50 replies to this topic

[MayDay]

Greetings space monkeys!!

Okay, now that I have your attention, allow me to warp your brains slightly further. I have recently joined a dodgeball league, and saw the movie Dodgeball, which was pretty funny. I then began to think to myself... "you know, there was never an Atari dodgeball game..."

Which leads me to here and now. I busted out my old Atari systems, played a few games on the Jr. model and actually opened up my woody to fix it (wish I had known how to do this when I was 10 and my Mom finally busted out with the $2 at a garage sale to buy it!). It's because of the left button never working why my favorite Atari games are ones like Vanguard and Pole Position (where the button is only slightly needed for stuff like... BRAKES! who needs 'em though?).

Back to the point, I have registered here, and read through a lot of the forums (I ran across the tutorials by Andrew Davie, very helpful!). I have some programming knowledge, namely C++, because I don't think Visual Basic counts. I would like very much to create my game, but have a few concerns.

1. Do you guys (and gals!) think the movie using a generic name will cause copyright problems? While it would be named the same thing, it wouldn't have to be based on the movie. However, if that didn't matter, I could also like a different level or a sequel that featured a "extreme degredation" mode that has wrenches laying around on the court.

2. How long is it going to take me to get a grasp of coding 6502? Is it reasonable to expect to have a game made in a year if you know absolutely nothing going in? If not, how long maybe?

3. I have read through the tutorials as mentioned above, and a year after they were posted, some of the links seem to be broken. Specifically, I need an emulator and the DASM assembler to begin playing around. I was unsuccessful in my attempts to download either. Thoughts on where to find them?

4. What is the etiquette for code? I see you guys share it pretty freely and help one another with code suggestions. Is it okay to steal code from say, a basketball court and alter it slightly into a dodgeball court? If someone sends you code suggestions, do you need to credit them somewhere on the game or in the forum? I have no problems sharing my code (not that it would be useful to anyone) but want all the credit for my game for myself! (and maybe offline friends who actually know assembler code). I'm a poopy-pants like that.

5. Finally (I promise), how much does it cost to produce a game when you're done? I have seen the krocodile carts, which appear to download code from your computer into a "game" cartridge so you can play it. Also, I've seen people talk about having new games for sale through Atari Age, do they produce them for you if you agree to let them sell or something?

If you can answer any or all of my questions, or just want to call the newbie a few names, pray proceed.

-Jason

PS- would a Volkswagon on the court be a little much? If you can dodge traffic, you can dodge a ball! Violence, exclusion, and degredation rule!

[Nathan Strum]

I can't help you with the programming, but a good game to look at would be RealSports Volleyball. The layout looks like it would lend itself very well to dodgeball.

As for the name, dodgeball is a generic term, so as long as the logo or artwork didn't borrow from the movie, it should be safe.

[Nukey Shay]

MayDay said:

1.  Do you guys (and gals!) think the movie using a generic name will cause copyright problems?  While it would be named the same thing, it wouldn't have to be based on the movie.  However, if that didn't matter, I could also like a different level or a sequel that featured a "extreme degredation" mode that has wrenches laying around on the court.

Dodgeball by itself, nope. Dodgeball + the image of wrenches = a slightly grey area tho (as that implies a plot point of the movie). Still, the idea of them prosecuting somebody over it based on that alone are pretty remote...it's their own money they'd have to give to the lawyers, after all

Dr. Evil said:

One Million dollars!

Seriously, that also would depend on how much of the production is done by you (also taking into account how much your time is worth). Also how big the run is - and how much public interest exists. But all of these worries are still putting the cart before the horse.

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I have seen the krocodile carts, which appear to download code from your computer into a "game" cartridge so you can play it.

Close...your computer is used to upload a game rom file to devices such as the Krockodile or Cuttle Cart. This speeds up game development, since you wouldn't need to actually burn an eprom chip every time you wanted to test a bit of assembled code. But since emulation handles rom code pretty faithfully, even that is not something that should be a concern until you are in the final beta stages of the project (just to double-check things on real hardware and work out any kinks).

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Also, I've seen people talk about having new games for sale through Atari Age, do they produce them for you if you agree to let them sell or something?

That's up to the Al's. It also depends on the nature of the project.

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PS- would a Volkswagon on the court be a little much?

