Sega Game Coding in Assembly - Computerphile
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 ธ.ค. 2016
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Coding an entire game in assembler. Matt Phillips is creating a brand new game for a 25 year old console.
EXTRA BITS: • EXTRA BITS - Assembly ...
More info on Matt's Project: www.tanglewoodgame.com/info
Thanks to The National Videogame Arcade: bit.ly/Computerphile_NVA
/ computerphile
/ computer_phile
This video was filmed and edited by Sean Riley.
Computer Science at the University of Nottingham: bit.ly/nottscomputer
Computerphile is a sister project to Brady Haran's Numberphile. More at www.bradyharan.com
Didn't know what he was talking about "Ess See Ess Aye" until I saw it written down... "Oh scuzzy!" =D
Ha! Was about to post the same.
And "Zill-inks"
finally someone with a devkit who can actually use it.
This. Its cool that you own one, but even cooler if you can actually put the kit to use and do something with it.
Shame on the collectors who own and remove these things from the wild because they just want to own it. These dev kits needs to be used, they were created for this purpose, not for rotting in a clearcase display. ah! and we need more sega genesis game.
I'd like see someone figure out how to make games for saturn
@@pinkyoshi9339 look up the yearly saturn homebrew contests. you'd be surprised at how many people do it.
Dude, as a Java Enterprise developer; I hereby offer thee my respects. You really made my day.
It's refreshing to be reminded that there's much more to programming, and that there's a whole world outside Silicon Valley hype cycle.
Computer/Video Game programmer, periphery shirt, and mentions cubase/music recording. I would get along with this dude
Plus he has Green Hill Zone tattoos hahaha
periphery, worked at crytek, and on a computetphile video. somebody give this man a medal
Love periphery. I bet his ability to grasp those complex rhythms plays into his ASM ability.
plus he has Green Hill tattoos hahaha
THIS IS BY FAR THE BEST COMPUTERPHILE EPISODE YET!
indeed!
Very interesting to see Sega development here!
Absolutely. He had me at "Traveler's Tales."
I was never expecting you to be here, Yuzoboy! :D
Notice when he started to talk about the development side of things his speech sped up and became more vibrant and lively. He certainly is living in that world. Respect and jealous.
Thats incredibly hard. This guy is some kind of software development masochist.
Hanniffy Dinn but it was more rewarding and you hadn't a choice.
It's actually not as hard as it seems. Despite how it seems, programming for the Mega Drive is really easy, especially with all the documentation, support and tools available. At most it is just time consuming to learn it all, and put all the knowledge to use.
I wonder if that's how the ROM hacks are made?
Knuckles the Echidna most ROM hacks are just done with editing the code and data, as well as testing on emulators. But if emulators are the only source of testing, it is bound to have compatibility issues with hw or other emulators. Something like this solves the issue, but for me having to use win95 to develop is unacceptable.
ᑎᗩTᔕᑌᗰI that explains why a lot of the earlier ROM hacks don't work with the Everdrive! They are only playable on the emulators.
I'm glad this piece of technology is still in good use instead of rotting in some museum. Cool project.
Gosh, my phone almost broke from the guys enthusiasm.
Animation looks very smooth in his game.
Love the art style too.
Two thumbs up. Just like some have mentioned, he is a real programmer. He said it took him three years to learn assembly and how to program a game in it. THAT, right there is what a lot of folks don't understand these days. They either call themselves a programmer after a brief exposure or completely give up if they can't create a masterpiece after a short period of time. It's a skill, and any skill worth learning will take time. This guy has the mindset many people lack. He doesn't get frustrated if the computer doesn't boot right away, he understands that it takes time to learn something, and he actually puts in the effort.
cout
Effort? Whot, you mean I actually have to like work at something? I thought you could get software to take care of that (sarcasm)
Going through sort of more as a hobby myself (but it's really I see as maybe a toolkit in and of itself to improve my development skills) doing Assembly (or a form rather of course being more accurate since it's more I don't know a family at least of languages rather to describe I suppose low level code.
