A New version of Huc

[TheOldMan]

but BG is just garbage.
....
couldn't even get it playing nicely with a mappy tilemap

Problem confirmed. I don't get 'garbage', but we have a few tools to do things to backgrounds, so it may be because of that.
Looking with the mednafen debugger, I can confirm the tile data gets loaded to VRAM correctly (at least at the right address), and is visible for display. However, it shows up as a black background, possibly because it uses palette 0.
I haven't checked a lot, but it appears to me that the BAT is either being loaded incorrectly, or not being loaded at all.

I am beginning to think there are a lot of changes and the transition to this new version could be rockier than I had hoped.

Agreed. I'm beginning to wonder if it is/will be useful at all
Shall we continue checking / debugging, or just drop it ?

(Cabbage: I can send you my test, which is about as minimal as you can get for displaying a sprite and background, if you would like. It's an example from a how-to I made for someone here a long time ago. )

[TheOldMan]

Update:
Oh, this made me chuckle for a while.

In the source code for the new HuC:
psuedo.c call amatch() to check for psuedo-operations (ie, #defines)
amatch calls astreq(). astrreq() compares characters, exiting if it hits a null, presumably.
.......
All of which is well and good, until you compare "tile" to "tile_ex".
"tile" will end in a null. So "tile" and "tile_ex" will match.
Unfortunately, the if/else if chain is set up to compare "tile" before it checks for "tile_ex"...
so it appears the code to match tile_ex will never be executed.

Now this was just a quick look to see what was going on, and I may be wrong...I'm not familiar with all the details of how those functions actually work, but it still looks fishy to me.

[megatron-uk]

Oh, FFS. The Everdrive-FAT libraries would be much further on if I'd had this to play with to start. 

[Bonknuts]

Just a FYI - PCEAS build of this package based on my 3.22 Tomaitheous release.

 Copy/paste from Mooz's forum:

Ahh ok, I see. It is. But, there's a possible incompatibility with old PCEAS generated code here; local label names used in high lever expressions. I added the ability to do .- and .+ (.+, .++, .---, .----, etc) for local labels. And you can use this just fine in expressions.. *IF* you use a space. The release that came with 3.21 Denki allowed you to do .local+$33. But you can no longer do this in this new version. You have to use spaces in between the operator symbols and label names, else it thinks ".local+" is the label. So, .local + $33 works fine, in the new build. But not without spaces, if that makes sense.

 

 I probably should have added a switch with compatibility mode for this part of PCEAS. I might do so, since I need to add a couple of things to PCEAS (macro function stuffs).

[MintyTheCat]

Hi,

I managed to build under Ubuntu:

Linux 'NAME' 3.2.0-64-generic-pae #97-Ubuntu SMP Wed Jun 4 22:22:15 UTC 2014 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

However, I had to turn off the 'warnings promoted to errors' as:

CFLAGS = -Wall -g -O2

In file: huc/src/Make_src.inc

A bit naughty, but the author was not checking his return and trying to be strict  O:)

The Sample/designer builds successfully for me.

Hope that helps one of you as I had not seen anyone report trying to build under Linux as yet.

Cheers,

Minty.

[nodtveidt]

It makes me chuckle to think that someone decided to go all-out Linux for something that is primarily used by Windows users. Not only that, but HuC has been cross-platform for as long as I can remember... the same source has always built with no modifications on any x86 OS with gcc, afaicr.

[MintyTheCat]

It makes me chuckle to think that someone decided to go all-out Linux for something that is primarily used by Windows users. Not only that, but HuC has been cross-platform for as long as I can remember... the same source has always built with no modifications on any x86 OS with gcc, afaicr.

Glad to add some humour

I tend to work as often as I can under some kind of Unix.

That I would say is the beauty of the Command-Line - I wrote all my Megadrive tools to be Command-Line tools that use nothing special in the hope that they will build every where and build well into the future.

[Arjak]

Bump.

I am considering trying to get into PCE programming, so I looked at this new version of HuC, but there is no compiled binary available, and I couldn't find clear instructions on how to compile the compiler.

It drives me crazy when programmers just give you some source code and expect you to figure it out, especially those arrogant types who basically act like you don't deserve to use the program if you can't compile it yourself. It's like they feel that they've done their part by writing the code, and so they don't have to make that last step of creating binaries for easy use, basically saying it's the user's problem. Lazy bums!

What should I do? Should I just go with the older version? Can someone get me a compiled version of this? Or is there a better tool that I should use that I don't know about?

[Arkhan]

You could get away with using the "current" HuC instead for now really.   

I mean basically, if you can't compile the new one, the features it has probably won't matter to you for now really.


As you can see from our games, the current one is more than enough to get somewhere.

Figure out how to deal with the new HuC after you get your feets wet.

[Lochlan]

I am considering trying to get into PCE programming, so I looked at this new version of HuC, but there is no compiled binary available, and I couldn't find clear instructions on how to compile the compiler.

There's a makefile build system, just type `make` in your console (in your *nix shell, of course!).  However after building I couldn't get any of my projects to compile so I don't really consider that version of HuC to be particularly reliable.

It drives me crazy when programmers just give you some source code and expect you to figure it out

Wellllll it is a github repo, i.e. source code, so I think the expectation there is pretty reasonable.  He could tag releases but it's his project and he gets to run it however he wants.  And IMO it is extremely bad practice to commit built files to a repository (although not uncommon, unfortunately) as you should be able to produce the built files by running the build system on source.  Committing built files can create a lot of annoying issues with merging and rebasing.

It's like they feel that they've done their part by writing the code, and so they don't have to make that last step of creating binaries for easy use, basically saying it's the user's problem. Lazy bums!

You know what's even worse than that?  End-users who complain that they don't get enough with their free software.

What should I do? Should I just go with the older version? Can someone get me a compiled version of this? Or is there a better tool that I should use that I don't know about?

http://www.zeograd.com/huc_download.php

[Arjak]

You know what's even worse than that?  End-users who complain that they don't get enough with their free software.

Heh, fair enough. I did get a little obnoxious there, as I tend to do when I rant about something that's frustrating me. I often forget to look at things from the other side. I apologize if I offended you or anyone else, Lochlan.

I do not use Unix or Linux, so I have no way of compiling the new version apparently. My current computer runs Windows 7, since that's what I'm comfortable with, for better or worse. At least my problem is solved for the moment. I've downloaded the latest "official" version, and I'll start working on Rover's tutorials at Obeybrew.com when I get the chance.

Speaking of Obeybrew.com, what's the status with that? It seems really...broken. 90% of the links lead to an error page. Is Rover still working on it? Any ideas of when it will be updated?

[cabbage]

I do not use Unix or Linux, so I have no way of compiling the new version apparently. My current computer runs Windows 7, since that's what I'm comfortable with, for better or worse.

you can compile it on windows using cygwin
but you might as well just stick with the old version for the time being.

Speaking of Obeybrew.com, what's the status with that? It seems really...broken. 90% of the links lead to an error page. Is Rover still working on it? Any ideas of when it will be updated?

i think rover has bigger things on his plate for the time being.

just focus on the basics at first. loading tiles, sprites, palettes, and displaying them properly; reading inputs and moving sprites around, etc.
the real meat of game programming is fairly platform-independent (collision detection, for example), so you can still find plenty of applicable tutorials and whatnot to help you out.

and, of course, i imagine there are several people (myself included) who would be happy to help you out if you run into something confusing and need some tips.

start small--have you tried making something like pong for pce yet? i know there are plenty of pong homebrews out there already, but it could be a good learning experience