* see "grey area" above

[MayDay]

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People don't generally initially learn to drive with the desired goal of winning the Indy 500 on the back of their mind icon_wink.gif Try to keep things in that context. Programming is an art form. Don't rush it.

I think you missed the part where I said my favorite game was Pole Position!

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Google is your friend.
http://www.google.co...ch?hl=en&q=dasm
http://www.google.co...q=2600 emulator

I should have explained this better... it wasn't that I couldn't find them, it's just that after downloading and unzipping, I couldn't get them to work correctly. The DASM program seems to have no executable file and only text help files. The Z26 I've downloaded only seems to give me the version number (Version 2.13-X86_CORE) when I try to open it.

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All depends on what you want to write. If a kernal from another game is used (even if slightly modified), it's a hack...no matter how much the supporting program code is original.

I understand the difference... but how is a hack percieved? If it's a totally different game with parts of the same code do people still look down on it so to speak? In other words, would people have a lot less interest in playing/buying my game? On the same level, if I use the "layout" from the volleyball game Nathan suggests, but wrote the code myself, is this virtually the same as stealing code?

I don't mean to be offensive in any way, would just like to do this for fun. I would much rather have direction and guidance before I begin so I'm not going back later and trying to revise/pick out code. Thanks again for your help so far guys, this website is totally awesome.

-JD

[vdub_bobby]

MayDay said:

I should have explained this better... it wasn't that I couldn't find them, it's just that after downloading and unzipping, I couldn't get them to work correctly.  The DASM program seems to have no executable file and only text help files.  The Z26 I've downloaded only seems to give me the version number (Version 2.13-X86_CORE) when I try to open it.

You use both z26 and DASM from the command line (MS-DOS prompt) in windows. Well, you can use z26 from Windows also. Here's how:

to use DASM, put your source code in the same folder as the dasm executable and type this at the DOS prompt (if your source code is a file named source.asm):

dasm source.asm -f3 -osource.bin

The -f3 flag is necessary! If your source is compilable, then it will create a file called source.bin. Read the DASM documentation (that text file you wrote of - it will tell you most of what you need to know).

To use z26 in Windows, you have two options:
Option 1 is from the command line. This is handy if you already have the DOS prompt window open to compile your code; put the z26 executable and the supporting file (SDL.DLL) into the same folder as your ROM image (i.e., source.bin) and type this:

z26 source.bin

Read the .pdf documentation of z26 for help, it is really good documentation.

The other way to use z26 is, in Windows, to drag the icon of a ROM image onto the icon for z26.exe. That should start it right up.

Also: you might try the new Stella emulator (see the front page of AtariAge) - the StellaX front end is very easy to use. :)

Hope this helps - it is no fun to hassle with emulators and compilers when you are trying to code or play games - I know what that's like!

[kisrael]

Nukey Shay said:

Dr. Evil said:

One Million dollars!

Seriously, that also would depend on how much of the production is done by you (also taking into account how much your time is worth). Also how big the run is - and how much public interest exists. But all of these worries are still putting the cart before the horse.

Doing it all yourself greatly increases the difficulty in getting it done. The AtariAge route is much easier. You'll get something like a $5 royalty on a $20-$30 game., and a ton of help promoting it as well as doing the production including a nice label and manual. (boxes are still tough though) On the other hand, if you have the geek cajones to burn your own carts, and know how to keep costs down but still promote it, you could do that and I guess make double the money. Or so. You should be able to sell between 25-75 carts w/ AA I think.

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I have seen the krocodile carts, which appear to download code from your computer into a "game" cartridge so you can play it.

Close...your computer is used to upload a game rom file to devices such as the Krockodile or Cuttle Cart. This speeds up game development, since you wouldn't need to actually burn an eprom chip every time you wanted to test a bit of assembled code. But since emulation handles rom code pretty faithfully, even that is not something that should be a concern until you are in the final beta stages of the project (just to double-check things on real hardware and work out any kinks).

Look for a supercharger on ebay...a lot cheaper, and can handle up to 4K roms with no hassle.

It's a huge kick to see your game working on real hardware and a real TV, so even though an emulator will handle most of your dev cycle, you want something like a supercharger or Krok or Cuttle to show it off to people and yourself.

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Also, I've seen people talk about having new games for sale through Atari Age, do they produce them for you if you agree to let them sell or something?

