12 replies to this topic

[lord_mike]

It seems that the Atari Age Explosion didn't just wipe out the servers... did it take out al the Batari Basic developers, too? There haven't been any postings since the explosion... is everyone alright?

Just checking! Is there anybody out there?

[Nukey Shay]

It is the middle of June. The season of baseball, bbq, bikinis, and beer.

[atari2600land]

Right now I'm working on a few things, but they're secret. (I bet all of you are saying "yay" sarcastically right now.)

[jbs30000]

Now that I finished my last final, and will have 5 weeks off, I'll be working on finishing a game I started a few weeks ago. I'll make a post when I'm finished.

[Impaler_26]

Yep, during summer people have other things to do than programming games. I'm sure we'll see more activity here by the end of summer....

[Random Terrain]

I have been working on a program, off and on, and found most of the answers I needed by searching this forum, but I was just about ready to ask a question when I saw this thread.

MausGames got pissed off at me a little while ago because he seems to take everything he reads literally and seems to want us all to be serious 24 hours a day. I don't know if that has anything to do with him not posting in this forum.

Unless you're something like a Nazi child molester, I don't care what your political or religious beliefs are or how much you joke around. It has nothing to do with programming or playing games. If you need help and I can help, I'll help. I hope other people are the same way.

[MausGames]

You didn't piss me off, at all. If I came off as a jerk, you're right, it's because I'm too serious. I lost my sense of humor somewhere in Ohio...

Anyway, I'm always here to help! If I'm pissed about anything it's that you are taking way too long to post the goods. I wanna see what you are working on, and I thought you of all people would have the patience and verbosity to give us a step-by-step of your project development.

I never posted the example you requested for a couple reasons - I've been volunteering really long hours at the local Salvation Army store ( plug-n-play games out the ying-yang, with ps1 mixed in...no nes or atari figures ) and I think the way you are doing things is the best way.

I fully intended to post, sorry to be so flakey, but I haven't done anything with bB since a few days before you asked. The fire has dwindled, but not died. I'll get back into things soon, maybe a 1.1 would do the trick

[Random Terrain]

MausGames, on Fri Jun 13, 2008 11:36 PM, said:

You didn't piss me off, at all. If I came off as a jerk, you're right, it's because I'm too serious. I lost my sense of humor somewhere in Ohio...

Anyway, I'm always here to help! If I'm pissed about anything it's that you are taking way too long to post the goods. I wanna see what you are working on, and I thought you of all people would have the patience and verbosity to give us a step-by-step of your project development.

I never posted the example you requested for a couple reasons - I've been volunteering really long hours at the local Salvation Army store ( plug-n-play games out the ying-yang, with ps1 mixed in...no nes or atari figures ) and I think the way you are doing things is the best way.

I fully intended to post, sorry to be so flakey, but I haven't done anything with bB since a few days before you asked. The fire has dwindled, but not died. I'll get back into things soon, maybe a 1.1 would do the trick

That's good to know. I have the beginnings of a game working, but no bonus items yet or whatever enemies I might dream up. I'm trying to come up with stuff I'll like, but I haven't thought of anything yet. I didn't want to waste people's time with an unfinished blob of nothing, but maybe I should post the bin file and let people take a look at what I have so far and someone will be able to poke my brain with a stick and I can get this game finished.

[RedBeard]

I sure am glad the bB folks are still here. I just finished downloading and installing the bB v1 about 30 minutes ago as per the bataribasic_dot_com web site. I think I tried the earlier version (V .34?) a while back because it's on my C: drive. Obviously, I moved on to something else (moving / changing jobs etc.) because I still have no program to show.

I noticed that using bB and Crimson I can write in ASM, so I think I'm going to use that combination and go the regular (non-basic) way. After I see what's going on in assembly as normal, maybe then try out many of the BASIC features. First things first (otherwise they'd be second or something), I'd like to get myself a "hello world" / working kernel going. Baby steps, don't you know.

><>RedBeard

/* Okay, I'm off to the '2600 Programming For Newbies' forum */

[RedBeard]

Okay, folks, I'm totally confused. (yeah, yeah, "again? you ask) Help, please...

Last night I set up the bB / Stella / Crimson editor. Today I copied and pasted the code from lesson 12 in SeaGtGruff's Atari Programming Workshop into Crimson. When I Ctrl+2 (>tools >compile bb program) I get this error: Unrecognized Character ";" and Unrecognized Keyword: 6502.

So somewhere in the "can you help me with assembly programming" thread I found that bB want assembly to be between "asm" (indented) and "end". When I do that I get this: Unresolved Symbol List [CR/LF] scoretable 0000 ???? ® [CR/LF] Fatal Assembly Error: Source Is Not Resolvable. Then the Stella just give me a blinky but blank screen with constant high pitched beeping.

