a little help

[Metricton]

ok I am interest in programming for the 2600 but the thing is I can't find any help or tutorials on how to program for the atari 2600 this is why I need some help.

[Osbo]

Good luck...

[atari70s]

maybe you shoudl talk to some people who have been programming carts . look at some of the new home brew adn email them with questions

[Metricton]

well the thing is I dont' even know where to start or what the atari commands are for programming it and stuff

[cschell]

I'd suggest starting with the Stella mailing list archives, and getting on the list itself. You can find out more about it here:

http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/

 

This is an email list specifically about programming the 2600. Lots of helpful people and lots of information in the archive.

 

2600 games are programmed in 6502 assembly language. Most people use the dasm cross assembler which is freely available. You can download it from Bob Colbert's website at

http://members.home.com/rcolbert1/sdev.htm

 

You can use an emulator to test your code, but you'll probably eventually want to test it on the actual hardware. The options for this are using eproms and a modified cart, a Supercharger (details on Bob's site as well), or a Cuttle Cart if I ever produce more. You can find more about the Cuttle Cart at my website at

http://www.schells.com/cuttlecart.shtml

 

Chad

[Metricton]

thanks C.shell for the info

[Ze_ro]

For those of you here who *have* programmed the Atari, is it difficult to come up with good effects such as background images (such as in Frogs 'n' Flies), and collision detection? I've had two years worth of classes learning machine language for the 6800 (Which, as far as I know, uses a similar instruction set). But the evaluation boards we used were obviously nothing like Atari 2600's... we never got to learn how things like collision detection and such were handled. I'd love to start programming a game for the 2600, but I've always assumed stuff like this would stump me.

 

--Zero