That's up to the Al's. It also depends on the nature of the project.

See above. I hope I'm not speaking too much about the financial arrangement, I don't think it's a big secret, but it might vary from game to game but I think my experience was pretty typical. But Al is reallly supportive and helpful during the dev process.

Anyway, all this is getting really ahead of ourselves...you need to start getting into the guts of it before your fellow coders take you seriously...it's very rewarding to start seeing your own stuff work in an emulator, even little baby demos and experiements, and then you'll be able to ask even better questions.

Anyway, I'd really start thinking about the gameplay mechanic. I wonder if you could try something like NES "Super Dodgeball" (see Seanbaby's page on that....) If you ignore the guys on the outer rim, just make it a 3 on 3 battle, and make it so that each player is limited to a specific vertical region of the screen, you'd be well within the limitations of the system (with 2 player graphics, a ball, and 2 missiles) -- have it so that a defending player can press the fire button at JUST the right time to catch the ball...it might help to have some kind of high speed inertia or something so its not too easy and predictable...

Just some thoughts. Good luck...it's tough but rewarding

[Cybergoth]

Hi there!

MayDay said:

2.  How long is it going to take me to get a grasp of coding 6502?  Is it reasonable to expect to have a game made in a year if you know absolutely nothing going in?  If not, how long maybe?

A year will be very tight if you don't have any previous experience in assembly programming. It's not just another programming language, but also completely different concepts like any higher level programming. More or less you'll need to learn everything from scratch again.

It helps a lot if you're already familiar with binary math and binary logic though.

Also you're on 2 tasks at once: Learning 65XX assembly and learning how to tame the TIA chip.

Well, I don't say one year is an impossible goal, but it'll require a lot of time, dedication and the will to bite through. 2-3 hours every other weekend definitely won't do it.

MayDay said:

4.  What is the etiquette for code?  I see you guys share it pretty freely and help one another with code suggestions.  Is it okay to steal code from say, a basketball court and alter it slightly into a dodgeball court?  If someone sends you code suggestions, do you need to credit them somewhere on the game or in the forum?  I have no problems sharing my code (not that it would be useful to anyone) but want all the credit for my game for myself! (and maybe offline friends who actually know assembler code).    I'm a poopy-pants like that.

Depends. As Nukey would say, it's all about fair usage. I always try to credit everyone who helped me with a significant part of the game in the manual. If someone contributes larger parts of code or music or level design, it is common practise to additionally send out a free copy of the game.

If one wants to use a kernel of another homebrew game, the original author is usually asked for permission. There's two other homebrews out there that are based on the Piero Cavinos Oystron kernel with his blessing for example - Still resulting in totally different games, SCSIcide has nothing in common with Oystron...

Exchange of smaller code snippets is common practise in the community. All help that is offered here or on [Stella] is offered for "free". Again it's nice if you credit the person for their help. (by mentioning them in the source or manual, depending on the "impact" of the help)

Still, after all of this, the game is still considered "your baby", unless you really team up with someone else - but that is your descission.

Greetings,
Manuel

[batari]

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A year will be very tight if you don't have any previous experience in assembly programming. It's not just another programming language, but also completely different concepts like any higher level programming. More or less you'll need to learn everything from scratch again.

I have to agree with Manuel here. I think that a more realistic time frame might be similar to what kisrael said above, since he says he didn't know the 6502 beforehand but he seems to have put in a lot of effort and was committed. I read the design log on Flapping, very interesting.

I'm willing to bet that most of the programmers here, like me, learned 6502 long ago on an Apple II, C-64, Atari 800 or what not, so the learning curve wasn't as steep. but the TIA is still tricky with all the bit twiddling and cycle counting you need to do, and I'm finding it harder than anything I've done on the Apple or C-64. but then again, people here have figured out a lot of the hard stuff already and have shared it with us, gratis. I've borrowed some tricks, for example I just copied and used example code for asymmetrical playfields, random number generator, and the six digit score to name a few, which I think you can do to some extent without calling your game a hack.

Also, I've found that people here are very helpful with advice. That is, as long as you aren't trying to pay someone $500 to program a game for you or something like that.

[vdub_bobby]

batari said:

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A year will be very tight if you don't have any previous experience in assembly programming. It's not just another programming language, but also completely different concepts like any higher level programming. More or less you'll need to learn everything from scratch again.

