5 ms·

I love writing 6502, or maybe just 8bit assembler in general . I got hooked after writing some NES games. Writing efficient (NOT “performant”) code that should

I love writing 6502, or maybe just 8bit assembler in general . I got hooked after writing some NES games. Writing efficient (NOT “performant”) code that should not be possible is very addictive. Stay away if you value your time

sethaurus 6y ago
Could you expand on the distinction between "efficient" and "performant"? Sounds interesting.
- selcuka 6y ago
  Not the OP but I believe efficient means the least number of bytes in this context.
- CyberRabbi 6y ago
  “Performant” is meaningless marketing speak to just mean “it run fast.” Efficient has a more precise meaning
  - sthnblllII 6y ago
    When marketing people make up silly words for things that already have a word just make up even more ridiculous words to make fun of them.
- VLM 6y ago
  If as a human C compiler you unrolled a loop, that would be performant, but because you're space limited you do not unroll the loop and that is (memory) efficient. Lets say you had a 6x8 character cell or a really small sprite for graphics, unrolling the loop would make a copy about 2x faster but would cost about 40 bytes or so.
dopeboy 6y ago
So I've written assembly in college and love NES games. If I want to get into writing NES games, where's the entry point for me? What kind of learning curve am I looking at?
- CyberRabbi 6y ago
  If you’re competent at x86 assembly, picking up 6502 will be pretty easy. This is a decent jumping point. Check out the optimizations link after you’ve cut your teeth a bit: https://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/6502_instructions https://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/6502_instructions Tools are everything here. Get a good emulator/debugger and assembler.
dspillett 6y ago
I cut my programming teeth on an Acorn Electron[1][2]. BBC Basic came with a built-in multi-pass assembler unlike the other 8-bits at the time where you'd need to pay for that, so it was easy to tinker by integrating a little assembler for things that were too slow in interpreted BASIC. I used it for things like sprite drawing & movements, and tinkered with many other bits & bobs. Ah, the good old days... I later used Z80's[3] at Uni for hardware projects, again programmed in assembler (via EEPROM which was less convenient, but we were practising for "embedded systems" development) which was fun too. The only thing close to the BBC Basic experience was Delphi which supported inline assembly, which I used once to do some bitmap manipulation faster than I could convince the compiler to manage. [1] a budget version of a BBC Micro Model B for most intents & purposes [2] and later a BBC Master Series [3] they basically started life as knock-off 8080s, the 8-bit chip that lead to the 8086/8088, so it'll feel familiar if you've done any old x86 assembly

sethaurus 6y ago

Could you expand on the distinction between "efficient" and "performant"? Sounds interesting.

selcuka 6y ago
Not the OP but I believe efficient means the least number of bytes in this context.
CyberRabbi 6y ago
“Performant” is meaningless marketing speak to just mean “it run fast.” Efficient has a more precise meaning
- sthnblllII 6y ago
  When marketing people make up silly words for things that already have a word just make up even more ridiculous words to make fun of them.
VLM 6y ago
If as a human C compiler you unrolled a loop, that would be performant, but because you're space limited you do not unroll the loop and that is (memory) efficient. Lets say you had a 6x8 character cell or a really small sprite for graphics, unrolling the loop would make a copy about 2x faster but would cost about 40 bytes or so.

dopeboy 6y ago

So I've written assembly in college and love NES games. If I want to get into writing NES games, where's the entry point for me? What kind of learning curve am I looking at?

CyberRabbi 6y ago
If you’re competent at x86 assembly, picking up 6502 will be pretty easy. This is a decent jumping point. Check out the optimizations link after you’ve cut your teeth a bit: https://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/6502_instructions https://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/6502_instructions Tools are everything here. Get a good emulator/debugger and assembler.

dspillett 6y ago

I cut my programming teeth on an Acorn Electron[1][2]. BBC Basic came with a built-in multi-pass assembler unlike the other 8-bits at the time where you'd need to pay for that, so it was easy to tinker by integrating a little assembler for things that were too slow in interpreted BASIC. I used it for things like sprite drawing & movements, and tinkered with many other bits & bobs. Ah, the good old days... I later used Z80's[3] at Uni for hardware projects, again programmed in assembler (via EEPROM which was less convenient, but we were practising for "embedded systems" development) which was fun too. The only thing close to the BBC Basic experience was Delphi which supported inline assembly, which I used once to do some bitmap manipulation faster than I could convince the compiler to manage. [1] a budget version of a BBC Micro Model B for most intents & purposes [2] and later a BBC Master Series [3] they basically started life as knock-off 8080s, the 8-bit chip that lead to the 8086/8088, so it'll feel familiar if you've done any old x86 assembly