Make GAMES for the ATARI 2600 with these FREE tools | 8Blit
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- Опубликовано: 7 авг 2024
- In this episode we look at the basic tools that will make up the development environment for programming and testing a game for the ATARI 2600. We’ll install the Stella emulator, along with the dasm 8-bit assembler. Afterwards we’ll use a code snippet to compile and test in the emulator.
#atari #atarivcs #atari2600 #atari7800 #atari50 #retrogaming #programming #gamedev #atarihomebrew #atarigames #6502 #assemblylanguage #homebrew #tech #vintage #retrogamer
Let's have a look at how the code works! In our next episode we examine the Assembly language code we just compiled and see exactly what it does!
• Your first code for th...
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Code for this episode on 8Blit GitHub Repository
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Stella - A multi-platform Atari 2600 VCS emulator
stella-emu.github.io/index.html
dasm - 8-bit Macro Assembler
dasm-assembler.github.io/
This episode provides answers and examples for the following questions.
What software can you use to make games for the Atari 2600?
What can I use to emulate the Atari 2600?
How to download and install the Stella emulator?
How to load an Atari 2600 ROM in the Stella emulator?
What is an Assembler?
What Assembler can be used for Atari 2600 games?
How to download and install the dasm assembler?
How to assemble a ROM with the dasm assembler?
00:00 Introduction
02:06 Installing Stella emulator
04:14 Installing dasm assembler
05:37 Writing some code
06:25 Assembling and running the code
07:30 Outro
This might be a good starting point to learn Atari 2600 development cause Atari just recently announced the Atari 2600+! It's a tiny hardware update to the Atari 2600 Console that comes with an HDMI output and can support 7800 games! Homebrew Dev just got more interesting!
It's a great starting point, build something awesome!
Well is it actually Atari 2600 hardware or is it just another raspberry pi emulation box with a fake 2600 casing 🤨
I had my VCS in '79. I was looking at the Wikipedia list of dates of game releases. We had a ton of games (we played a lot of Atari together!). I liked Adventure and Superman a lot. I played Pole Position, Defender, Asteroids, and Missile Command over and over. I liked Atlantis and Pitfall, River Raid and Star Raiders. I did not like 3D Tic Tac Toe one bit, and my mom loved Circus Atari. I played a lot of Combat and other 2-player games with my sister & cousins and friends.
I had forgotten just how many games we had for the Atari until I started going through a list of them and watching a few game compilation videos! I don't know how my parents afforded them at the time
Megamania and Space Invaders were my goto games. The 2600 was the first video game system I purchased with my own money. Before that I had a Sears Tele Games (Atari) Super Pong unit that I hounded my parents to get me for Christmas. That machine changed my life and led me into the world of computers and programing. From a TRS-80 all the way to where I am now (and still playing games in my 60's ). I often wish I could go back in time and show my younger self the games that I would be able to play today. Watching systems grow over the years has been amazing. Thanks for these videos, I'm only on my second one but will work my way through them all today. Again, thank you!
I think I played Megamania at a friends house a long long time ago. Thanks for watching, I hope you enjoy the other videos, and feel free to subscribe if you haven't already!
I'm a long time (1983) Atari 8-bit computer owner & programmer (BASIC, TurboBASIC XL, Action!, and lately C vis cc65), and slightly longer-time VCS owner and lover.
Probably my favorite 2600 game was and is Adventure. Lousy bat.
I remember typing in pages of 1 and 0's from the Atari 800XL manual, and copying some bits of code that I think we pulled from an Antic magazine. Good times, unless you missed a digit! The more I think about the games, the more my favorite seems to change. Maybe Pitfall 1 or 2, Maybe Kaboom, Burger Time, so many great games!