I do find it highly interesting how assembly works though nontheless, though have not touched on it at all in years I will admit that but yeah plan on going back to it very soon!
A real programmer? Nah, real programmers use emacs
@ironmike southern I bet he can't name a single example of what he's talking about lol. He's just angry that kids are learning to program and have better access to learning tools and knowledge than he'll ever have.
"Debugger" sounds funny in British English.
I guess you could say Alan Turing was
**puts on sunglasses**
_debuggered_
I love it when they say: There will be a link in the video description: and its not there. Thank you
Traveller's Tales! Legendary coders for Sega systems. I am amazed at the work they achieved, especially Sonic R on Saturn. I'd be thrilled to hear all their war stories.
Great video. I really like the editing on this one, where they show the results on the screen. Great work. Matt's work looks amazing and really complicated. It's pretty admirable that he dedicates so much work and time to a technology that's obsolete.
Finally, assembly is getting some love!
Also, SCSI is pronounced “skuzzy” (kids these days).
around my place I always heard "skasi"
i dunno , i use both
Anyone pronounce SCSI as "sexy"?
but why would someone bother using assembly for game prog????
Because it's a console which isn't very powerful.
The Periphery shirt doe
I listen to Prog metal , but I find Periphery very boring and bland Tech Prog
I prefer bands like veil of maya, after the burial and such, but periphery I/II for a session is always nice. :P
My profile icon is my favorite prog tech band.
Does anyone recognize it?
lost in the static by after the burial and Mikasa from Veil of Maya
Tesseract for the win bois
Does it have DLC and microtransactions ?
He doesn't mention needing / supporting the "Mega Modem" so I'd guess probably not
nat4200 Booo :(. And no special edition with an " iconic " hat ?
Andrew Joy
Well, the game isn't developed by EA. :p
you have to fund it's development yourself
You have to pre order everything
Anyone else love the fact this dude has a Periphery shirt on?!
Thank you so much for this video and all the other ones featuring Matt! I've been glancing at his blog for several years and these videos give me the inspiration to give the whole Sega Genesis programming thing another go.
Now that's passion!
this is the first computerphile video I've ever watched, but I've heard of the channel before. I've gotta say, I hardly understand the language he uses to describe what he's doing with the sega/computer commands, but I absolutely love it. It reaffirms my love for science and technology, and gives me a behind the scenes look at what really happens when you create and run games. Smarter people than I have figured out the solution, and I am just reaping the reward. this is great!
I like to think I'm pretty savvy in low level computing like this, but so much of what he did is beyond anything I know. So amazing and glad enthusiasts are still doing this!
Excellent stuff Matt! Can't wait for this!
Really nice! In looking forward for more videos of this!!!
I... I didn't realize people programmed games in pure assembly. @_@
Anos Anosn I can't imagine everything is done in assembly. Then again a lot of game programming today is done is C which is just one step up.
Rollercoaster Tycoon was written by one guy in x86 assembly
Yeah, pretty impressive. The first RollerCoaster Tycoon was also written completely in assembly, by a single person.
Even games today have some of their code written in Assembly. Usually at areas where performance is key, such as rendering etc.
The tricky thing is that you need to write procedures based on the architecture you write your game for, e.g. for Intel vs. AMD vs. ARM as well as the GPU.
Running things on a 7mhz x68k you needed all the power you could get, and there weren't any tools available to properly compile code written in a high-level language to run optimally, so you basically had to write everything in assembly. Think about games like Chrono Trigger for the SNES, that's a 50 hour game with tons of music, graphics, story, and it's 4MB.
It allways amazes me this kind of willpower. Great job!
this was incredibly interesting, i watched every second with amazement. Such old hardware still being used and people enjoying coding in such low level environments, this seems very fun.
Love this. I hope you do more of these types of videos in the future!
Dear lord what a great topic, Computerphile! Please more of this!
It's amazing to see the actual dev process on real hardware! Great video!
I love when Computerphile covers coding videos. Please make more.
