Getting into homebrew...

[VenomMacbeth]

Hey, all.  Well, I've recently made the decision that I'm going to focus on learning how to develop homebrew games for old consoles.  However, I know basically nothing of computer programming.  I know there are some members on here that do this, so I thought this would be a good place to ask where I should start.  Any suggestions at all would be greatly appreciated!

[Arkhan]

You need to learn C.

http://www.cprogramming.com/tutorial.html

Without it, you won't get very far.   It's the most widely used language for game programming, for the most part.

Ignore anyone who says you need to start with Assembly.  If you are new to programming in general, jumping straight in with assembly is a great way to completely discourage yourself from trying ever.  Worry about that once you understand C programming.

[VenomMacbeth]

Thanks, Arkhan!  So after I learn C, should I go ahead and learn assembly?  And what about basic?

[Arkhan]

Well, depending on the console, you could never learn assembly (Sega Genesis, for example).

assembly is what you need to really get performance out of most 8-bit machines.


as for BASIC, it never hurts to learn and experiment with it on a machine.   So many old computers have BASIC.

Akalabeth and Ultima 1 were written in BASIC, so they aren't just toy languages!

If you are into Atari 2600, check out Batari BASIC

[BlueBMW]

How translatable is c++ back to c?

[Arkhan]

It's not, really.

C++ has a standard library that isn't in C.  You can change stuff over, but it's effort.

Also, C++ introduces classes.   C does not have classes.   You could try fudging them with structs and function pointers or something, but again, totally don't recommend that.

If you know C++, you can pick up on C in about a weekend, since you've accidentally learned most of it via C++.

and if you know C, you can pick up on C++ in about a week.

[VenomMacbeth]

So I have a question...one of my goals is to be able to program games with simulated sprite scaling, like the console ports of After Burner, Out Run, etc.  How feasible is this?  I've yet to see it used in homebrew games, though I could be mistaken.

[BlueBMW]

It's not, really.

C++ has a standard library that isn't in C.  You can change stuff over, but it's effort.

Also, C++ introduces classes.   C does not have classes.   You could try fudging them with structs and function pointers or something, but again, totally don't recommend that.

If you know C++, you can pick up on C in about a weekend, since you've accidentally learned most of it via C++.

and if you know C, you can pick up on C++ in about a week.

I've noticed a lot of references to C commands when I look up C++ commands.  I suspected they overlapped some but werent interchangeable on a lot of things.  Interesting...

[Bernie]

I will leave this stuff to the smarter ones.....