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avatar_keith56

Multiplatform Z80 ASM development videos... with vampires!

Started by keith56, 09:32, 08 January 18

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keith56

I'm planning to start a series of these, so I think it's time to post a new thread!

I'm making some youtube videos in which I discuss the challenges and my strategy to multplatform ASM development, for the CPC MSX and Spectrum - using my game as a talking point

I'm hoping that people who are interested in gamedev may find them useful - or as my game is open source, may decide to use parts of my code in their own projects

I've uploaded a new video today, in which I discuss an overview of all the functionality in the 'Core' module of my game engine, some of the differences between the systems that caused design choices, and how I've got my game engine working with these platforms (so far!)

You can watch the new video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjaBUqqWQEc

there are also 2 previous episodes:

My development software setup:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeHiytsWKm0

and converting a 4 color CPC image to ZX spectrum:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xc5M03jLNPY

If these are interesting to people I plan to do more, so please let me know what kind of thing you'd like me to talk about
Chibi Akumas: Comedy-Horror 8-bit Bullet Hell shooter!
Learn ARM, 8086, Z80, 6502 or 68000 with my tutorials: www.assemblytutorial.com
My Assembly programming book is available now on amazon!

keith56

I've done another youtube video!

This one describes how CPC Rom & Plus registers page in... mentions the memory paging options of the spectrum +3 , and touches on the complex world of MSX-subslots!!

This video includes a practice demonstration of CPC and spectrum screen memory using some short democode I've written


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfyRwITEv0M

on a somewhat related note, I'll be doing a prize draw where I give 3 of my patreon's professionally printed 'ChibiAkumas' T-shirts totally free (I'm even paying shipping), so if you were on the fence about signing up, you might want think about backing now for a chance to get one!
http://www.patreon.com/akuyou

Hope you like the video, I'm planning to keep making them - so please let me know if you have a particular subject you would like me to cover relating to retro-dev!
Chibi Akumas: Comedy-Horror 8-bit Bullet Hell shooter!
Learn ARM, 8086, Z80, 6502 or 68000 with my tutorials: www.assemblytutorial.com
My Assembly programming book is available now on amazon!

keith56

Ok, I've been hard at work this week, and I'd like to present the official start of my GameDev tutorials!

I plan for these to take you from absolute beginner programmer, to Z80 game developer... Remember, I only learned ASM 18 months ago, and I'll teach you all the things I needed to learn, try to help you avoid the problems I had,  and explain them in what I think is the easiest and fastest way for a beginner!

The website of this new tutorial is here:
http://www.chibiakumas.com/z80/

The lessons will have an accompanying video, which I intend you to watch as well as reading the website (though in theory you could do just either one)... The video for lesson 1 is here:

https://youtu.be/LpQCEwk2U9w

Lesson 1 is for the total beginner, I assume you've never even used winape before, and I'll show you how to enter, compile and debug your first Assembly program!
Chibi Akumas: Comedy-Horror 8-bit Bullet Hell shooter!
Learn ARM, 8086, Z80, 6502 or 68000 with my tutorials: www.assemblytutorial.com
My Assembly programming book is available now on amazon!

ervin


keith56

I've done another video, this one explains Binary and Hexadecimal, showing how to convert them with a little CPC basic 'calculator' tool I've written - and an Excel spreadsheet, I also explain how to manually calculate Binary->decimal and decimal->binary and demonstrate nevative hexadecimal numbers with the help of the winape assembler!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coKLkFmx3eI

The XLS and calculator prog are in the 'Tools' folder of the 'sources' archive on my website:
www.chibiakumas.com/z80/

I hope this is of use or interest to people, it took me a lot of effort making it!
Chibi Akumas: Comedy-Horror 8-bit Bullet Hell shooter!
Learn ARM, 8086, Z80, 6502 or 68000 with my tutorials: www.assemblytutorial.com
My Assembly programming book is available now on amazon!

Hwikaa

Awesome work, Keith! I can't wait to see more videos. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge, this is going to be helpful for sure.

Morri

I am also planning on watching these when time allows. I have always wanted to learn ASM and the fact that you cater for complete noobs could be exactly what I need.
Thank you so much for your efforts and willingness to share what knowledge you have acquired.
Keeping it Kiwi since 1977

keith56

Quote from: Morri on 20:52, 30 January 18
I am also planning on watching these when time allows. I have always wanted to learn ASM and the fact that you cater for complete noobs could be exactly what I need.
Thank you so much for your efforts and willingness to share what knowledge you have acquired.
No problem at all! I'm really surprised by how popular the videos are proving... the series was something I wanted to make, but I really didn't expect anyone to be interested - so I'm extremely happy with the response!

