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[voidSkipper]

I don't know if giving my mad science software engineering a purpose somehow devalues it in some way, but I thought it'd be nice to make some assembly tutorials for the absolute beginner.
Foreword
Being able to write assembly is not a necessary skill to become a game developer, or even a game programmer. In this day and age, compilers work well enough that bytecode-level black magic is more likely to confuse your workmates than it is to improve any aspect of your algorithm.

However, in my opinion, there is no better way to understand how a computer really works than getting as close to the hardware as you can. Assembly is just one step away from writing your program's .exe out in raw 1s and 0s - and if you can write assembly well enough there's no reason you couldn't do just that. With an understanding of assembly, you'll likely find yourself stumped by cryptic error messages, strange crashes, and code structures that "should work but don't" a lot less often.

With that in mind, I've started writing a series of tutorials on assembly programming. All of these tutorials use my virtual console, VO-EM. No paid software or licenses are required.

I'm very interested in getting feedback on these - despite being employed as a teacher I'm often told I'm terrible at explaining things.
Index
A Series (Beginners)

• A0 - Getting Started from Scratch ^{An overview of what a computer really is.}
• A1 - My First Program ^{Babby's first assembly program. Covers toolchain setup.}
• A2 - Branching ^{A slightly more serious program, using conditional branching.}
• A3 - Exploring the Assembler^{A deeper look at what the assembler does with our code.}
• A4 - Saving & Loading^{A course in saving and loading data to and from memory locations.}
• A5 - Calling subroutines^{How to write functions at the assembly level.}
• A6 - Input & Interrupts^{Learn about hardware interrupts.}
• A7 - Input & Interrupts Pt II^{Make an interractive program using gamepad input.}
• A8 - Introduction to Computer Graphics ^{An introduction to how computers display graphics.}

• A9 - Drawing to the Screen ^{The final A-series tutorial - interactive graphical output! Make a Tron-like effect!}

Z series (lol)

• AX - Hello World ^{Tying it all together with a Hello World tutorial! (May be a bit advanced for most at this stage; still filling in the gaps)}

[voidSkipper]

Updated with a new tutorial - the iconic Hello World!

http://wiki.vo-em.com/index.php?title=A3_-_Hello_World

[oahda]

Nice initiative! Might have a peek later. Probably won't need it, but can't say no to knowledge.

[ProgramGamer]

How many horizontal sprites before things start blinking?

[voidSkipper]

Nice initiative! Might have a peek later. Probably won't need it, but can't say no to knowledge.

Hopefully it's educational for you!

How many horizontal sprites before things start blinking?

To be honest, I haven't stress-tested sprite rendering yet. There's no 'hardware' reason it should start wigging out if you put too many sprites per line like older consoles used to, but I may have to introduce one if too many sprites causes it to start dropping frames.

[yuuta]

I did everything up to A3, too complicated for me

[voidSkipper]

I did everything up to A3, too complicated for me

Thanks for the feedback Yuuta - a few people have told me know that the jump in difficulty is too high. I really wanted to get "hello world" done early for traditon's sake, but I think I'm going to have to add some intermediate steps.

[voidSkipper]

Updated with three new tutorials!
>A3 - Exploring the Assembler
>A4 - Saving & Loading
>A5 - Calling subroutines

"Hello World" has been moved to "AX"; it will now be last, or at least much later, in the A series of tutorials.

[voidSkipper]

Updated with two new tutorials!
>A6 - Input & Interrupts
>A7 - Input & Interrupts Pt II

[voidSkipper]

Updated with a new tutorial!
>A8 - Introduction to Computer Graphics

[voidSkipper]

Added the final A series tutorial:
>A9 - Drawing to the Screen