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1. Adrian Cochrane (alcinnz@floss.social)'s status on Thursday, 26-Jan-2023 05:05:42 JST Adrian Cochrane

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   @raccoonformality I had to look up those fantasy consoles, but given your goals I believe NES or Atari 2600 will get you lower-level.

   Whilst still providing decent (hardware) abstractions for graphics rendering, you do want that for a game to be an achievable project!

   • Adrian Cochrane (alcinnz@floss.social)'s status on Thursday, 26-Jan-2023 05:09:28 JST Adrian Cochrane

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     @raccoonformality Incidentally if you want to understand how the NES hardware worked, I like this YouTube channel: https://invidious.dhusch.de/channel/UCwRqWnW5ZkVaP_lZF7caZ-g (via Invidious)

   • Vertigo #$FF (vertigo@hackers.town)'s status on Thursday, 26-Jan-2023 05:40:45 JST Vertigo #$FF

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     @alcinnz @raccoonformality Avoid the Atari 2600 until you've mastered the 6502. The TIA chip doesn't have a frame buffer, so you'll be "racing the beam", as they say. So, not only does your code need to be logically correct, it must also be correct in time as well, and you'll need detailed knowledge of PAL or NTSC waveform generation.

     I'd recommend using a regular computer from the 80s, something like a Commodore 64 or Atari 400/800 family of machines. Learn the 6502 on this platform first.

     Then, once you're comfortable with that, I'd say you'll be ready for the deeper embedded world that dedicated games consoles tend to be.

     Adrian Cochrane repeated this.
   • Adrian Cochrane (alcinnz@floss.social)'s status on Thursday, 26-Jan-2023 05:42:08 JST Adrian Cochrane

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     • Vertigo #$FF
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     @vertigo @raccoonformality Ooooo! Racing the beam, avoid that! NES would be the better choice between the two!

   • theruran 🌐🏴 (theruran@hackers.town)'s status on Thursday, 26-Jan-2023 05:50:33 JST theruran 🌐🏴

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     • Devine Lu Ator
     • Vertigo #$FF
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     @alcinnz @vertigo @raccoonformality @neauoire has some reference material on their wiki: https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/famicom.html and https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/assembly.html

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   • Devine Lu Ator (neauoire@merveilles.town)'s status on Thursday, 26-Jan-2023 05:57:36 JST Devine Lu Ator

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     • Vertigo #$FF
     • theruran 🌐🏴
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     @theruran @alcinnz @vertigo @raccoonformality I've made a LOT of example files to learn the NES, might be worth looking into that collection: https://git.sr.ht/~rabbits/famicom-cookbook/tree/master/item/examples

   • mathew (mathew@universeodon.com)'s status on Thursday, 26-Jan-2023 07:48:20 JST mathew

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     • Vertigo #$FF
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     @vertigo @alcinnz @raccoonformality Seconded. The 6502 is a great choice for learning what programming in assembler is like, but pick hardware that has a frame buffer.

     The BBC Micro is a pretty good choice because the assembler is available from inside BASIC (so you don't have to do literally everything in assembler to get started), and the hardware is a simple memory-mapped bitmap, rather than having things like sprite hardware or tiles to worry about.

     Another option is BBC BASIC for SDL with built-in assembler support. You could run it on an ARM device like a Raspberry PI; ARM assembler is pretty simple because it was inspired by the 6502, and ARM is also going to be a useful platform to know in the future.

     http://www.bbcbasic.co.uk/bbcsdl/index.html

     Also not a bad choice is the Atari ST. The 68000 series CPUs are really friendly to program in, and again you get a nice simple flat frame buffer. FaST ST BASIC is BBC BASIC for the ST, with built in assembler.