Omnimaga
Calculator Community => TI Calculators => ASM => Topic started by: thepenguin77 on September 20, 2010, 08:31:49 pm
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Like many of you have probably seen. There are a lot of people who want to learn assembly, but they don't want to do it with "Learn TI-83 Plus Assembly in 28 Days." But I really like 28 days as it is what I learned with. The main problem that I found with it though is that it gives a little too much information at one time. So to combat this, I am making my own guide to this guide.
I basically am just going to go through and say what's important and what's not depending on what skill level you are. I will also try to make the process of creating programs as easy as possible. This means taking everything out of the equation except the actual z80 part. (No DOS or TASM to bother with.)
Here is what I have accomplished today. I just learned html today so it's not very complex, but it works.
Tell me what you think.
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My issue with 28 days is that it provides no concrete game/program example to test directly what a piece of code does and the stuff included does nothing interesting to the person who learns, not to mention the way they introduce you to registers and the calc memory is not for people like me. So far it seems like Hot Dog way of teaching ASM helps those people. I might check your guide, though.
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Good work so far. But you should tell the reader why we need registers, since 28 days only explains what they are. It does not say why in the world the calculator needs registers, only that they exist. I, too, learned from 28 days, but I was thinking, "What's the big deal?"
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I personally got stuck on day 2 the first time ever, and the two other times I tried learning ASM I got stuck on day 3 x.x
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I learned more from listening to people like calc84 than from my first couple times trying to read 28days. And it also was really annoying that one of the most important routines in the guide (pixel plotting) is coded incorrectly, leading to a lot of frustration and discouragement. What i found was that as i read Hot Dog's tutorial, i was able to get the basics, and as soon as I knew those, all the information in 28 days became accessible.
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Nice guide! I'm reading it now, and it seams great! ;D
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I'm not sure if this is because of the way 28 days is written, but there are certain z80 concepts that I learned by learning Axe Parser x.x. After learning pointers, I often found myself lurking through WikiTI to understand/find some stuff >.>
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hmm, my uncle thought me a little bit about z80
he was explaining about regestries, push and pop, jumping from line to line, etc
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I'm not sure if this is because of the way 28 days is written, but there are certain z80 concepts that I learned by learning Axe Parser x.x. After learning pointers, I often found myself lurking through WikiTI to understand/find some stuff >.>
Same here, i found Asm a lot easier to learn after i had dabbled in Axe for a bit. Its like an intermediate language between Basic and Asm :D
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hmm, my uncle thought me a little bit about z80
he was explaining about regestries, push and pop, jumping from line to line, etc
He knows z80? O.o
I guess I am too used to my mom having been computer illiterate until a few years ago XD
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yeah, he is a race-car diver, and his cpu (or whatever it was) for the car he built himself and programmed it in z80...
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Darn that's epic :O
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And my dad wrote a messaging machine in z80 for his final project in computer engineering :D Complete with voice synthesis! :D
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Well thanks for all the suggestions. DJ, my goal for this one was to provide an example program for each step of the way to show you what you should be understanding up to that point.
Overall, my goal for this is just to try to make 28 days as easy as possible. I don't really want to write my own guide, I just want people to be able to make the most of the already written guide. I had actually been meaning to do this for a while, I was just never in the mood to do it.
Some of the things that I think will really help programmers is that I want to make an environment where they only deal with z80 code. Basically I will make a template file with the header information above and commented so that a reader would ignore it. That way they are really only trying to learn assembly. Then assembly will basically be as simple as double clicking a batch file, typing the name, and sending to calc. I am also trying to make a big list of useful bcalls to make the learning process easier. I figure that assembly is a lot more appealing if you have the ability to multiply. ;)
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Ah ok nice :). More ways to learn ASM are a must IMHO. It opens the language to a wider audience. Some ppl just claims it's easy with 28 days but base their view on themselves, not taking in account everyone is different. Sadly it is not the reality. Even with MaxCoderz/RS actitivy being lower and Cemetech/UTI/Omni being the center forum to ask ASM questions now, there are still much less ASM questions asked at those 3 places than TI-BASIC stuff. A lot of people give up faster on ASM.
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I learned it with the 28 days too, though I didn't understand most of it.
The best way to learn is to copy-paste some existing script, and then try to modifie it to see how that affects the outcome.
You should really provide some standard routines with it, and then explain each line seperately.
That greatly helps, and gives the reader a place to start.
Also, try not to give more how's and why's than nessacery, that greatly confused me in the 28 tut.
I'm making a big game now, it's nearly over 10000 lines, and I know crap about how and why it works, just that it does. :P
Just throwing my experiences out here, hope that helps you!
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Yeah I agree that source code can be very helpful to learn, same for messing around with it. Just reading tutorials and meaningless pieces of code in them is sometimes not enough. You have to check some people source code for games that you kinda like or would like to know how to make.
Btw, I can't wait to see your game :D