Lesson 2 should be up this weekend!
Chibi Akumas: Comedy-Horror 8-bit Bullet Hell shooter!
Learn ARM, 8086, Z80, 6502 or 68000 with my tutorials: www.assemblytutorial.com
My Assembly programming book is available now on amazon!

ervin

Yes, what Morri said.

These videos are absolutely brilliant.
Even though I have been learning z80 asm for a few years now, I'm still learning little bits and pieces from the vids.

I imagine the vids could perhaps become popular in the speccy and msx communities as well, for the z80 knowledge presented.

keith56

Yes, I'm posting the vids on MSX.org and spectrumcomputing.co.uk too... though there's some resistance to this 'WinApe' thing!

There's a couple of people compiling with another assembler and running it on their msx... they'll get a shock if they do that with the next program - it writes to the CPC screen at &C000-&FFFF ... seeing as the MSX firmware data is at &F000 - it'll crash their machines!!!  :laugh: :P :laugh: :P ... (I'm going to put a warning in the vid)

The CPC community are very lucky to have winape, I don't know any other Z80 system with an emulator with a built in Assembler and Debugger!
Next video should be up this weekend!
Chibi Akumas: Comedy-Horror 8-bit Bullet Hell shooter!
Learn ARM, 8086, Z80, 6502 or 68000 with my tutorials: www.assemblytutorial.com
My Assembly programming book is available now on amazon!

keith56

Lesson 2 of my Z80 Assembly tutorials is up!

Lots covered this time, including Copy/Fill with LDIR, using EQU to declare constants, Labels, and conditional jumps to make loops... all writing to the CPC screen so you can see the effect!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAvuyAzO_Uo

Each video has a matching text section on my website, and if you really can't type in the code - you can download the commented sourcecode as well!

http://www.chibiakumas.com/z80/#Lesson2
Chibi Akumas: Comedy-Horror 8-bit Bullet Hell shooter!
Learn ARM, 8086, Z80, 6502 or 68000 with my tutorials: www.assemblytutorial.com
My Assembly programming book is available now on amazon!

Hwikaa

Again, great video (and great article, by the way).
Looking forward to the next one.  ;)

keith56

Lesson 3 is now online!

This time we'll make a little 8 bit calculator, with the user interface in basic, and the calculations in assembly!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPXmvoZz9Nk

Don't forget to check out the website, where you can see the lesson and get the sourcecode for the ASM and basic!... I've even added a more conventional 'Print mode' colorscheme for those who don't like Red on Black!

http://www.chibiakumas.com/z80/
Chibi Akumas: Comedy-Horror 8-bit Bullet Hell shooter!
Learn ARM, 8086, Z80, 6502 or 68000 with my tutorials: www.assemblytutorial.com
My Assembly programming book is available now on amazon!

keith56

Z80 Programming Lesson 4 is now online, this time we'll cover the Stack, indirect registers (IX & IY) - write our own String printer - print a hex string and use the CPC call with parameters!


https://youtu.be/Lz_tD123fmw

As usual the same content is documented on my website - and you can get the sourcecode as well!
http://www.chibiakumas.com/z80/
Chibi Akumas: Comedy-Horror 8-bit Bullet Hell shooter!
Learn ARM, 8086, Z80, 6502 or 68000 with my tutorials: www.assemblytutorial.com
My Assembly programming book is available now on amazon!

keith56

Please see the 10 minute video below

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Fixjz3VoSI

I'm planning to release the free development tools & scripts I'm using to develop Chibi Akumas V1.666 - to try to help beginners dip a toe into 8 bit multiplatform development, but I could do with some help in the form of beta-testing

If there are any users who have some time to spare to try out the tools shown in the video please let me know

I'm not aware of any potential problems with these scripts or tools,I've tried them on Win XP/7 and 10, and on 32 and 64 bit without issue

But of course it has to be *** At Your Own Risk! *** - that's why it's beta testing!
Chibi Akumas: Comedy-Horror 8-bit Bullet Hell shooter!
Learn ARM, 8086, Z80, 6502 or 68000 with my tutorials: www.assemblytutorial.com
My Assembly programming book is available now on amazon!

keith56

Another episode of my Z80 programming tutorial series, covering Bit operations like NOT AND and OR, as well as Bit shifting commands, the CARRY flag, and even giving an example of a program with self modifying code!

As usual the video has a matching Text based tutorial on the project website:
http://www.chibiakumas.com/z80/


https://youtu.be/lyoIaVKF_3A
Chibi Akumas: Comedy-Horror 8-bit Bullet Hell shooter!
Learn ARM, 8086, Z80, 6502 or 68000 with my tutorials: www.assemblytutorial.com
My Assembly programming book is available now on amazon!