For me, I absolutely loved Pitfall! I loved the colors and the Tarzan call when grabbing on a vine. One game, I am still obsessed with, which doesn't have anything to do with Atari, was an arcade game that I probably purchased several times in quarters, lol, called Jungle King. I found a great short documentary on its creation and the copyright Infringement suit to Tarzan, prompting its character and name change, but hoping to find a working console someday, so I can play it again, as an adult.
“Perfect, our screen is blue and everything is good.”
No Windows user, ever.
lol, very true. I wish I have chosen blue on purpose!
Thanks, excellent information, can't wait to try to make a classic!! Back in the day, Combat and Pac-Man did it for me 😁
Hope you enjoy it!
I'm excited to see where this goes. I started learning 6502 Assembly a few weeks back, the only difference for me is that I use Notepad++.
Thanks Peter! I'll be going into more detail regarding other IDE's for targeting 6502/2600 development in another video. Just not sure when that will be at the moment!
Thank you a lot. Regards from Brazil!
You are welcome!
Yes I definitely want to make my own games for both my Atari 2600 VCS and my Stella emulator. I have played various games on both systems, yet I believe that there are always more games that can provide more fun.
So true, there's always room for more games and more people keeping the 2600 alive and kicking!
this is absolutely a basic answer, but Yars' Revenge is my favorite 2600 game. Adventure and Haunted House are also pretty high, and Secret Quest could definitely make it up there if i play it more.
Pitfall's cool too but i haven't played it in years
It's funny that a lot of the games people seem to love went under my radar for a long time. Growing up I didn't play Yars, Adventure, Haunted House, or Secret Quest. Now when people mention them I get to look them up and try them for myself!
Thanks for the tips. I was thinking about getting into 2600 homebrew at some point
Sorry for the late reply! I say jump right it and start playing around with the system. Creating your own homebrew is definitely a possibility!
Thank you so much.
Your little snip-it of setting up DASM just made up for the past 2 days of me trying to execute that file.
that's awesome, glad you found it useful!
Wow, I live in Australia, 55yo and haven't seen that add in 40+ years. What a blast from the past. Especially the Dad playing night driver. I would look at that old guy and think "Whats people that old know about computer games?" Now im that old man, and the answer is more than you may think.!
I love watching the old commercials, brings me right back!
Just discovered this video! Thanks! Really helpful and easy to follow.
Thanks Gabriel, appreciate the kind words!
What a great channel. Dude-thank you!
Thanks Kevin, I really appreciate it! Hope you continue to enjoy the videos!
very cool! I will be here looking for updates and learn more about Atari development! congratulations by the channel....
A late reply, but a reply none the less! Thanks for checking out the channel and reaching out, really appreciate the support!
@@8Blit a reply is a reply indeed! Thank You for sharing the info, is a great channel and i started doing some test with your guides, and thanks for take a minute to answer me!! hoping to see more soon!!
Popeye i just loved that game, and zaxxon
The reason the system (Telegames), and games were renamed for Sears, is that anything sold in Sears must have their badge(s) on them, outside of some brand names they approved.
I believe Montgomery Ward did the same.
That's not unlike most electronics as well, one dishwasher model could be sold under several brands.
@@8Blit Indeed.
I also know a "QC Trick" companies use, like RCA/GE did (I knew an RCA tech). If they make a new TV model, if it was one that worked well, and produced high quality results, it got an RCA badge. If the system was lackluster, it got a GE badge instead. I also made potentiometers for a company many years ago, and they did the same thing. If the output's linearity was good, we put our name on it. If it was exceptional, it got our name, and a "High Performance" tag on it as well. If it was passable, it got the name of the company that was acquired by where I worked.
Many thanks! Back in 1984 I played Star Voyager from Imagic a lot! Best wishes from Germany, Ralf
Greetings from Canada! Star Voyager was a great game!
Thank you soooooooooooooooooo much
Glad it helped!
Circus Atari, Jungle Hunt and Pitfall. Played a lot in High School (1982)...then moved on to Commodore 64 (my first "computer"). At age 59, I'm ready to get back to my roots. I have a Computer Science degree (1982-1986) so we did 1 year of Machine Language coding before moving onto Pascal...I'm ready to get back into 8-bit/Machine Language Programming.
