Amiga assembler tutorials - the wonders of YouTube

I wish I had these sorts of resources back in the 90's...

After some tweets back and forth with a few cool people, I have been shown further resources on the internet for learning about assembler for the Amiga.  I just wanted to share with you a cool YouTube channel Jonas pointed out to me that has several tutorials for Amiga assembler.

If I could embed a whole YouTube channel I would, but here's a link to the channel itself by ScoopexUs: http://www.youtube.com/user/ScoopexUs?feature=g-high-cen

My time at the moment is so limited I haven't had a chance to view all the videos, but I can see there are 9 Amiga programming tutorials, as well as some demo scene stuff.  Check out the channel or here's a couple of snippets...

It starts off really simple with this:



and continues to get more in depth up to this:



Thank you to ScoopexUs for the awesome tutorials, I really hope there are more to come, and thanks to Jonas for pointing these videos out to me, as well as proper reference books.

OK SO... I need to continue being a sponge and learn about the Amiga hardware and soon hopefully I will be able to put together my first proper experience.

Comment here or get involved on twitter: @rich_lloyd

Starting to learn assembly language - the journey begins... where do I start?!

Final goal?

Write a game for the Amiga 500.  Bonus goal would be for the same game to run on the Sega Mega Drive (Genesis), but I'll work that out once the first goal is achieved.

Lets start!

I have an Amiga 500, and as mentioned before I'll be following the Amiga Format Bullfrog tutorials for writing a game in assembly language (I'll be writing separate blog posts for each tutorial).  OK so tutorial 1 was pretty straight forward, very basic beginnings pretty much incrementing a register to move a sprite position and understanding some basics.  I've had a quick flick through ahead of the future tutorials and it's pretty obvious that I'm going to have to do some extra research!

OK after some quick googling, I've come across the following websites:

• http://www.amigacoding.com/index.php/Main_Page
• http://www.amigau.com/c-programming/assembler/assemblertut.htm
• http://www.amiga.org/index.php
• http://eab.abime.net/coders-tutorials/21516-asm-resources.html

Through those links I was able to download numerous pdf documents, text file tutorials and lots of other people discussing assembler. Great!

A few people had mentioned particular books that they recommended, which then put me on a mission to hit ebay for real world BOOKS! Ebay books for 68000 processor

Real world books I've ended up with, should keep me going for a while!

"Lets get real"

OK so coding on the Amiga 500 is great, I have DevPac 2 and I can run simple examples.  However, this is going to take forever!  Not only is assembly language slow to code (especially when I'm learning), but one of the biggest draw backs is the lack of resources on the machine. As in, I can't just Google something and try it out.  My Amiga 500 is on my desk and sits next to my laptop so yes I can Google stuff, but I have no way to transfer files across other than typing out line by line. What do I do?

Ebay to the rescue again... I've purchased an Amiga 1200 (with a broken floppy drive - hopefully I will blog to explain how I will fix it).  The great thing about the Amiga 1200 is that you can connect it to the internet, and also use a compact flash card as a hard drive!! 4Gb!!  It's still in the post, but I expect I will try and code on the A1200 and once I'm up to speed I'll try and create boot disks with my tests and trials for the A500.  Remember my goal is to write a game for the Amiga 500 not Amiga 1200!

What next?

I've read through most of 2 68000 books, and I think it's becoming clear that I'm learning vanilla 68k assembly language.  I need some Amiga specific references.  I'm using DevPac 2, but maybe I need to get my hands of DevPac 3, AsmOne or some other assembler package?  And then find a reference + tutorials for that package?

I have stumbled upon Easy68k, this is an Editor, Assembler and Simulator for the 68000 that runs in Windows.  Again this looks like just vanilla 68k, but looks like a great way to learn the basics without crashing my Amiga ever time!

Do you still code in Assembler?!

Would love to hear from anyone who still codes in assembler, especially for the Amiga machines.  Or maybe if you used to?  Any hints or tips you could recommend?

Comment here or get involved on twitter: @rich_lloyd

It's 2013 man, why bother learning assembler for the Amiga?!

OK so I'm a little late to the party (over 20 years), but I've set myself the goal to learn assembly language for the Amiga (68000 processors) and wanted to share my experience with you.

At the age of 13 I was so excited to see a tutorial in Amiga Format called 'How to program your own games in assember', this was the stepping stone for me to become my dream, a games programmer.  Sadly as a kid, I struggled, I already knew BASIC and AMOS, but Assembler was something else.  The internet didn't exist, I was too young to realise there would be books on the topic, and didn't know anyone in the same boat I could share learning with.  I was alone.  I gave up, but it's always bugged me.

Now I'm an experienced programmer, I became professional in the late 90's and my dream of coding games came true, but I never did learn assembly language.  Of course I didn't need to, the industry moved on, easier and more productive languages are now used.  Games I write for clients these days use Unity3D or XNA/MonoGame and the teams I work with can produce sophisticated 3D worlds.

"Games ain't what they used to be"

Technology today is mind blowing, and the games produced today are masterpieces. However I still feel most games today miss the magic of the games made in the early 90's, especially on the Amiga.  Is it just my age or did Amiga games really have something different about them?  To prove I'm not wearing rose tinted glasses I've started to research some of the old classics.  Google and youtube are great, but I've also fired up my Amiga 500 and properly reliving the experience.  I wanted to understand more about the all round hero Amiga machine, and how the games were written.  Whilst hunting through my old stuff, I came across my Amiga Formats (issues 39-44) with the tutorials I struggled with as a kid, I found all the cover disks, including the full version of DevPac 2.

My Amiga 500 - awesome machine

I'm about to learn assembly language, how hard can it be? Right? Game ON!

Challenge accepted.  I'm aiming to blog about my experience with each tutorial, and then hopefully sum up the whole journey.  I have my Amiga 500 now set up on my desk, all issues of Amiga Format tutorial with all the cover disks (I hope they all still work).

Can't wait to get stuck in to the tutorial I really hope it can teach me everything I need to know.  Having new knowledge combined with my career experience, I would love to write a game for the Amiga!

I've bought this book on Amazon 'An introduction to 68000 Assembly Language', it's very brief, but it does give me the list of commands available.

Very brief book - but perfect for when I start delving deeper...

Do you still code in Assembler?!

Would love to hear from anyone who still codes in assembler, especially for the Amiga machines.  Or maybe if you used to?  Any hints or tips you could recommend?  Did you complete the tutorials?  Did it kick start your career?

Comment here or get involved on twitter: @rich_lloyd