Hey NA!

I've been doing some research and trying to determine if I should use NESASM3 or ASM6 before I head down the path of NES programming.
Are these accurate?

NESASM3:

1. Seems to be widely known / used. 
2. Nerdy Nights' tutorials are all NESASM3, so examples are plenty
3. Seems to have a history of being "buggy"
4. Can only make simple games (is this tetris simple, or contra simple...not sure) 

ASM6:

1. Seems to get greater for being less "buggy" than NESASM3
2. NESMaker decided to use it, so must be good
3. Can be used to write more advanced games (contra up to zelda advanced...not sure)
4. Can't find any examples of ASM6 

If so, I'd like to go ASM6 simply because of its #1 and #3...but because of its #4 I'm a little stuck since just about every tutorial (including the Nerdy Nights one on this forum) is written for NESASM3. 

Please share your thoughts. 

For NESASM 1 and 2 are accurate. 3 and 4 not so much. I do not think that I have ever encountered a bug, and plenty of large games have been made with it. Choice of assembler is the least of your worries when making a game; use what gets you started the easiest. There are plenty of real issues to work through once you get get programming.

I've made all my games with NESASM3 plenty of which could be considered large.

I know that it has come up before, but where is it that people are finding these myths about NESASM? Is it one thread, is it scattered information? It comes up every year or two, and the misconception never seems to go away.

That's actually the response I was hoping for, I really appreciate the feedback. Think I'll go with NESASM3 then!

Wow! Very good to know as well. Based on your comment and solegoose I'm confident in using NESASM now, thank you for The insight, and congrats on all the games that's incredible! Btw, I went to retrousb, Sneak Peek is no longer available?

Over the last month of reading several forums and threads it was definitely 1 outta every 15 posts seemed to mention this issue. You are the first that countered it, but based on your comments and khans I'm really confident in using it, so thanks for that!

Yeah, I've heard people speak out against it over the years, but no one can ever come up with any real reason that is a deal breaker. As for the games that have used NESASM, and that it can be used to make projects big and small, there are a lot! Probably as many as projects that have been made with ASM6 or CA65.

Compiler just comes down to syntax, and what you are familiar with. If you're starting out with the Nerdy Nights, it makes sense to not try and immediately learn two syntaxes at once. I have had to manually convert non-NESASM code to NESASM and things can be rather different, enough to make learning another a barrier.

But hey, all of that could just be me. I'm sure folks would love to debate why it is no good (although I still doubt there will be a valid reason at the end of the day   ). Best of luck, and don't hesitate to ask any and all questions that come to mind!

Post of the day!

Gotcha. So what's happening is I'm finding great sample code snippets for different things but some are in ca65, some are in nesasm, others in p65 and asm6... and I just wanna be able to use them for parts of my code but they don't compile since they are for different assemblers. So I figured I'd do some research and finally asked which ones the one to use. I definitely have no clue how to translate ca65 to nesasm for instance, wish I could though so I could use some snippets I found. I will definitely ask you guys for help, thank you for the offer, I'm still in the reading and learning phase though haha!

I love you.

Sadly it has been sold out for 9 years. Or maybe it isn't so sad?  

 

Aren't there plans for KHAN Games 4-in-1 Retro Gamepak to be back in stock? They could grab their Sneak 'n Peek on there....

Tentative plans, but I don't know if it's truly going to happen or not. The desire to keep parts on hand to manufacture games on demand is definitely not as high as it was a few years ago.

I heard ASM6 makes it burn- down there. Just sayin'... Actually, I shouldn't be so vague:

ASM6 is the chlamydia of compilers. The first LDA and you're sucking down azithromycin like it's Faygo at the GOTJ.

This thread just took a turn.

I have a blanket rule to not click Zi links. Thank goodness.

Haha, it’a good to be loved! I hope that means I can count on yall for help  (Ill definitely need it based on what I’ve read).
But that’s amazing, and exactly where I’d like to be!

Now back to my hex table exercises lol

 

Looks like someone has it for sale on the eBay: https://tinyurl.com/yy55mrgt...

Dang, $110!! That must be an awesome game. Can’t wait to make one that hopefully becomes a classic for all to play 😁

Any assembler is fine as long that you know to work around their quirks. Regarding nesasm #3, there is some known bugs but if you know how to get around them, it won't be a problem (label length limit, zero page access quirk, etc). One "issue" is nesasm uses a non standard way regarding the [] brackets usage so code written for it will need to be adapted when used in other assembler. Except for that, as long that you are aware of them, there is nothing wrong to start with it (I did, now I uses ca65).

 Very insightful... I had only heard of some of the bugs on a few scattered posts, never an actual list. 

The label length limit is good to know and an easy problem to avoid (do you know the limit, 12 chars or less or something?).

The zero page access quirk is a little unsettling,   because that deals with the first byte of memory up to $FF or something like, and it’s supposed to be faster cause you don’t need to specify the whole 16 bit address... I might be way off just going off top of my head been reading LOTS of material 😁 Can you shed more light on this issue and how I can work around it?

So The bracket issue will only affect me if I’m porting my nesasm code to ca65 or something else? That’s okay I suppose, it won’t stop me from making a game just recoding it if I ever wanna do that, but I’m thinking I wouldn’t ever wanna do that haha. 
I do have some ca65 code I’m trying to port to nesasm though, any thoughts on that as well would be great! 

Thanks again for the reply and info, great stuff! 

Go with whatever you feels comfortable using. Don't worry about limits or bugginess. Those two factors are determined by you. I program my games in C compiled with cc65 (with a small sprinkling of assembly here and there). "Common knowledge" dictates that I should only be able to make simple, single-screen games this way. My current project is a scrolling beat-em-up in the vein of Double Dragon or River City Ransom, and it feels great.

Not saying you need to use C like I do, it's just where my background knowledge was before getting into NES development so I instantly felt comfortable. I've also become more comfortable with assembly over time as a result. If you feel comfortable, you'll write better code, you'll get it done faster, and you'll work around any issues that get in your way.

Congrats on the beatem up! I loved both those game but RCR was such a twist on the genre plus we all loved the super dodgeball sprites haha.

im moving forward with nesasm just cause it’s more common and tutorials are based on it. We’ll see if I ever need to code in anything else down the road, as I don’t have a comfort with any of it since it’s all new. 😁

Appreciate the info