Gryzor

I find it very strange that I enjoy watching these while working out :D

keith56

Quote from: Gryzor on 18:47, 25 February 18
I find it very strange that I enjoy watching these while working out :D
Er yeah me too - I used to try to listen to "Learn Japanese" podcasts at the Gym, but always ended up listening to music - but whatever works for you!

The last lesson was pretty big - did people feel that covered too much in one go, or was it about right?
Chibi Akumas: Comedy-Horror 8-bit Bullet Hell shooter!
Learn ARM, 8086, Z80, 6502 or 68000 with my tutorials: www.assemblytutorial.com
My Assembly programming book is available now on amazon!

Gryzor

Just about as long as my workout, so just fine [emoji16][emoji16]

Sent from my HTC 10 using Tapatalk


adolfo.pa

It worked for me. Also, I loved the part about self modifying code; I think introducing this kind of more advanced topics so soon makes things more interesting. I want more!! :-)

andycadley

Interesting. Watching it I thought self-modifying code might be jumping a little too far into fairly advanced topics, but perhaps not. It was also unusual to see a less mathematical description of the various Boolean operations, a more practical approach than many textbooks would use but I can imagine people finding it more useful.

keith56

Quote from: andycadley on 01:19, 26 February 18
Interesting. Watching it I thought self-modifying code might be jumping a little too far into fairly advanced topics, but perhaps not. It was also unusual to see a less mathematical description of the various Boolean operations, a more practical approach than many textbooks would use but I can imagine people finding it more useful.

I'm not very good at maths, so I'm explaining them the easiest way to me in the hope it'll help others - it's kind of intentional, I want to teach the 'dumbest' way I can think of in the hope it will attract people who've not been comfortable with other tutorials - lets face it there must be 1000 of Z80 tutorials out there - and most people have never coded anything!

Yes, Self modifying code is a stretch, and when I first saw it discussed I though "That's too hard, I'll just forget it", but about 6 weeks later realised I wanted to use it, and now I use it for everything.

It's a bit tough to work out good short examples to teach all the ASM commands, and this was the perfect one for self-modifying so I slipped it in, I'm planning to do about 10 of these 'New command' lessons in total, then I will switch to more practical examples that will relate to game coding!
Chibi Akumas: Comedy-Horror 8-bit Bullet Hell shooter!
Learn ARM, 8086, Z80, 6502 or 68000 with my tutorials: www.assemblytutorial.com
My Assembly programming book is available now on amazon!

keith56

Lesson 6 is now up

Covering Lookup table, Screen Co-ordinates, Vector Tables, Basic Parameters Byref... I'll teach you how to code your own ASM sprite routines you can call from basic!


https://youtu.be/IhbXd-m6WmQ

As always you can download the source code from my website - and the whole lesson is documented there too!

http://www.chibiakumas.com/z80/

Also, as a bonus, I've created an 'introduction to the Enterprise' video, showing off the Enterprise 128 computer, and showing how to program 'Hello World' in assembly on that system!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtZHk__bkgE
Chibi Akumas: Comedy-Horror 8-bit Bullet Hell shooter!
Learn ARM, 8086, Z80, 6502 or 68000 with my tutorials: www.assemblytutorial.com
My Assembly programming book is available now on amazon!

AJW

From your latest lesson:
Quote

GetNextLine:
    ld a,h
    add &08
    ld h,a
bit 7,h
    ret nz 
ld bc,&c050
    add hl,bc
    ret


If I'd seen that yesterday, I wouldn't have spent hours trying to figure out how to do the same thing.   :-[


Seriously though, thanks for the lessons. I did a bit of Z80 assembler coding thirty-odd years back, but I'm more than a little rusty, and it is nice to have a recap that doesn't involve digging through all 620-odd pages of my dog-eared copy of Rodnay Zacs' Programming the Z80. Keep up the good work.

keith56

Quote from: AJW on 08:33, 05 March 18
From your latest lesson:
If I'd seen that yesterday, I wouldn't have spent hours trying to figure out how to do the same thing.   :-[

That's great to hear! That's pretty much the whole theory of the tutorials - trying to teach people the things it took me too long to figure out!

The 'Command' languages are nearly done, and I'll switch over to more practical examples... so please feel free to make requests - and if I know enough to explain it - I will do so.
Chibi Akumas: Comedy-Horror 8-bit Bullet Hell shooter!
Learn ARM, 8086, Z80, 6502 or 68000 with my tutorials: www.assemblytutorial.com
My Assembly programming book is available now on amazon!

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