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My adventures in the world of 6809 assembly language and Vectrex. | ||||||
 The idea to start doing this ignited at the 2nd Alternative Party in Helsinki. There were demos shown for various old platforms, and being a Vecfreak, I kinda hoped that next year there could be a Vectrex one too. I suggested this to my friend Marq, who is experienced in programming on 8-bit computers, but he said he had too many platforms under work already and suggested I'd try to learn it
myself. To my surprise, I took up the challenge. I've never coded in assembler before. However, I lit a sparkle of interest in Marq too, so in the end, he started trying out the Vectrex a little too. With his help and Chris' (get it from here) and Christopher's tutorials, this is what I have accomplished so far. | ||||||
| LATEST STUFF | ||||||
| Bin name | Source | Author | Screenshot | Date | Comments | |
| sound5.bin | Yes | Manu | No | 5-18-2002 | Even more help for beginning programmers. This program plays a different tone from each of the controller buttons. Not completely explanatory, but might be helpful with getting started with sound effects. Thanks to Christopher. | |
| scortest.bin | Yes | Marqnu | No | 5-18-2002 | Some more help for beginning programmers. Coded mostly by Marq, comments and rest of the coding by Manu. A little program that displays a score and adds to it every time a button is pressed. | |
| bowl00.bin | No | Manu | Yes | 5-18-2002 | Here's the little bowling demo. Press button to throw the ball and steer with joystick. Hitting the right pins gives you a strike! | |
| No | No | Manu | No | 5-15-2002 | Just a bit of news : VecSports Boxing is ready! Read more on the dedicated page. Also did a little bowling game demo in less than two hours. Let's see where that's going.. VecSports Bowling? :) | |
|
Are you
ready to Rrrrumble? |
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| Vectrex Development System | 3-25-2002 | It finally arrived today! Check it out from the link on the left. We're also starting #vectrex IRC-channel (on EFnet) sometime soon.. we'll keep you posted (a place for programmers and Vectrex fans to chat realtime). | ||||
| coleman.bin | Yes | Manu | No | 3-21-2002 | More help to the beginning Vec programmer (I hope). A detailed example on collision detection (and joystick reading).. This is a fixed version (v2) that now works with different sized objects, thanks to Alex H. for pointing that out! | |
| No | Yes | Alex | No | 3-21-2002 | This is a little snippet of code Alex posted in the newsgroup (hope you don't mind me posting it here as well). It demonstrates how you can use a circular 'shield' around objects for collision detection instead of rectangles. | |
| 0ldsk00l.bin | No | Manu | Yes | 2-18-2002 | Finished! My side project is done, maybe now I can get back to working on the boxing game. This is the first old skool computer scene styled intro for Vectrex (at least that I know of). Impress your friends (heh, right) or use it as a Vectrex screensaver (it loops) and crank up the volume! Not tested on a real Vectrex though (yet), comments welcome. Tested on DVE and MESS32, works fine, but sounds better on DVE. Does someone know where the music is from? Got it from the VecSound .zip-file and I'd like to give credits to the composer. | |
| anim.bin | Yes | Manu | Yes | 2-17-2002 | More stuff for beginners. A simple but working 'animation' routine. Big thanks to Marq for helping with this one. | |
| taulukko.bin | Yes | Manu | No | 2-15-2002 | Something for the beginning Vectrex programmer's out there. A basic example source code on how to read a table on 6809 ASM and Vectrex. | |
| bb2.bin | No | Manu | Yes | 2-10-2002 | Again almost a year's break.. if you don't count the 'remix' I made for the Alternative Party 3. This is brand new stuff.. hopefully will be finished for this summer's Vammala party. Enjoy. Works with DVE and MESS (at least on PC). Thanks to Chris and his Vecsound system... | |
| ayb.bin | No | Manu | Yes | 3-14-2001 | First attempt to code something after 6 months break. Nothing much, but hopefully you'll at least get a smile from it :) | |
| Received a socketed PCB with EPROM that has my BETH, VSB, Vimpula and Vecdemo (and multiselection menu) burned on it from Mark Shaker. Everything works, but needs some tuning, some of my vectors are way too bright and things shake and wobble a bit, especially with BETH, though the graphics look good. Well, at least they work :) Also bought a pair of replacement controllers from JD, they rock. | ||||||
| No | Manu | No | 8-26-2000 | Just a little experiment. Let me know how it works on your configuration (tell me which emulator you used). Reports say DVE and MESS work fine, but X-MESS crashes. (?) | ||
| No | Manu | No | 8-26-2000 | Finally some sound effects, thanks to Chris for help. I want you people to try this out too, because DVE keeps buzzing on me, but MESS works fine. The music is the same all over, but that will change. | ||
| OLDER STUFF | ||||||
| Bin name | Source | Author | Screenshot | Date | Comments | |
| 1st_one.bin | Manu | No | 7-11-2000 | Learned to draw vectors (outline of Pikachu) | ||
| Pokemon.bin | Manu | Yes | 7-12-2000 | Learned to draw multiple vectors (added eyes, nose, mouth, cheeks..) | ||
| Pokemove.bin | No | Marq & Manu | No | 7-13-2000 | Marq made him bounce up and down. | |
| Psypsy.bin | No | Manu | Yes | 7-14-2000 | Learned to draw dots (Psyduck's eyes) | |
| Veccy.bin | No | Manu | Yes | 7-16-2000 | Learned to do loops (multiple speaker grills etc.) | |
| Vecdemo1.bin | No | Manu | No | 7-17-2000 | Most of the above combined, you can proceed by pressing button 1. Also tried the different font sizes. First version, I'm sure this will develop further. | |
