z80 game programming tutorials

[chickendude]

This is something i've thought of doing/compiling for a while. It would be nice to go through, in a similar vein as 28 Days, different topics specific to programming games in asm, things which you'd have found useful when you first started coding (i think the reason most of us started programming TI calcs was to write games). We could cover things like:
-different ways to handle tilemaps (maybe expand it later to things like parallax scrolling, bridges/masked tiles that the player can walk under/behind)
-collision detection
-interactive objects
-handling enemies/mobile objects
-paths
-maybe even sprite/fastcopy routines or the theory(ies) behind grayscale on our shitty LCDs
and other things that might require you to have a nice foundation in assembly but which aren't completely straightforward. Basically, a little primer to help people start writing GAMES (and being able to write their own routines without having to depend on prewritten routines, not that there's nothing wrong with that, they just don't always do exactly what you want them to). I dunno what your thoughts would be on something like this?

[NanoWar]

Well sure, I've never done anything graphically complex except simple tilemaps, but a games tutorial about how the hell you do that stuff would be very helpful!
More topics: Clipping, masking, grayscale, these 3Dish labyrinths, direct keyboard input, lcd driver details, maybe pixel artwork, AI?, animations!

Jim E should have done this .

[chickendude]

Yeah, i'd like to compile a list of things that would be useful to know as far as game programming. If you have any more suggestions, please share them! It'd be cool to get people more knowledgable than i am to write about different things, i could write a little about tilemaps/collision detection, interacting with objects, etc. but things like grayscale and 3D stuff i know absolutely nothing about. I know there are tutorials on raycasting, etc., and i know Ben Ryves writes about his 3D project at his blog, it'd be cool to compile something like that into a more how-to sorta thing.

EDIT: and yeah, Jim e (and Spencer) would've been able to write about a lot of interesting things.

I think it's a wonderful idea. It's something I see tossed around here and there, but not many people ever seem to get around to writhing one.

[Madskillz]

I think it is a great idea. Macros would be something cool to touch on too.

[chickendude]

I only know a bit about macros, #DEFINE macro(param1,param2) or a\ ld hl,param1 \ ld de,param2 \ sbc hl,de. NanoWar would be a much better person to talk about macros

In fact I was planning to start writing a tutorial too, my idea was very close to yours but with slight differences about the approach.

I would love to write something which explains step by step how to write a game (from A to Z). A real game with a real challenge. And we could start from very early stage (writing something into the lcd) to a finished game (something cool, not an easy game). At each step we could talk about each manner to handle something, why choosing one or the other and comments a lot the code.

As far as I know, there's a lot of technical tutorial but nothing which really show how to create games, there's a lot of conceptual issues in game design, that's interesting

And of course keeping the subjects you mentioned

[chickendude]

That would be a cool idea, too, my idea was/is a bit more general trying to talk about writing games in general, though with more of an emphasis on tilemap-based games. I've started writing a little bit on tilemaps and now i think i've got a lot more i could write about (handling objects, collision-detection, scripting, simple physics, etc.). I was thinking of maybe starting off with a simple tilemap routine and from there going on to write a simple mario-style game. I dunno if your idea was aimed at people new to assembly or not, but i was thinking of something more for the people who've finished all the tutorials and have started writing programs but don't really know where to go from there. Honestly, i can't remember how i learned assembly. I read AsmGuru back in the day and then just started trying to write code, asking questions, and following all the assembly programming help sections. MaxCoderz and RevSoft had some really amazing topics, the ones at MC are still available and old posts from CoBB, Spencer, Jim e, Joe P, Dwedit, Ben Ryves, and more are full of amazing information.

[Madskillz]

Yeah I wish we had a backup of our stuff. We had some good topics with valuable information in it.