gorf68

Hopefully these bin file will run ok... For running the .BIN files: http://free.7host01....garryg/vecx.exe http://free.7host01....rryg/retdev.bin http://free.7host01....rryg/vtwist.bin For compiling the .ASM files: http://free.7host01....garryg/AS09.EXE http://free.7host01....arryg/VECTREX.I

Are there any tutorials on how to user-define the character set on the Vectrex? I’d like to use a hybrid of redefined characters as well as the standard vector lines in an idea for a new game I’m playing around with.

Yup, I also instantly thought ‘Oh, that looks like a decent version of Atic Atac!’ I was tinkering with the idea of doing an Atic Atac type game for the Vectrex. The game looks good though!

Maybe didn’t make it clear that I’d be happy to donate most of these (for free) to a good home rather than chuck them in the round filing cabinet! I'll put up a list ASAP...

I’ve had a quick Google of CMB PRG Studio and it sounds like an ideal candidate for getting me started, thanks!

I’m cleaning out the loft, and will have some old programmingbooks ready to be thrown if anybody is interested. Probably mostly ZX Spectrum MC based, at lest one ATARI Reference, and maybe some VIC-20 stuff. Probably also a few old application and computing manuals as well. So if anybody is looking for anything I’ll gladly have a look to see if I have it, or I can put a list of what I find up here.

I think it may depend on the type of game they are writing, if it’s a modern 3D perspective game your reasoning sounds sane enough to me. If it’s a retro or top-down maze based game however, there may be another option... How about doing what was done on good old Dandy way back in the eighties- E.g. use a 'game of life' style system to 'move' a set of on-screen (or off screen) enemies based on a set of rules rather than keeping individual positions for each. This lets you have a lot of very fast on-screen action without having to individually x/y position-track anything apart from your player controlled character. It also means that all the off-screen action can be just as 'inteligent' as the on-screen ones.

I've heard of the 'Quetzalcoatl' C Cross assembler for the VIC-20, but I assume any 6502 assembler will do if I'm going to program directly in assembly. Will VICE work with the file generated from any 6502 asembler? Or do I need something else to convert these to a recognisable format first? Has anybody used Quetzalcoatl, or is there a better alternative?

OK, haven't had a chance to update this yet... But I will put some .bin files on the blog page and link them here.

Didn't the last terminator film hav a room-full of what looked like old Commodore PET's in it?

Well there is the Vectrex and I have a first-version Lynx (don't think a lot of the 'Big-Lynx' systems were made/sold), on the newer side I've also got a first run raspberry PI and an OnLive TV box I do have an old-style 40/80 BBC double disk Cumana 5" floppy disk drive... if that counts? I also still have the BBC cub monitor, which is now permanently attached to my Amiga How rare is the first version of the Game.con handheld console? How about the pokiman Picachu version of the N64? Probably my rarest (but by no means the most collectable/expensive) thing is my Telling Colour Stars TV games system. I think I was 11 or 12 when I got that. Never did get all the cartridges though!

Ah, one of the remaining 'few brave men'

Thanks, that could work, and it is the type of comment I was looking for...

Strange that! It defenetly isn't supposed to be like that. I put these links up some time ago, so I’ll have to heck on what happened to the .RAR file and the .ASM files should all have fairly short lines of code with comments. I’ve no idea why they didn’t format properly in Notepad. These files may have been opened and re-saved with Dreamweaver or Visual Studio, but none of these editors should have made the code look like what you described! Did you try using another editor? I can’t do it from work, but I’ll try and put some new .ASM and .BIN files up tonight or over the weekend. To compile and run the .ASM files I used the AS09 compiler and the VECX emulator. E.g. 1. Make a test folder to hold the files. 2. Download the AS09.EXE compiler, and put it in the test folder 3. Then download the VECX.EXE emulator, and put it in the same folder 4. Next you need to download any standard VECTREX.I file, and put it in the folder 5. Now open up a command prompt window and go to the test directory 6. Type: AS09 –i vtwist.asm (return) to compile the .ASM 7. This will make a vtwist.bin file in the same folder 8. Then type: vecx –c vtwist.bin (return) to run the .BIN file in the emulator 9. you should now see the code running. It’s not complicated, really just running two commands (a compile and a run) from the DOS/Command prompt. A quick Google should find all the programs easy enough. Maybe I should make all the required files available from the Blog page for quickness. You can find a VECTREX.I file in most Vectrex code download sites: this is just a list of useful/standard Vectrex ROM routines and memory locations. Both this file and the AS09 compiler can be found in the code download for the rather good ‘Vectrex Thrust’ game: available at - http://www.emix8.org All the code for these games is held in one single file. So you only need the VECTREX.I and the .asm file to compile.

