After seeing the fancy programs people like Mateo and James have been making with assembly, I am getting envious of their skills. So, I am wondering if anyone who knows assembly really well can share what he used to get so good... I can't seem to find any good tutorials.

I really want to be able to program incredible games like that!

Oh... and can someone give me an example of a simple tilemapping function in Axe?

A pretty old Axe tilemapping tutorial can be found on Omnimaga here. There may be some minor improvements that can be made with more recent language features, but it's still a pretty good base.

The best guide for learning asm can be found here: http://media.taricorp.net/83pa28d/lesson/toc.html
Although when I was first learning Hotdog's asm guides were also really helpful: https://www.omnimaga.org/files/Our-TI-PC-Products-Music-and-Calculator-Videos/Our-TI-Documentations/TI-83-ASM-For-The-Absolute-Beginner.zip

The best method to learning assembly is to learn it how one would do any language such as basic, axe, or the like is to practice practice practice. This involves also not trying to push yourself farther than is realistic when you are first learning; although this depends on the person. Also, really get used to reading A LOT. Even when you see a giant wall of text such as this one; just power through on the tutorials or code, whatever you may be reading; it will greatly help you and avoid a lot of potential questions

Also, when learning something such as asm, it is really helpful to have a nice environment set up so you can easily write programs and test them in an emulator so you can see first hand what happens, plus it will give you a good base for debugging when you go about making your own programs. SPASM is the recommended assembler for z80 code; there is also Brass but I find it to be not as intuitive for first time users.

Lastly; feel free to ask any questions you may have! Don't feel discouraged if you can't figure something out, just keep trying different things until you get the desired result. Expect a ton of failure; it is a difficult language to learn, but once you get the hang of it you will find it to be easier than Basic with many respects.

Don't give up! Just keep trying a little bit at a time; and be sure to read

Thanks for the support guys!

@Mateo Yeah, I know what you mean by not pushing yourself than realistic... that is totally my problem. I get impatient when all I can do is put text on the screen. I just want to jump ahead and make some incredible rpg or something super advanced

Ok! Here is a gif of my first asm program. All it does is display a string, pause, display a string, etc. I reminds me of an rpg.


I have a question: How to I format text? see picture below. I don't understand how to set or reset these functions.

Use the set instruction to set bits and the res instruction to reset bits. The syntax-highlighted bits in each section there are the arguments to use with these instructions to set or reset those flags.

Thanks, I'll try it. So, to set inverted text I would write,

set TextInverse, (IY + TextFlags)

Correct?

Correct.

Thanks, man! Have a great evening

You're off to a good start, Switchblade! Learning Assembly can be intimidating, but it looks like you're already picking it up Like Mateo said, just keep working at it, and don't be afraid to ask questions.

I also found reading source code of other programs to be useful. Sometimes it can be overwhelming if things seem complex, but it can also be handy to pick up little optimisation tips & tricks. Again, if there are sections in source code that you don't quite understand, post it here and we'll do our best to help

Thanks, I will!