Ok everyone, I just couldn't wait... I had to give a little update on what I just received in the mail on Saturday! My package came and boy was I jazzed! I had just received my Apple 6502 Assembler/Editor disk and manuals. You may be saying to yourself, "God, What a geek!" but if you understood the gravity of this package you would realize that this is one of the main components in reaching my goal of recreating the original Ultima 1 program!
After gaining some true insight into the glory days of programming the apple IIe computer, I found that no game worth its weight was ever programmed without some form of assembly coding. That is to say, any game that relied on speed as a factor in its operations was definitely programmed using some form of Machine Language.
As of today, the only Assembly editors I've heard of so far are: Merlin, Big Mac, LISA "pronounced "Lee-Za", and the Apple Dos Tool Kit, which is what I just received. There are probably many more out there but these seem to be the ones that were used when they programed games on the apple II.
Now the reason I'm so excited is because the Apple II series of computers only came with Integer Basic or Applesoft basic. The Assembler Editor was a separate package that had to be purchased and back then this package was expensive!!! The key word here is “purchased”, since we are talking about a software application that is over 25 years old, there aren’t too many packages available for sale in 2011! Actually, I haven’t been able to find ANY Apple II assembler editor for sale until now. Well, at least I didn’t have to pay the hundreds or thousands of dollars that it would have cost if I bought it in 1980! I know I could have figured out some way to convert the .dsk files that are available for the Apple II emulator but I’m not going to do this for three reasons:
1. I don’t know how to do this!
2. I’m going to recreate the original Ultima 1 program on an original Apple IIe computer just like Richard Garriott did way back in 1980, so I need an actual, physical program to do this!
3. I want the process to be completely legal and as if I was in 1980 so all the books I’m reading are the real thing, all the programs I’m using are ones I’ve already had or have purchased on eBay, and the Assembly Editor I’m going to use was also purchased and is a legitimate working program for my Apple IIe computer!
With this purchase of the Apple 6502 Assembly Editor I now have the ability to start programming in Machine Language! This is instrumental because without this program my dream is dead! It would stop right here and we would probably never know how the original Ultima 1 was ever programmed. This is going to happen! I am going to figure out how to program Ultima 1 and then make it available to everyone! It’s kind of corny to say but this is a bucket list item for me and I plan on making it happen.
So, to recap, I will be programming on an original Apple IIe computer, I know own a legal copy of Apple 6502 Assembler/Editor, and I own a number of really good Assembly language programming books to get me started in the right direction. With a little time and a lot of effort I will be giving you all some examples of code and some screen shots of Ultima 1 revisited!
Stay tuned, it can only get better! Hehehe
P.S. Don’t worry, I will still be posting book and software reviews while learning the magical language of Assembly!
No comments:
Post a Comment