tanooki said:

I'd be happy learning 6502 if I could make heads or tails of it just seemingly since I think some could easily be applied to 65C16 on the SNES couldn't it?

Pretty much everything you program on the 6502 will also run on the 65c816.  Except not the illegal opcodes lol.

Edited November 20, 2023 by jeffythedragonslayer

[CPUWIZ]

3 hours ago, jeffythedragonslayer said:

Pretty much everything you program on the 6502 will also run on the 65c816.  Except not the illegal opcodes lol.

Speaking of IOP's, if you have not seen it, this is pretty good:  https://www.pagetable.com/?p=39

[jeffythedragonslayer]

16 minutes ago, CPUWIZ said:

Speaking of IOP's, if you have not seen it, this is pretty good:  https://www.pagetable.com/?p=39

That acronym makes me think of illegal pancakes 

[+bent_pin]

5 hours ago, CPUWIZ said:

Speaking of IOP's, if you have not seen it, this is pretty good:  https://www.pagetable.com/?p=39

Such a better explanation than other sites on the same subject. Thank you for sharing!