Amiga ASM docs?

1magus · Post by **1magus** » Mon Dec 06, 2010 7:51 pm

I was told to look for these to learn ASM for the Genesis, anybody know of some good documents to help me learn ASM?

Chilly Willy · Post by **Chilly Willy** » Mon Dec 06, 2010 8:45 pm

AmiNet has all the Amiga goodness you could ask for. It is very helpful to learn 68000 programming on a 68000 based computer before moving to a console since computers have a full OS to help, whereas consoles have absolutely nothing - if you want to do something like print to the screen, you have to do every last bit of that yourself on a console.

However, that's probably not the easiest way to learn 68000 assembly - try Easy68k first. It has an editor, assembler, and simulator all in one program. You really don't need to go as far as working on Amiga assembly unless you plan to write for the Amiga. Easy68k may be all you need.

http://www.easy68k.com/

1magus · Post by **1magus** » Mon Dec 06, 2010 11:38 pm

Chilly Willy wrote:AmiNet has all the Amiga goodness you could ask for. It is very helpful to learn 68000 programming on a 68000 based computer before moving to a console since computers have a full OS to help, whereas consoles have absolutely nothing - if you want to do something like print to the screen, you have to do every last bit of that yourself on a console.

However, that's probably not the easiest way to learn 68000 assembly - try Easy68k first. It has an editor, assembler, and simulator all in one program. You really don't need to go as far as working on Amiga assembly unless you plan to write for the Amiga. Easy68k may be all you need.

http://www.easy68k.com/

Oh ok thanks so do you think I should make sprites in GIMP? I remember reading a long time ago about a tutorial to get it set up for Genesis development so you don't use colors that it cannot display but I could never get it to work.

powerofrecall · Post by **powerofrecall** » Tue Dec 07, 2010 12:11 am

I've personally had good luck with mtpaint but you shouldn't get ahead of yourself if you're new to 68000.

If you know C, I'd suggest coding in that first. I don't know 68000 very well yet myself and have found it's very easy to use Stef's gcc kit to code in C rather than fuss about and spend lots of time hand-crafting routines in 68k (plus you have the option of inlining 68k asm if you feel you really need to). GCC produces better asm than I could other than using the stack a lot. It's also possible to code C in such a way the optimizer will work with it better if you're so inclined.

Of course I'm not trying to stop you from learning 68000 if you're set on doing it, but if you want quick results it might not be the way to go.

Chilly Willy · Post by **Chilly Willy** » Tue Dec 07, 2010 6:53 am

Stef's devkit is a good thing to look at, even if you don't ever use it. Look at the source code that comes with it for using the Genesis hardware to do things like load fonts and sprites and such. But like powerofrecall says, don't get ahead of yourself - learn 68000 assembly and C in general, then move on to looking at source code for Genesis demos and games (plenty of that here) as well as Stef's mini devkit.

By the way, if you use Ubuntu (or one of it's derivatives), mtpaint is in the repo, so it's easy to install - just select it via Synaptic Package Manager, then click apply. No need to go to the sourceforge page and get the archive and install by hand.