Hi all,
I got in to retro gaming a couple of years back, having had a Beeb as a kid in the early-to-late Eighties.

Inspired by the homebrew games on this site, and those in the back pages of Retro Gamer magazine, I've been meaning to learn 6502 assembler so I could write a simple game.

Well, I've finally got started. With some encouragement from Samwise I've started a dev diary over at
http://www.retrosoftware.co.uk/wiki/index.php/JSnakeDevDiary

I started writing it part way in to coding.. and it's a bit big, but hopefully readable. There are some code snippets and screenshots alongside my ramblings.

Sam, I can't find a way to create new pages (do I have permission or can you create me some)?? I'd like to split the dev diary up a bit as others have in their diaries. Please could you help?

At this stage, I should say a BIG thankyou to SteveO for his MODE2 screen address calculation and vsync /irq routines, tricky for his Random routine (both of which can be found in http://www.retrosoftware.co.uk/wiki/index.php/SampleCodeLibrary
.. I've more or less nicked them wholesale and call these routines constantly.

Without these routines, I would've struggled a lot more than I have done. The sample code, dev diaries and these forums are a great resource and I'm grateful to all the contributors!

When I'm feeling a bit braver and this thing is vaguely resembling an actual game, I'll put up the source code and an ssd file. Til then , I'll update the diary as and when I make reasonable progress.

Comments and feedback are welcome. I'm keen to improve my assembler skills, and better my understanding of the hardware.

Cheers,

jbnbeeb

Nice to see you've gone public, jbnbeeb.

I'm sure the clever ppl here will be giving you more pointers than you can shake a stick at.

You should have permissions to create new pages ... there are some detailed instructions available here.

Give me a shout, if you're still having problems with it.

Sam.

Yay, this is what we like to see - more victims (er, I mean volunteers) stepping up to the plate!

Very best of luck and well done on maintaining such a detailed dev diary - that will prove to be a really useful source of reference to others, no doubt about it!

thanks both. I shall endeavour to keep it up. The good work on here is certainly an incentive to keep coding!

Hi everyone,

I've just updated my dev diary for JSnake. I've uploaded a work in progress video to Youtube. I still haven't solved the speed-up bug, which I have discussed in separate thread (http://www.retrosoftware.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=73&t=763)..

Link to latest diary entry:
http://www.retrosoftware.co.uk/wiki/index.php/JSnakeDevDiary280412


Diary index:
http://www.retrosoftware.co.uk/wiki/index.php/JSnakeDevDiary

That's lookin' reet smart - it's certainly nice and nippy!

In fact, it's probably already faster than the devilishly-quick Hyper Viper!

And again, just wanted to re-echo my thanks for continuing to maintain a dev diary!