heuser.marcus{at}freenet.de wrote:
> On Aug 21, 1:49 am, "Terry Olsen"  wrote:
>>> I now use my PC for development (faster and more
>>> comfortable) and the finished product (if it gets finished ;-)
>>> will run well on a 1 MHz machine (that's the one parameter that
>>> is definitely fixed).
>> Do you develop in an emulator or do you use a cross compiler?
> 
> Right now I'm in the spreadsheet of OpenOffice ;-)
> 
> You see, I'm not yet in the implementation phase so I've not
> decided on this, yet. It's a large game project and I want to
> create lots of content first so that I know what I have to write.
> 
> Generating *good* content is in my experience much harder than
> the actual programming. It won't be a programming sensations like
> David's raycaster, anyway, so I'm pretty confident that I can pull
> it off. Also I'm not inclined to program lots of code and then
> realize that I'm on a completely wrong path. Michael's waste basket
> isn't for the code - it's for the ideas ;-)
> 
> In the past I always lost interest because I didn't have enough
> stuff to make it "live". This time it's the other way round and
> I'm going slowly but steadily forward.
> 
> I think I would like to use AppleWin but it's fullscreen mode is
> broken (at least in the debugger) and the normal screen size is
> too tiny for development.
> 
>> What do you use to develop for A2 on a PC?
> 
> Assembler (I would like to use Merlin because I know and like it
> but I think that a cross assembler may be the way I'll have to go)
> and Applesoft (mostly for the editors and other tools).
> 
> This is what I know good enough and I won't learn a new language
> for a single project.
> It seems that I have to create some sort of simple scripting
> language just to save memory but I this isn't really comparable.
> 
> For most of the graphics I think "8-16 Paint" (the 8 bit variant)
> will be sufficient.
> 
> You can see that I'm still right at the start and can't give you a
> "code finished" percentage yet but I'm determined.
> And no - I won't give any details regarding the content ;-)
> 
> bye
> Marcus

Hi Marcus-

I was in a similar situation with my raycaster.  Initially I wanted to 
do everything on the A2, but I soon realized that time was limited and 
the process needed to be as streamlined as possible.  I need a modern 
multi-file/multi-window editor to be efficient (80x24 just doesn't cut 
it).  The biggest time saver for me ended up having an emulation 
environment that could start up quickly and load the binary I had just 
build with the cc65 toolchain.  Having the ability to break into the 
emulator and check memory values and insert watchpoints/breakpoints was 
crucial.  Since I use a Mac, Virtual ][ was not just the obvious choice, 
it was a godsend.  No source code level debugging here!  Full screen 
wasn't an issue as I generally needed to have the source code windows up 
next to the emulator.  Transferring everything over to real hardware 
once in a while is important to ensure the feel and look is right.

For content creation, I wrote tools in AppleSoft and ran the emulator at 
full speed.  It made for pretty quick development inside the environment 
the content would be seen in.  My content was pretty minimal though.

Good luck!

Dave...
--- SBBSecho 2.12-Win32