HuC updates? alternatives?

[djcouchycouch]

Hello!

I usually work on Sega Genesis game development (*cough* Goplanes *cough*) but this morning I wanted to mess around with HuC for fun. Modified one of ObeyBrew's tutorials and was up and running in like an hour.

HuC doesn't seem to have been updated in 2005. Have there been any updates since?

Are they any alternatives to HuC for coding PCEngine games in C?

Thanks!
DJCC

[Arkhan]

HuC doesn't seem to have been updated in 2005. Have there been any updates since?

No.  There were some goofy "updates" and "tweaks" that are floating around, I think... but they are mostly irrelevant fluff updates and do nothing to fix the overall annoyances of HuC.

Are they any alternatives to HuC for coding PCEngine games in C?

Nope.  Unless you want to write your own library and use CC65 or something.


Welcome to PCEland.

HuC Sucks.   Get used to it.   

[djcouchycouch]

do nothing to fix the overall annoyances of HuC.

I don't suppose there's a good place to find information about said annoyances and possible workarounds?

Nope.  Unless you want to write your own library and use CC65 or something.

I'd rather not

HuC Sucks.   Get used to it.   

That's too bad!

[nodtveidt]

No "official" improvements have been made since 2005. Tomatheous, Arkhan, and I have all extended it with additional libraries and features but none of these have ever been incorporated into the "official" version. I'm thinking of forking it and producing something new based on it but time is at a premium right now.

[djcouchycouch]

No "official" improvements have been made since 2005. Tomatheous, Arkhan, and I have all extended it with additional libraries and features but none of these have ever been incorporated into the "official" version. I'm thinking of forking it and producing something new based on it but time is at a premium right now.

Can you give an idea of what kind of additions were made?

[spenoza]

There have been previous conversations about how the few people with enough skills to really make important fixes to HuC and the compiler are too busy making games. They've all said they could probably fix a lot of HuC, but that it wouldn't be fun (they wouldn't like doing it) and that would mean one or two games they want to make would get pushed back or never exist. I think these folks prefer to just patch over problems circumstantially where they need to. I can't blame them, but it does make me a little sad.

[Arkhan]

There have been previous conversations about how the few people with enough skills to really make important fixes to HuC and the compiler are too busy making games. They've all said they could probably fix a lot of HuC, but that it wouldn't be fun (they wouldn't like doing it) and that would mean one or two games they want to make would get pushed back or never exist. I think these folks prefer to just patch over problems circumstantially where they need to. I can't blame them, but it does make me a little sad.

Holy shit, you're not dead! 


Also, don't forget about OldMan's HuC exploration.  You can find some of his comments floating around the forum. 


We all just work around problems when they appear.  your best bet is to get going, and start asking questions when shit doesn't work.

[nodtveidt]

Can you give an idea of what kind of additions were made?

Arkhan and TheOldMan did Squirrel, which gives HuC a badass PSG sound system. It replaces a few core files so I'd call it an upgrade. Tomatheous released a revised version of the assembler, though I'm not quite sure what changes he made. He also did an Arcade Card and Supergrafx extension library. I modified the assembler to dump a bank size list to stdout to help with code backpacking. Tomatheous and I both got ADPCM streaming working and incorporated into the library, and I also did some code shuffling that moved a few library functions out of lib1 and into lib2 since they weren't really needed all that often, plus cut out some fluff functions that no one really used. But spenoza is right... fixing the compiler would be a lot of grunt work which would be boring as hell and it'd just get in the way of making new games... plus, once you get used to the system, you'll usually wanna go assembly anyway, where a lot of HuC's issues disappear. Older versions of the Magic Kit library worked great with just the assembler, but the library is so entrenched in HuC now that you either might as well just use HuC or write your own library.

[spenoza]

To the chagrin of many, I do yet live. PC games and job hunting have absorbed my life, but it is now the holidays, so I'm taking a moment of respite to catch up.

I still think we, as a community, should do something to improve HuC and the compiler, despite the fact that nobody really wants to deal with it head-on. Even if it were a fund drive to offer someone a little monetary incentive to take the time to do it, I really wish we had some tool to motivate those with the relevant abilities. I completely understand the lack of internal motivation and interest, and so I wonder if there's a way to generate motivation externally.

[sunteam_paul]

To the chagrin of many, I do yet live. PC games and job hunting have absorbed my life, but it is now the holidays, so I'm taking a moment of respite to catch up.

I still think we, as a community, should do something to improve HuC and the compiler, despite the fact that nobody really wants to deal with it head-on. Even if it were a fund drive to offer someone a little monetary incentive to take the time to do it, I really wish we had some tool to motivate those with the relevant abilities. I completely understand the lack of internal motivation and interest, and so I wonder if there's a way to generate motivation externally.

If we can get more people interested in PCE programming, that could go a long way.

[Arkhan]

To the chagrin of many, I do yet live. PC games and job hunting have absorbed my life, but it is now the holidays, so I'm taking a moment of respite to catch up.

I still think we, as a community, should do something to improve HuC and the compiler, despite the fact that nobody really wants to deal with it head-on. Even if it were a fund drive to offer someone a little monetary incentive to take the time to do it, I really wish we had some tool to motivate those with the relevant abilities. I completely understand the lack of internal motivation and interest, and so I wonder if there's a way to generate motivation externally.

I posted a thread asking where the f*ck you went, and noone knew lol.


I thought about driving around Cleveland seeing if I spotted you, but then I got lazy.

[djcouchycouch]

If we can get more people interested in PCE programming, that could go a long way.

And if we can get PCE programming better, we can get more people interested.

Damn you, chicken and egg problem!!!!

In the future, I'd sure like to attempt at porting Goplanes to PC Engine. Won't happen for a while, though.

[spenoza]

I posted a thread asking where the f*ck you went, and noone knew lol.

Wish I'd been here for that. If someone found me I'd want to know. I've been a little aimless. Job hunting can be very demoralizing. It was a lot easier getting lost in PC games than having to deal more directly with my job problem.

So I'm not totally derailing this topic...

If we can get more people interested in PCE programming, that could go a long way.

And if we can get PCE programming better, we can get more people interested.

Damn you, chicken and egg problem!!!!

Well, maybe if we take alternating steps as a community we can work our way along a bit at a time. Folks are already doing that on the programming side, but there's no organized effort to make sure changes get merged back. Basically, even a dedicated maintainer would probably be a good thing.

[Arkhan]

TBH, until you really start doing over the top crap with a game, you aren't even going to notice a problem.

and by then, you'll probably know how to fix it, or can ask one of us.


that's probably why it's not been done. 

[djcouchycouch]

Has anyone ever tried CC65? I do not know the extent, but I've seen mention of PC Engine support.

From what I can find, however, there's not much in terms of library support. Any idea what it would take to bring over HuC's libraries of functions over to CC65? Assuming it's a worthy alternative.