nesdev.org

Hello, new member and NES dev n00b here.

I've found the Nerdy Nights tutorials really handy, but it uses nesasm. As I understand it, ASM6 is much better than nesasm. Does it have comparable tutorials somewhere that I can look up?

Also, is there an official ASM6 page? The version I have of ASM6 is 1.51 and I have no idea if there's a more recent version.

Thanks!
Shawn

I tried to use ASM6 and port my NES game over there, and even failed to write a ASM6 program that even compiled. It's a whole 'nother world to me I guess, using ASM6. I don't find ASM6 any more useful, I find it the opposite actually. NESASM3 is perfectly fine, I'd use it unless you know they you need spomething better. The only real advantage I want of ASM6 is +/- labels, but it's not worth it.


http://home.comcast.net/~olimar/NES/

That's Loopys main page, and he made ASM6. Download it there, should be the most recent. The help file is there, read on how to use it. Other than that, I know nothing else besides it's pretty difficult and I wouldn't worry about switching assemblers before you have a great idea on how to even program for the NES or how it works. Unless you can port the tutorials to ASM6, you should stay with NESASM3.

The assembler you start with shouldn't make much of a difference. In the beginning we rarely use much of the assembler's special features. Because of that I doubt that Nerdy Nights has a lot of NESASM-specific code. The only problem in this case though is that ASM6 uses different syntax for a few things, different from all other assemblers (that's actually one of the bad aspects of it).

A while ago I posted some ASM6 templates hoping that more people would start with it rather than NESASM. Those templates have the basic structure of the ROM and can already be assembled, all you have to do is fill in the actual game code. Beginners should start with the NROM template before trying anything with mappers.

As long as you pay attention to the syntax differences (mostly "lda [], y" in NESASM vs "lda (), y" everywhere else) and ignore unneeded assembler directives (".bank" and such), you should still be able to follow Nerdy Nights even if you use ASM6. You can always ask here about things that don't appear to work, and we'll tell you what you have to change.