Gene Medic: retro edutainment game for the Atari 2600 in 6502 assembly language
genemedic.org
genemedic.org
I see a Harmony cartridge in your VCS. For those, who don't know, that device makes developing on real hardware pretty easy and fun.
Emulators are very solid, however, if one is pushing it, or wants to test the variations on original hardware out there, a Harmony cartridge makes a lot of sense.
(just read your page some, and see you mention Harmony explicitly)
You've done a great job boiling something hard to understand and conceptualize down to the very basics in true Atari 2600 style! Few systems offered such a broad range of potential experiences, variety of controllers, color, sound, types of games possible, coupled with a seemingly useless 128 bytes of RAM.
Over the years, I've been amazed at how that combination, and the iconic nature of the game console, drive people to boil things down to their essence, and keep it fun.
There really is nothing else like it.
Now I'm off to play your game on my machine. :D
The magic comes from the hardware being just a bit too spartan. Had it incorporated a bit more dedicated purpose, ease of use type functionality, the ultimate limits would have been significantly lower. (potentially, depending on how buggy those would have been)
The first thing one does is get a kernel running. That's the display, rendered line by line.
Depending upon what one's vision for the display is, that kernel may be simple, flexible, or very complex, timing dependent.
When it's all said and done, some cycles are left during the blanking period, mostly the vertical one, for game mechanics.
Once, during a project, I ran out of bits. Literally, every single bit used. Was thought provoking.
Another thing, I consider pretty amazing is the compiled BASIC available. One enthusiast saw that a lot of the code could be generated, while retaining a fair amount of display capability.
https://www.google.com/search?q=batari+basic+games&sa=X&rlz=...
What happened was kind of unexpected. Ordinary people could grok the very simple language and limited environment.
The same thing happened for them as it did for assembly language programmers, and that is the stark limits made for a keen focus on the game mechanic. Limit choice, and people finish projects, and or execute on visions.
A ton of goofy, often pretty fun, games got made.
then drag the download link for he binary image from github and drop it on he cartridge slot.
Also, the sheer amount of effort and skill/talent involved in doing stuff like this is mind bending.