Where to start?

1magus · Post by **1magus** » Wed Jan 20, 2010 7:31 am

Does anybody have any suggestions where I should start learning Genesis Programming? Should I learn C or ASM, start on Genesis or another console? Kind of a beginner programmer but I am a 3D modeler so I'm no stranger to computers

Chilly Willy · Post by **Chilly Willy** » Wed Jan 20, 2010 7:57 am

Learn both C and assembly. You can use them both on the Genesis. Look at Stef's Mini Devkit on the forum here for a Genesis devkit with C compiler. If you use linux, I've put out a devkit derived from it that can also be used for the 32X.

bastien · Post by **bastien** » Wed Jan 20, 2010 7:02 pm

if you can read the french look at my web site .
I think it's a good point for start,
here is the link : http://sega4ever.power-heberg.com/

1magus · Post by **1magus** » Wed Jan 20, 2010 7:27 pm

What of sprite/ map making?

Chilly Willy · Post by **Chilly Willy** » Thu Jan 21, 2010 1:22 am

Go through old threads on the Tools forum to start. That'll give you an idea of what's available.

dtech · Post by **dtech** » Fri Jan 22, 2010 5:25 pm

Depends on what you already know and feel familiar with. I remember back in the days (probably a decade ago) I wrote my own map/tile convertor that could optimize to as many tiles as necessary (by finding the closest looking ones), and used glitchy sasm (remember having problems with >128k programs), genecyst/kgen and famous sega2.doc

Those were all tools to start with, along with extreme interest Nowdays you have incomparably better documentation (thanks to reverse engineering to extreme amounts), as well as better tools and compilers.

For sprite animation, there's a cool tool for PC: GraphicsGale (http://www.humanbalance.net/gale/us/), free version of which has all features needed for basic sprite creation and animation.

For very advaced character animation (like in contra (large enemies), vectorman, exosquad, etc..), that I like a lot, there are some different tools needed because characters are composed from bunch of sprites and motion envelopes. Don't know any good tools for that. Was allways wanting to create such an animation tool, but never did (as usual)