I have to agree with Manuel here. I think that a more realistic time frame might be similar to what kisrael said above, since he says he didn't know the 6502 beforehand but he seems to have put in a lot of effort and was committed. I read the design log on Flapping, very interesting.

I dunno. I did a bunch of A8 basic programming in the late 80s and did a bunch of C++ in college in the late 90s along with one class in x86 assembly - but that was the extent of my programming experience before I started trying stuff on the 2600 last November. It does take a lot of time, though, and a lot of careful careful coding. A one-cycle mistake can really screw things up!

[batari]

Well, I guess that knowing another assembly language, even x86, would give you an advantage at learning 6502. The instruction set, registers and addressing modes are a little different, but the bit twiddling and branching is basically the same across the board.

I'm doing a lot of stuff in ARM assembly now, and I found it very easy to learn based on what I already knew with the 6502 stuff, the only significant difference is that you can put condition codes on any instruction and not just branches... But anyway, that's off topic.

[kisrael]

batari said:

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A year will be very tight if you don't have any previous experience in assembly programming. It's not just another programming language, but also completely different concepts like any higher level programming. More or less you'll need to learn everything from scratch again.

I have to agree with Manuel here. I think that a more realistic time frame might be similar to what kisrael said above, since he says he didn't know the 6502 beforehand but he seems to have put in a lot of effort and was committed. I read the design log on Flapping, very interesting.

I would describe myself as "moderately commited" -- I wasn't THAT obsessed. It was like around a year in all.

I had just the tiniest bit of very very rusty solaris ASM under my belt....6502 is pretty straightforward, just make sure you use the right syntax for numeric constants (that burnt me more than anything else) and then right down how to do a numeric comparison....that was the biggest thorn in my side.

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I'm willing to bet that most of the programmers here, like me, learned 6502 long ago on an Apple II, C-64, Atari 800 or what not, so the learning curve wasn't as steep.

Yeah...I missed that. SOme of the sharper coders definately have their roots on the 80s 8bits.

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e TIA is still tricky with all the bit twiddling and cycle counting you need to do, and I'm finding it harder than anything I've done on the Apple or C-64.  but then again, people here have figured out a lot of the hard stuff already and have shared it with us, gratis.  I've borrowed some tricks, for example I just copied and used example code for asymmetrical playfields, random number generator, and the six digit score to name a few, which I think you can do to some extent without calling your game a hack.

Absolutely. Skipdraw is another good example.

Really, a kernal is so small and tiny that anything besides taking someone elses wholesale and modding it isn't a "hack".

ANd while I had a passable flickering kernal on my own, Paul Slocum wrote mine for me on a silver platter. So maybe I should keep my trap shut...

[Cybergoth]

Hi there!

kisrael said:

I would describe myself as "moderately commited" -- I wasn't THAT obsessed.  It was like around a year in all.

But then again Joust Pong is a reasonably simple game for a beginner. Doing it in something like Blitz Basic would probably take less than a weekend.

Greetings,
Manuel

[kisrael]

Cybergoth said:

kisrael said:

I would describe myself as "moderately commited" -- I wasn't THAT obsessed.  It was like around a year in all.

But then again Joust Pong is a reasonably simple game for a beginner. Doing it in something like Blitz Basic would probably take less than a weekend.

You're absolutely right....actually I chose it because I knew from prior experience it was pretty easy, and within the 2600 2-players and a ball capability.

[Cybergoth]

Hi there!

kisrael said:

You're absolutely right....actually I chose it because I knew from prior experience it was pretty easy, and within the 2600 2-players and a ball capability.

Same here for choosing Gunfight as my first project

Greetings,
Manuel

[MayDay]

Well, about a week after I have got here, I have finally got my emulator working correctly (z26). However, I use XP on my computer and can't seem to be able to access DOS... or is this incorrect? I also have my original Windows disc for ME, but need to run XP for our home's wireless network. Any suggestions on how I should run my assembler short of partitioning (sp?) my hard drive or buying a new computer? I know this will be much more fun after I'm actually able to play with the code instead of just reading through it. Also, thanks to everyone for your help so far. I have several mockups I have done, I may post one in the next week or so.

