
8bit Workshop - tekromancr
https://8bitworkshop.com/
======
mrspeaker
Back in 2006 I heard about the Atari 2600 homebrew scene and was fascinated to
read about the mind-boggling tricks required to write a game for the system
(like, coding to the TV raster beam... madness!). I went down the rabbit hole
for a while and learned 6502 asm, and ended up with this "sort of a game" \-
[https://github.com/mrspeaker/plops](https://github.com/mrspeaker/plops).

It was a great learning experience and certainly made me respect the devs of
the day - who were performing miracles given the hardware constraints, and
luck of modern debugging tools!

~~~
kgwxd
I've been into the 2600 homebrew scene since "Making Games for the Atari 2600"
came out a few years ago. I haven't made anything useful yet, but the
community is great and very active. There's an awesome twitch channel[1]
dedicated to 2600 homebrew, ZeroPageHomebrew. They do 2 shows a week, ~2 hours
each. The developers and various AtariAge people are usually active in the
chat. They're doing an awards show in February for homebrews made last year.

[1]
[https://www.twitch.tv/zeropagehomebrew](https://www.twitch.tv/zeropagehomebrew)

------
sixothree
I actually just finished reading "Making 8-Bit Arcade Games in C" in its
entirety.

It definitely has a target audience: Those who know how to program in a
language resembling C, who don't know assembler, don't care to learn
assembler, but can understand basic syntax of assembler. And most importantly
it is for people who want to gain an understanding of the internal hardware of
some vintage arcade machines.

I was surprised to learn that Robotron doesn't use sprites.

~~~
JKCalhoun
I suppose I am surprised as well — but surprised too if it had. I mean, that
would be a _lot_ of sprites.

I could ask you how it was done but perhaps I should just look into it myself.
Thanks.

~~~
sixothree
I suppose the real clue as to the sprites is that when two objects overlap and
one moves away, it briefly leaves a black spot on the other object.

------
nategri
> You can even write C or 6502 assembler code for Woz's creation, the Apple
> ][+. Thrill to the unusual frame buffer layout and one-bit speaker output!

These folks get it.

~~~
jackhack
C? Pascal, maybe, Cobol, Fortran, and even some oddballs like Forth, but C
didn't catch traction until the mid-80s. I remember Chuck Sommerville (author
of the original Snake Byte) and his father describing this "new language" (C)
which has all the speed of assembly but is much friendlier.

Applesoft Basic and 6502 ASM (thanks to the Lazer Systems Interactive
Assembler -LISA) were tops in those days.

~~~
peapicker
The OP was quoting the 8bitworkshop page which has an environment, now, for
programming the Apple ][+ in the manner decribed.

~~~
jackhack
I understand now. Thanks for that clarification!

I spent a few minutes on 8bitworkshop and honestly, it's kind of exciting to
think of coding the APPLE ][ in C.

I think it was the mid 1990s before I saw my first color-coding editor
(Metrowerks?). All this for an Apple is just fantastic.

------
shaunxcode
Maybe this will finally satisfy the people who balk when they see chip-8
pico-8 etc. described as 8-bit. This looks REALLY cool. I would love to see
something similar for 16-bit/68000 console/arcade machines.

------
agentultra
Sweet! I love that, 30-odd-years-later, I'm actually programming for the NES
and can flash my own carts. What a piece of hardware that console was. To be
able to pass on this knowledge in an easy-to-digest format is really cool.
Kudos to the authors!

------
canada_dry
This reminded me of an interesting gent I met at last summer's San Mateo Maker
Faire. He was showing off how he'd designed a Sinclair Z80 computer running on
a FPGA.

Sadly I misplaced his info and can't find any info on the interweb.

Oh well, I can have some fun with this!

~~~
Lerc
The ZX80 was a truly impressive model of simplicity. A Z-80 a ROM some RAM and
a handful 74 series chips.

[http://searle.hostei.com/grant/zx80/zx80.pdf](http://searle.hostei.com/grant/zx80/zx80.pdf)

If you want to understand how a bunch of chips make a computer it's a good
place to begin.

------
Dowwie
8 bit games show what is possible when hard constraints are imposed on
programmers. They did so much with so little. There's a great documentary
about game audio, called "beep!" [1], where musician-programmers share stories
about how they were given the absolute bare minimum memory to create sound
effects and music. It's inspiring to hear what they managed to create.

[1] [http://www.gamessound.com/](http://www.gamessound.com/)

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sneakernets
Oh man, and I _just_ bought a bunch of stuff for my C64 to start developing
games. Is the simplicity yet complexity of 8-bit coming back?

------
rchrd2
About a year ago, I used this to make a hack of the Atari game "Freeway",
which is just ambient drone sounds:
[https://gist.github.com/rchrd2/9f4d8cedef373c05563f69486cf49...](https://gist.github.com/rchrd2/9f4d8cedef373c05563f69486cf497e6)

------
benj111
I like how 'Making games for the Atari 2600', features a character quite
obvious supposed to be Mario. I'm struggling to id the dragon though.

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1541021304/ref=as_li_tl?ie...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1541021304/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1541021304&linkCode=as2&tag=pzp-20&linkId=c149f6365c0a676065eb6d7c5f8dd6ae)

~~~
tarentel
Mario Bros, the arcade game, was ported to Atari a few years prior to the
release of Super Mario Bros on Nintendo.

~~~
benj111
Did not know that thanks.

The box art also explains the blue hat (on the book cover).

[https://www.retrogames.cz/play_004-Atari2600.php?language=EN](https://www.retrogames.cz/play_004-Atari2600.php?language=EN)

------
aquova
This is a really neat project, I look forward to diving into it deeper.

Within the last week or two, I've (re)discovered the Game Boy homebrew scene,
which seems to still be rather active. It's still quite Greek to me, but I've
been attempting to learn how to make games in GBz80 assembly.

[https://github.com/gbdev/awesome-gbdev](https://github.com/gbdev/awesome-
gbdev)

------
Wildgoose
I sold my first program aged 15 back in 1981. It was a version of Space
Invaders for the minimum-spec Acorn Atom squeezed into 512 bytes.

That kind of experience doesn't really go away, I still try and first find a
clean minimal code before "expanding" the code to make it more easily
maintainable.

~~~
ido
how/where did one sell computer games in 1981?

~~~
Wildgoose
By selling them to Computer Games companies who would mass produce them for
sale via magazines or alongside computers in the early computer stores. In
this case I remember the company was called "Bug-Byte".

------
levicole
I own "Making Games for the Atari 2600" which is listed on this site. It's
definitely worth picking up.

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ArtWomb
Great to see this product evolve since v1.0. And a terrific tool for teaching
game design and programming.

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3chelon
The timing of this is superb - I literally just ordered an IceStick FPGA with
the intention of recreating an 8-bit gaming platform, and I was wondering if I
could somehow start playing in a virtual environment first! Can't wait to try
this out...

------
FPGAhacker
I'm impressed with the online verilog simulator. Very cool website.

[https://github.com/sehugg/8bitworkshop](https://github.com/sehugg/8bitworkshop)

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mcnichol
So gorgeous...love when these types of projects get out to the community.

Just loving this!

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msie
Where has this been all my life? Thank you HN!

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pjmlp
This looks really cool!