Hi Scott, that's awesome, I hope the channel helps you out on your journey and would love to see what you come up with!
I must have missed it, but where is that chunk of test code you pasted into notepad at? Really excited to give this a try.
Hi, glad you're excited to jump right in! All the code for the episodes are on my GitHub here github.com/kreiach/8Blit
The code for this episode in particular is in the 's01e02 - Generating a Stable Screen' folder.
@@8Blit awesome thanks. i found another hello world clump of code and after rolling my face on the keyboard enough i managed to get it to compile :) Definitely looking for more info on it. I've made a number of 2600 controller couplers like this new one ruclips.net/video/ewqtcNAT4us/видео.html that is a coupler without a game.. so now it's time to stop the RnD for couplers (robotron, spy hunter, etc) and figure out some ways to make actual games :)
DOOD!
I clicked on DASM and it just immediately shut down. It didnt even really start up. It just briefly flashed and boom, it was gone.
dasm is a command line program that will exit as soon as it's done assembling your code. If you're using windows and double click it, it will open up a command window and close it right away. If you click on your search bar in windows and type 'cmd', it will return a match for 'Command Prompt'. Click on that to open. From there you'll need to navigate to to where you have your dasm program to run it.
As an alternative, in a later video I cover the Atari Dev Studio (free) which is a plug in for Visual Studio Code (free). It comes with dasm, the stella emulator, and allows you to code and build your Atari programs without the need to use the command line. You can find it here. ruclips.net/video/fZu8dxS1ARw/видео.html
If you go that route, you can come back to this video to try programming from the start and follow along that way.
I started off teaching the command line method so as not to hide the details on how your code is turned into a ROM that's usable on the 2600, or within an emulator.
Is windows the appropriate OS to develop for Atari2600?
I would say any OS you have is an appropriate OS to develop for the the Atari 2600. In this particular video, the software we use is the Stella emulator and the dasm compiler. Both are available for multiple other OS's. If you use a version of the dasm compiler for your OS then you should have no problems following along with the examples on this channel. If you're using a different compiler the syntax may differ.
@@8Blit I think I have a good excuse to buy a Windows laptop! :) I use Linux and Mac every day butI miss Windows. Thanks for the advice!
dasm keeps crashing wont fully launch on windows 11
I suspect your executing it via the windows explorer. Dash is a console application and will look like it's closing prematurely if you try to double click it in windows. You should be executing it from the command prompt. If you search for 'command' in windows you can open the command prompt. If you have some trouble with that then please check out my video titled 'coding faster with the Atari Dev studio'. That will show you how to setup visual studio code for doing atari 2600 programming.
@@8Blit I see thanks
Debugger?
The dasm compiler doesn't include any run time or debugging capabilities. For this you'll have to use the debugging features within the emulator you're using. In Stella, you can enter debugging mode by clicking ` on your keyboard. I'll be creating a video on debugging in an upcoming video. Probably next month.
Just to let you know, I'm filming the debugging episode this weekend and it should be out about a week after that!
The background music is distracting and it’s hard to hear what you are saying.
No doubt, this was my second episode. If you stick with them they get much better! Thanks for watching!
Hello, I use the dasm in linux and when I run dasm 8blit-s01e02-background.asm -o8blit-s01e02-background.bin -f3 I get the folloing errors:
--- Unresolved Symbol List
vcs.h 0000 ???? (R )
startOfFrame 0000 ???? (R )
--- 2 Unresolved Symbols
I have included the vcs.h and checked it works with another test code.
Any thoughts?
I updated that code a couple of days ago. I'll have a look at that after work and fix it up for you. Sorry about that!
Thanks, I have made the correction on GitHub. In the last jmp, I had 'startOfFrame', it should only be 'startFrame'.