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Reminds me of a simplified vector graphics renderer of some sort.  The speediness sounds really handy for, say, game development - every cycle counts when you're rendering a game, even in 2d!  IFJMP is instant now (fixed that bug), so, yes, it takes 2 cycles per pixel, which is...frankly, I didn't even know you could optimize the code that much.  Very impressive!


Your preprocessor is really cool.  The base source file for the line-renderer/pixel-pusher looks like real Assembly, like the sort I often see in, say, online 6502 development tutorials.  It's quite a bit easier to understand, and omg the use of underscores in the binary sections is a huge improvement to readability.

The only major comment I have is that it might be worth adding the estimated/intended address of every word in the comments for that line - makes it easier to debug when something (inevitably) goes catastrophically wrong.  Combined with the comments for, say, "label here", or "overlay here", it should be fairly easy to figure out where the problem is in the original pre-preprocessing source file.  One of the latest updates (dunno if it's the one I released last, or the one that's WIP w/ the code for the cycle timer & such) has a built-in way to check the current address in the Debug screen, meaning that being able to search for said address in your code can help you find what blew up faster than manually trawling through the RAM viewer, looking for the highlighted entry.


(Also, my apologies for taking so long to reply to this.  Internet blew up.  Again.  I feel like such an unprofessional developer >.<)

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Yeah, it reminded me of vector graphics too. I considered calling it something like that, but it kind of felt like it made it sound like it did more than it does, so...

As for the speed, well, it's a tradeoff really - it requires some setup, and using several registers (and the right ones), so it's not ideal for all cases - e.g. if you had lots of individual pixels or very short lines instead of long ones. (It's kind of telling that my Snake game only uses it for drawing the initial window, not during gameplay.)


Re: preprocessor, thanks. It's been a while since I did any assembly other than toys (not that I ever did much with it at all), so I don't really know what the state of the art is there (haven't looked at 6502 tutorials or anything), so it's encouraging to hear that I'm close anyway.

About the underscores and readability - yeah, that's exactly why I added that. I started with just plain 0b syntax for explicit binary numbers (along with 0x for hex), then added the "..." to make the monitor device easier to work with - but many things were still such a chore, what with having to count out the bits every time, so I was thinking some way of grouping/separating the bits would be nice, and... yeah, it was just so much better. I'm not removing that, no way, no how.

I've kept working on it and adding features I wanted, fixing bugs, etc. - I think I know two ways to fix the line number issue (not quite sure which I'll go for, one requires more refactoring than the other). Just need to get around to it. Another thing I've been meaning to do is include not just the disk address of labels, but also the local address (where it will be in RAM), since that can be more useful.

I'm not sure if having it add the address on every line will be all that useful to me personally, since I don't usually look all that much at the output (when not working on the preprocessor itself anyway), but I could probably make it do that pretty easily, so if others would find it useful, sure, I can add that. (Who knows, I might find it useful myself once it's there.) It wouldn't be an estimate either, since it needs to track the addresses accurately anyway. And once I fix the line number issue, including that too might also help?

EDIT: OK, I've now fixed the line number bug (went with the easier-to-do way for now), and added the local address to the label comments. I've also added an option to add the address of every instruction in a comment on that line. It can actually add any or all of the original line number, the disk address, and the local/memory address (where it will be when that overlay is loaded), depending on the options given to it, so whichever combination you prefer should be available. Use --help for the details.


No worries on taking a while to reply, I'm pretty slow at that myself, and I understand that life comes first. Also, I do programming professionally, and let me tell you, when the Internet goes down? A lot of things just... stop. Even if you already have all the code you're working on locally instead of being in the middle of code review or similar, "Hm, let me just look that up... Oh wait. *facepalm*"