On Sunday 07 July 2002 08:20 pm, Brian ("Roagie") wrote:
> Hello all! I'm new to the list, but not to the cause. I've been collecting
> for years and years and have finally gotten to the point where I want to
> crack this 2600 nut.
Welcome to our world! It is a large nut with a hard shell, but the rewards
are well worth the work getting through it.
> Also, what is X contributing to the process in the above LDA statement [LDA
> playf0,X]?
> [snip]
> I'm also seeking any baby-step docs similar to Kirk's redline demo... aka
> liberally commented source code for newbies! :)
I may be presuming too much here, but it appears that you are new to assembly
language, given that absolute indexed addressing is not familiar to you.
That's ok - my Euchre game is my very first 8-bit assembly project, and I
only had minor exposure to 16-bit assembly several years ago. The statements
are not the challenge, but putting them together. After a while, you'll
start to see combinations of statements that accomplish what you want.
At any rate, for introductory docs, I recommend the following:
1. Assembly in One Step (http://www.geocities.com/oneelkruns/asm1step.html),
a nice overview and reference.
2. Richard Mansfield's book _Machine Language for Beginners_. While I don't
agree with all of Mr. Mansfield's opinions about which statements to avoid,
he does give a detailed and well-explained introduction to 8-bit assembly
language.
3. Nick Bensema's Atari Programming Page (http://www.io.com/~nickb/atari/),
which has several docs and tools.
To find info on specific topics, just dig through The Dig as you have been
doing. When I needed a six-digit score routine, I searched using The Dig and
found one Bob Colbert posted to the Stella list.
(My apologies if you are not an assembly beginner and all of this is old hat.
It was just the impression I got.)
I hope this helps! Just keep posting your questions as you go. (In fact,
this could contribute well to a general newbie guide...)
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