Wow, haven't seen this stuff in over two decades. It's all coming back to me now. I grew up writing 68k ASM for various platforms; Macs, Ataris, Amigas. Thanks for this blast from the past!
wow!! I really love 90s hardware. I'd love to see more videos about this exactly topic!
Where is the link to his blog? They said in the video, they would link it.
Thanks so much to the both of you!
For all of you who are blown by that, it aint that difficult. Learning assembly is just like learning any other language. Moreover u can easily integrate c with assembly. Just write a few assembly lines for setting up video audio buffer and call the main function of your c programme. Thats it
mad respect for matt philips and thank you computerphile for bringing this topic to us. beautiful.
I recently thought a lot about coding in assembly, also had some conversations about it and then BAM I see Computerphile came up with that video. Thanks!
Patience and dedication!
so cool. I wish I knew about all this stuff! Thanks for sharing Matt!
Love the shirt!
Great to see another mathcore enthusiast!
Dig the periphery shirt. Love those guys. Also super cool to see how game building used to be.
"It boots one out of three times"... Brilliant!
Keep up the good work, Matt!
He's wearing a Periphery shirt so I'll listen to whatever he says
cant wait to play the game Matt!!
Major, major props Matt
Hey, this is awesome! If you can find other/more devs to talk about game development, I'd like to see it!
I am very impressed with the original hardware and skills! I really hope your Kickstarter gets funded, and in this case I have put my money where my text is!
I get that using a dev kit is the proper way to do it because you'll know it'll run and you won't run into any emulator anomalies, but I'd personally prefer using an emulator.
Everdrive cart?
Exactly
YOUR SHIRT IS AMAZING! You must be quite the djentleman!
What a cool bit of kit! And this chaps been developing in 68000 assembly? Superb.
The complexity of it forces a unique creative process.
For those who are wondering, you can not create a Sega game from Assembly. Assembly is merely a pseudo-coding language which is just one step above machine code. When coding in Assembly, you can only store ASCII code in registers (such as AX, BX, CX, DX, EX, etc.). These registers have very limited capacity to hold the necessities such as the palette of every single level. You also can not receive input from the user upon arrow-button pressed events, since the code of the up-arrow, down-arrow, etc. is too long enough to fit inside the 2-byte registers. It's inconceivable to program even an 8-bit Sonic game in Assembly language. It's better to use a more advanced programming language, such as COBOL or XML.
Or PHP
C is too inefficient, Java is the better option.
Not me! 1 zillion devices use java, it is the most efficient
Don't feed the troll, I doubt he's being serious.
I appreciate all of the replies! I wish I could reply to all of you great human beings, but I got XML programming to do later today at TheOnion University. If you guys are wondering, I'm taking the Assembly Debasing program and currently enrolled in semester 1, so I'm just getting started. But at the same time I know exactly what I'm talking about; feel free to ask questions and I'll get back to you as soon as possible. Take care!
And the game was happily received.
Great video.
Its cool that its such a rare piece of equipment, its Awesome that he is actually using it to develop on!
so nice to see that people keep that legacy up and running, I for myself use Atari 8 Bit for 25 years now without a break
Does he have a tattoo based on Sonic Green Hill Zone screenshot? This guy could be my hero.
He stole my tattoo idea before i even invented it!
Some day I'll get a pixel tattoo.
I'm thinking some monster from Shining in the Darkness maybe.
***** the Eggman final boss is stunningly cool.
If you can't get your hands on one of those dev kits you can build your own pirate kit and make unlicensed games. That's what Electronic Arts did back in the day and things worked out pretty well for them I'd say =)
You can (it's basically what I'm doing with an snes right now), but debugging tools are the hard part.
Real hardware and emulators get you part of the way...
But a consumer console has no debugging support, and it's quite hard to implement that manually, so you end up having to do a lot of your tests on real hardware without even having a debugger to work with.
And people thought assembly language by itself was a nightmare.
It gets so much worse without a debugger... XD
KuraIthys Yeah my comment was mostly a Trojan horse for some trivia on the scrappy origin (pun not intended but I'll take the credit) of the now behemoth publisher 😊
"Artisanal game development"
Just seen the release of this game as a news item on the BBC website - pretty much a year later!