Check to see if the screen coordinate you move your man to holds a dot. If it does Then increment your score Else ... um don't.

What Mac or preferably PC based tools are there for programming/testing assembly programs for the VIC-20? My old VIC was the first system I owned, and after looking at some of the amazing things people have done with it over the years I think it’s about time I tried to do some new games programming for it.

It depends what you want to do. If you want to learn classical programming concepts on a ‘proper’ old-style language I’d still recommend Pascal, or Python is a decent modern alternative. People will tell you that the various flavours of ‘C’ are the holly-grail of programming, but I would recommend a language more designed for teaching first. C can get very messy very quickly if you don’t code it properly. If you want something BASIC that will let you bang out some games/graphics type stuff quickly I’d go for something like Dark Basic on the PC, or pick up a RETRO computer with a decent (although sometimes limited) basic. BBC basic is probably about the best... and you can embed assembly right in there, when and if you ever want to dabble! GOD, NO!!I'm a C and VB.NET developer using Visual Studio... it doesn’t learn you to program properly at all. If you want to learn how to program I'd stay away from library base object orientated stuff! having said that, if you must - programmin Python on the Raspberry PI is quite a good way to get started.

Well back in the day it was the Atari 800 XL. This was the first machine I got some stuff accepted to PD libraries for. Back then you had to submit stuff by post and they decided what to include in their catalogues. I think I got a Jet-Pack rip-off and a Tempest-ish rip-off accepted first. Although there probably long-lost now! The first machine I programmed was the VIC-20, and I’m really thinking of trying to be something on this again. Isn’t there a C cross-compiler for it or something? My console of choice is the Vectrex, possibly one of the most straightforward machines to program in assembly. I do keep meaning to have a go at hacking around with the Deamcast though. Although I don’t generally touch hardware (for programming) that’s that new!

I'd be interested in what you would add/do to this: It's a very basic and unfinished idea I was playing around with some time ago, but I dropped it. I can post some binaries of what little I had if you like... I was thinking of something like that... but what if it was on a road that rises and falls, where you could jump your ‘car’ over certain obstacles whilst avoiding things in the air, as well as trying not to fall off the sides of the ‘road.’ This sounds doable, although it may be difficult to keep the on-screen action (amount of drawing required) down enough to avoid flicker! Maybe I could try a simple fly-through-the-tunnel game. Although it would help if it were a square tunnel... e r. Ventilation-duct flyers maybe I don’t think I could beat Web-Wars for playability though

Don’t be afraid of assembly! The Vectrex is a very good machine to practice Assembly on. It has a variety of good ROM routines that let you get things up and moving relatively quickly. I knocked up my first (very simple) program over a couple of days, maybe just 5 or 6 hours programming, and that included the time taken to read Vectrex tutorials. The first thing I usually do when programming for a new system or language is to write a pong program, this was extremely simple on the Vectrex. So I bypassed pong and started playing around with other things almost straight away!

Hello gliptitude, and thanks for taking a look... Don't expect too much though. As I said all the stuff up on the blog were early programming experiments that I primarily use to get used to programming the Vectrex. I think an Atic-Attack 'type' game may be on the cards. It was a simple but addictive little game on the Spectrum. I still think there’s the seeds of a good idea in the 3d tunnel type ‘twister’ game idea... although I haven’t done much in the code put up on my blog.

Thanks, that sounds very much like it's what I was thinking about. Looks like it's got dedicated 'push' editor software as well. Although I'll probably still do most of my testing on an emulator it would be very usefull to see things working on the real hardware.

Ok, the stuff I did previously was written in notepad, compiled using the AS09.EXE program and tested with the VECX.EXE Vectrex emulator. I know this all seems very basic. So is there a more streamlined approach, or at least a good (preferably free) editor that recognises assembly code? Ideally I want to get a cartridge that will let me test on the real hardware. So is there anything that can be integrated to a development platform that can ‘push’ code directly to the Vectrex? Or do I have to save my code to the writable Vectrex card then plug it into the system every time I want to run a test? Not that I’m complaining if I have to do this, anything would be a step up from what I was using!

Let me know when you start that thread, I'm defenetly looking at doing some more Vectrex programming but I'm short on viable ideas! Has an Atic-Attack type game been done on the Vectrex?

Can the vecFlash be written to as often as you like, for development testing use? I'v heard that some of these can only be writen to so many times, or is that wrong? Oh, and how much and when would the vecFlash be available?