><>RedBeard

/* It appears to compile and work with the command line DASM and all that (Yay!), but I was hoping to eliminate some of those extra steps like launching a COMMAND window and "cd .." ing over to C:AtariVCS etc. */

processor 6502

               include "vcs.h"

               include "macro.h"


;------------------------------------------------------------

               SEG

               ORG $F000



Reset



  ; Clear RAM and all TIA registers



               ldx #0

               lda #0

Clear           sta 0,x

               inx

               bne Clear



StartOfFrame



  ; Start of vertical blank processing



               lda #0

               sta VBLANK



               lda #2

               sta VSYNC



               sta WSYNC

               sta WSYNC

               sta WSYNC               ; 3 scanlines of VSYNC signal



               lda #0

               sta VSYNC          



  ; 37 scanlines of vertical blank...

           

               ldx #0

VerticalBlank   sta WSYNC

               inx

               cpx #37

               bne VerticalBlank





  ; 192 scanlines of picture...



               ldx #0

Picture

               SLEEP 20           ; adjust as required!



               inx

               stx COLUBK



               SLEEP 2            ; adjust as required!



               txa

               eor #$FF

               sta COLUBK



               sta WSYNC



               cpx #192

               bne Picture





   



               lda #%01000010

               sta VBLANK          ; end of screen - enter blanking



  ; 30 scanlines of overscan...



               ldx #0

Overscan        sta WSYNC

               inx

               cpx #30

               bne Overscan



               jmp StartOfFrame




;------------------------------------------------------------

           ORG $FFFA



InterruptVectors



           .word Reset          ; NMI

           .word Reset          ; RESET

           .word Reset          ; IRQ



     END

[batari]

bB does not require asm headers or directives in its code blocks. Just start typing instructions and you're all set.

[RedBeard]

Thank you. Glad to know that I don't need to surround it with asm...end or anything. I'm sure it's Operator Error.

The funny thing is, the examples are working if I use Crimson to make and save them then use DASM in command line to compile them. Then I navigate to Stella and use its menu to open the example. (I need to be careful that I add the ".asm" extensions and such, but it all seems to work.)

The problem, I think, is in the file names and arguement passing. Crimson Editor does not automatically put any extensions as far as I can tell. (That's fine because it's used for so many kinds of programming, understood.) Then I try to send DASM a file_name.asm and it has a cow. The error log keeps telling me it dosn't understand a ";". [see below] And apparently if you send Stella a nonexistant file, it just gets all blinky and stupid looking, pretending to be running something.

---------- Capture Output ----------
> "C:\AtariVCS\bB\2600bas.bat" C:\AtariVCS\bB\kernel_L15
(1) Parse error: unrecognized character ";"
2600 Basic compilation complete.
DASM V2.20.07, Macro Assembler ©1988-2003
bytes of ROM space left
2829 bytes of ROM space left
Complete.

> Terminated with exit code 0.

So anyway, any help is appreciated. I am doing my 'baby steps', and closing in on the dream that has eluded me since 1982. (I actually played Atari in about 1979 at some friends - of - freinds' house, but by '82 I was totally hooked.)

><>RedBeard

/* And somehow I have some file_name.asm.asm files floating around. Yikes! */

[batari]

For what you are writing, it would be better to just use DASM, but if you want to use bB, you are on the right track - it sounds like you are just missing the "asm" command to tell bB when you are using inline asm. Here's your code modified to work with bB (untested)

  asm
Reset

; Clear RAM and all TIA registers

  ldx #0
  lda #0
Clear sta 0,x
  inx
  bne Clear
StartOfFrame
; Start of vertical blank processing
  lda #0
  sta VBLANK
  lda #2
  sta VSYNC
  sta WSYNC
  sta WSYNC
  sta WSYNC; 3 scanlines of VSYNC signal
  lda #0
  sta VSYNC

; 37 scanlines of vertical blank...

  ldx #0

VerticalBlank sta WSYNC
  inx
  cpx #37
  bne VerticalBlank

; 192 scanlines of picture...
  ldx #0
Picture
  SLEEP 20; adjust as required!
  inx
  stx COLUBK
  SLEEP 2; adjust as required!
  txa
  eor #$FF
  sta COLUBK
  sta WSYNC
  cpx #192
  bne Picture
  lda #%01000010
  sta VBLANK; end of screen - enter blanking
; 30 scanlines of overscan...

  ldx #0
Overscan sta WSYNC
  inx
  cpx #30
  bne Overscan
  jmp StartOfFrame
end