| tono.bin | No | Marq & Antti | 7-20-2000 | Marq surprised me with two little bins he had made. This one Antti drew with Xfig - vector drawing program on Linux and then Marq used his converter to convert it to 6809 assembler. | ||
| arsek.bin | No | Marq | 7-20-2000 | Arsek is a picture of a clown he made using the same method, this time he first loaded a bitmap picture in the Xfig and then drew lines over it which were converted to assembler with his converter. Looks really nice. (Now works with DVE too) | ||
| cgm2as.zip | Here's Marq's converter (C-source, 7kb) with examples. | |||||
| Joystick.bin | Yes | Manu | 7-19-2000 | Reading and testing Joystick. Simply push Joystick 1 up, down, left or right to see if it works. Figuring out how to do this took me a day (now don't laugh there you assembler gurus).. So I'm pretty happy I got it working. | ||
| Space16.bin | Yes | Manu | 7-19-2000 | Based on the source of Joystick.bin. You can now move a space ship, but can't move it outside the box it's trapped in. Exciting, huh? | ||
| Beth.bin | No | Manu | 7-20-2000 | My game idea beginning to shape up.. sorry no source code, no time for commenting much, but if this is finished some day, I'll publish the source. You can actually shoot the bad guy, but it's difficult for now.. Try it out. | ||
| Beth2.bin | No | Manu | 7-20-2000 | Now shooting the bad guy is much more easy. Timer running, animation on the bad guy.. | ||
| Beth3.bin | Yes | 7-21-2000 | Did a 2 hour job by re-commenting the source (added 10 kB to the file size). Scoring works, and you die when the timer or fuel runs out. After three deaths a little Game Over screen is displayed. | |||
| Beth4.bin | No | Manu | No | 7-26-2000 | Still struggling with the sound effects, but there's a few improvements, I'm sure you'll notice what they are. Changed to another assembler, thanks to Chris for the tip. | |
| vr2r.bin | No | Manu | Well, wanted my mind off the sound effects and did this in about 4 hours. (Also wanted to go through the things I've learned so far). Probably going to be a (not too carefully) hidden 2-player game in B.E.T.H.. Still lots to do here too. | |||
| 2in1.bin | No | Manu | About the | 7-28-2000 | As the name suggests.. there's only one binary now, but it's two games! It's possible to choose between the games, and the boxing has gone through many improvements : you can even knock the other guy out now. Will work on this on the weekend too, if possible. | |
| rotation.bin | Yes | Manu | No | 7-31-2000 | A simple example of rotating a vector object. | |
| music.bin | Yes | Manu | No | A simple example of playing music from ROM. | ||
| veccy3.bin | No | Manu | No | "Vectrex Demo" returns with one added part - a rotating and zooming vector object. This project came third in the "Vammala Party #7" demo competition. | ||
| No | Manu | No | 2-in-1 is now called "Vexperience" (I just can't make up my mind can I?) Not much new here, some bug fixes, both boxers can be moved, but collision detection doesn't work right yet. | |||
7-31-2000 | Nothing new really, but now the veccy3.bin and rotation.bin work with DVE too. | |||||
8-1-2000 | Lots of bug fixes on the vexperi.bin - now it works with DVE, and even the collisions in the boxing game got fixed (duh what I dum mistake I had made). | |||||
| No | Manu | 8-15-2000 | It took a couple of weeks, but seems to have been a wise decision. I separated the boxing game (for now) and completely rewrote it, removing all the trickery I made the first time and replacing it with somewhat sensible code. Now everything more and less works, so it's a working 2-player game. I want to add more stuff to it though (sound!) - suggestions are very welcome. Testing the gameplay is kinda difficult with only 2 hands :) Also learned how to use includes (now that wasn't too difficult). | |||
| The bins have been tested both with MESS and DVE Vectrex emulators. All above is Public domain for all Vecfreaks (tm) as long as you don't publish them as your own, or use the unfinished game as a base for your game. Just let me finish these first, okay? Thanks, I knew you would understand :) Contact me : man@sci.fi (manu_pkp on #rgvc) | ||||||
| VECTREX LINKS & PEOPLE | ||||||
| Spike's Big Vectrex Page | The center of the Vectrex universe. Everything you need. | |||||
| www.playvectrex.com | Focused on technical information and "how-to's" . Check out also the "Design it" section. Also the home of the wonderful Vectrex arcade controller. | |||||
| Classic Game Creations | John Dondzila, the first person to write new Vectrex games. An inspiration to many new Vectrex programmers - he's made some amazing stuff (Vecmania for one). | |||||
| Vectrex Programming | Christopher Tumber's excellent site about Vectrex Programming : tutorials, references etc. He's written Omega Chase for the Vec. | |||||
| Chris Salomon's page | He's helped me a bunch and has some good stuff on his site. He wrote the Vectrex Frogger. | |||||
| Sean Kelly's homepage | Sean manufactures Vectrex multicarts and is the person responsible for new replica Vectrex cart cases. (wow) | |||||
| www.vectrexcarts.com | Mark manufactures new Vectrex carts, and for an amazing price. Get the new games from him! | |||||
| www.vectrex.biz | VECRAM and other Vectrex related stuff. Vecram is.. is.. wow! See it yourself! | |||||
| Ronen Habot's Vectrex page | He's the author of the games Vaboom and VectRace. | |||||
| Kristof Tut's Vectrex page | He has at least 3 new Vectrex games under concstruction. | |||||
| Raven's Retro Nest | Good all around Vec page from A. Coleman. | |||||
| A scan of a Finnish Vectrex advertisement, thanks to Jukka. | ||||||
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