Hi everybody. I've been following a simple tutorial that deals with NES programming. I don't know too much about assembly except what this tutorial taught me, but I'm quite familiar with programming in general, and the tutorial was very understandable to me.
I recently found NESHLA, which looks like it allows for much easier development than pure assembly. It's also nice that it includes a portable compiler.
Basically, what I'm looking for is some kind of tutorial that will help me get started with NESHLA. I've been checking out the sample file which seems perfectly understandable, but it would be nice if I had some kind of explanatory text to go with it.
So, does something like this exist? I haven't found too many things myself, and the website is apparently outdated. There's a programming manual there, but it's more of a reference guide than a comprehensive text.
Anything is appreciated. If something like this doesn't exist, maybe you have some good links to other tutorials what will work for a person like me? Looking up what opcodes do is one thing, but actually learning how to be able to structure an application written for the NES is something else. That's mostly what I'm looking for.
In any case, thanks!
NESHLA tutorials
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NESHLA has only been out for 2 years or so, so there is probably no one who is compfortable enough with it to make a tutorial about it, but who knowns ? Maybe there is one arround that nobody knowns about ?
At least I personally disliked NESHLA when I tried it, for some reason. Plain ASM is not the most confortable to start with, but once you have done the first step and have made your own template files it's allright. Also you should carefully comment each routine, what it is precisly doing, and what register/variables it will modify/relies on to do its work, because not doing that correctly can result into horrible mess and loss of time (I personally have experienced that). Aside of this small trap, there is nothing really wrong with assembly as far I can tell.
Unfortunately I don't know about any wonderfull ASM tutorial either, there is many decent ones but they are somewhat old. I know Celius was working on writing one, but now I also know he's somewhat busy and he don't have regular internet acces for awhile so his tutorial will probably not be released until one year or so (I just say this like that, he would give more information himself I guess). His tutorial was supposed to be both very newbie friendly and very technical at the same time, as currently most docs are either one or the other but rarely both.
At least I personally disliked NESHLA when I tried it, for some reason. Plain ASM is not the most confortable to start with, but once you have done the first step and have made your own template files it's allright. Also you should carefully comment each routine, what it is precisly doing, and what register/variables it will modify/relies on to do its work, because not doing that correctly can result into horrible mess and loss of time (I personally have experienced that). Aside of this small trap, there is nothing really wrong with assembly as far I can tell.
Unfortunately I don't know about any wonderfull ASM tutorial either, there is many decent ones but they are somewhat old. I know Celius was working on writing one, but now I also know he's somewhat busy and he don't have regular internet acces for awhile so his tutorial will probably not be released until one year or so (I just say this like that, he would give more information himself I guess). His tutorial was supposed to be both very newbie friendly and very technical at the same time, as currently most docs are either one or the other but rarely both.
Maybe you could give me the link to these somewhat old tutorials? I'd like to read them. I think that it's indeed a good thing to be friendly to newbies while at the same time remaining technical, because I'm sure most people who are actually interested in assembly also won't be shy of learning about the intrinsic details. I know I'm not.
I think it's actually probably the best thing to teach people about good assembly code practices, since anybody can learn what the opcodes do quite easily, but it takes experience to not make a big spaghetti dish out of your game.
I think it's actually probably the best thing to teach people about good assembly code practices, since anybody can learn what the opcodes do quite easily, but it takes experience to not make a big spaghetti dish out of your game.