Lots of respect to this chap.
great video,great effort matt keep going!
i'm a beginning programmer, when i started the video, i thought "wow Nasm... this will be confusing and boring" But NO, it was actually curious, cool and really INSPIRING! i felt invited to see the magic happen up close,
thanks for this video!
That periphery shirt!
Great band
Good to see somebody actually using a dev kit.
The game dude made, Tanglewood, turned out to be very good.
He should start his own channel. I’d love to learn from him
Respect to him for what he is doing. Thanks for that window 95 booting and turbo like debugger.
MC68000 asm was so nice to code. Nice video.
Andrew N One of my favorites! I loved 68k, still miss it
Barry Manilowa
Well, there are few decent Sega emulators out there - at least, for Linux and Windows.
Artem Borisovskiy Depends what you mean with "decent". If you mean that they actually work right and are completely usable; no, there are no Sega emulators like that. If by decent you mean that they work barely and could use a lot of more time being fixed, then yeah there are few like that.
It sure was, and with DevPac it was 98% wondrous =))
What's wrong with Kega Fusion and Exodus?
This makes me want to program an old game system in ASM (which I tried to do as a kid, but obviously I failed miserably because I wasn’t smart enough).
Fantastic video
Funny enough, there was a video game called Tanglewood published in 1987 by Microdeal, a small British video game company. It was ported to some 68000-based computers but not the Sega console.
Huge respect to this guy, great looking game too.
Just yesterday i read about gameboy programming in assembly and now this video comes out, very nice!
Ess-see-ess-aye? Skuzzy! SKUZZY! SKUZZY! Come on! Say SKUZZY!
Awesome. I loved the sega genesis when i was a kid. Was my 2nd console system, after the NES. I had the sega channel from TCI cable company in seattle. And i always had wrote down game design ideas on these little flash cards that i get from school, i had my own method learning how to spell words instead of the flash card system so that means that i had a ton of empty cards that i use for drawing game maps, weapons, story, notes of the physics of the game.
Such a clever and humble man.
loved this video
Real programmers program in assembly language!
Real programmers program in Brainf**k.
Real programmers programe in Whitespace.
ender_scythe Brainfuck is crazy!
Actually, I disagree with what I said earlier, real programmers program in Glass.
Real programmers use butterflies. Google it.
Cool, the case looks so cyber!
The "Big Evil Framework" at 5:26 made me laugh!
im excited for tanglewood
Thanks for making this video I love stuff like this , Also Matt Philips is a machine !
Great stuff!
Absolutely Fascinating. Could listen to the geezer all day. Love all the coding jargon. That Machine is the Dogs Bollocks, I'd love to have it in my SEGA collection. 👍👍
What a BEAST!! Also... Love those tattoos!!
Looks like someone had some fun with the subtitles. Might wanna take another look at those.
Wow. Amazing work! Kudos 😊
I was linked here from a GOG review of Tanglewood. It's absolutely fascinating.
Also that dev kit is really cool
i fking love this channel
I wish he also talked about his experience working for AAA gaming companies
So awesome!
Never noticed his Periphery t-shirt till now, noice!
Nice periphery shirt. It's nice to know there's other programmers out there who listen to them too.
It'd be harder to find a programmer who doesn't listen to prog metal
Great video!!
Had to dig deep to find the code! Cheers
The last game I wrote in Assembler was on the 6809--the 68000's little brother. That family has the best architecture IMHO.
This is awesome!
Very interesting. Would you link his blog in the video description ?
Hey there :D didn't know you were into assembly!
It's one of my passions up to this day. I'm also surprised to meet one of the R.I creators here :-]
Maizuma Games Nice! I guess coding is just something a lot of redstoners are into. It's cool to actually see an example of this trend in person :D
I've only taken one assembly class, and I have a love-hate relationship with it. I think it will become more love and less hate as I grow more proficient in assembly. How did you get into it?