-Jason

[vdub_bobby]

MayDay said:

Well, about a week after I have got here, I have finally got my emulator working correctly (z26).  However, I use XP on my computer and can't seem to be able to access DOS... or is this incorrect?  I also have my original Windows disc for ME, but need to run XP for our home's wireless network.  Any suggestions on how I should run my assembler short of partitioning (sp?) my hard drive or buying a new computer?  I know this will be much more fun after I'm actually able to play with the code instead of just reading through it.  Also, thanks to everyone for your help so far.  I have several mockups I have done, I may post one in the next week or so.

-Jason

You might try the latest version of Stella - IMO it is much easier to use and set up. Haven't tried it on XP, though.

Not as handy for developing as z26 though.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

MayDay said:

However, I use XP on my computer and can't seem to be able to access DOS... or is this incorrect?

The DOS emulation of XP is good enough for DASM or DiStella. Just open the console (Start, Run..., cmd).

[MayDay]

yeah, I've tried that already, here's what happens...

[/img]

I'm sorry if I didn't add this picture correctly. It's only open for a fraction of a second. I was able to get a screen capture of it to read, and it just says fatal assembly error and closes. What do I need to do differently?

Thanks,
Jason

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[Nukey Shay]

What exactly are you typing? For some reason, Dasm isn't finding what it is that you want to assemble, it doesn't know the assembly method, or it doesn't know how the assembly should be saved. It could be as simple as renaming the "dodgeball atari game" folder to a different name that has no spaces...possibly one that only uses 8 characters (how about just "dodgebal"?).

[batari]

The error shown will happen when you run dasm without any parameters. This can also happen when you double-click on the dasm executable from Windows instead of running it from the command prompt. Since I don't see the command prompt in the window, this is probably what happened.

Dasm is not a Windows program, so it's not going to have menus, buttons to click, or anything of the sort, and you must first start the command prompt (as Thomas suggested) before you can compile anything with dasm, by clicking on the start button, then click Run, then type cmd in the window and click OK. Then once you are in the command prompt, change to the directory containing dasm. Forgive me if you already know how to do this, but in case you're not sure, type E:, then cddodgeba~1dasmdasm22010dasmbindos, then you are ready to compile.

Supposing you have existing source code in the same folder as the dasm executable, say dk.asm downloaded from the minidig (http://www.qotile.net/minidig/) you would compile in dasm by:

dasm dk.asm -odk.bin -f3

If successful, all dasm says is "complete." Then try out the newly created dk.bin in Z26 to see if it worked.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

MayDay said:

I'm sorry if I didn't add this picture correctly.  It's only open for a fraction of a second.

In "Run..." type "cmd", then the console opens. There you enter the dasm command line as described above.

[MayDay]

Well, I've tried a million different things... I've tried dragging DASM into DOS, which gives out the screen above (probably still the closest i've got). I've also tried typing variations such as these.

dasm combat.asm -f3 -ocombat.bin
dasm combat.asm -f3 -osource.bin
dasm source.asm -f3 -combat.bin
dasm source.asm -f3 -ocombat.bin

Perhaps a better approach is what I SHOULD be typing.

All of these and the other combinations i've tried all say 'dasm' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

It's pretty obvious I haven't used DOS in a while... it took me forever to remember how to get back to the C prompt. It's also probably obvious that the file name I'm trying to assemble is a copy of the combat code I found in the forums, combat.s is the actual file name I believe (what is an s file? I assume it stands for source, but have never seen it before). I can open the file and view the code in Notepad.

Anyway, sorry for being a pestering nuisance, it's just really frustrating tyring to get these programs to work so I can actually begin!

Once again, thanks to everyone for your help so far.

-Jason

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Try dasm combat.s -f3 -ocombat.bin

But make sure, that the combat.s file is in the same directory as dasm.exe.

.s is just a suffix like .asm (which means nothing special).

[MayDay]

Yeah, I should have put that as one of the examples... I've tried it already, as well as any/all variations I could think of, and tried it again just to make sure. And yes, they're both in the same folder. I hate people who beg for help with their computers. Okay, not really, but also know how annoying it can be sometimes. I really, really appreciate the people who've taken the time to try and help.

-JD

[Thomas Jentzsch]

MayDay said:

Yeah, I should have put that as one of the examples...

So, what is Dasm saying, when you use my example? There should be some error message.