Vectrex Programming at German University 2016 & 2017

[mikiex]

"They probably aren't all fluent in English as well as German"
Germans learn English a lot in schools, so I would expect most to be fluent these days
Most Germans I've met speak great English ( certainly better than my German!)

[VectorX]

Ah, ok. That's not always the case, depending on which area of the world it is, like with another educational aspect I know of with Tommy, the guitarist of the death/thrash metal band Coroner becoming a guitar teacher years ago. They're from Switzerland. Someone had said on the Coroner forums years ago about how many people would be badgering him in regards to his band and how jammed his classes must be, but the forums founder said that not many of the Swiss population in general speaks English. Coroner had some foreign press but not a whole lot; I think they had more English interviews than non-English in regards to the press in general. And maybe people are different there about fame, as the forum founder said they seemed really surprised when she asked for their autographs at a show over there. I saw them here in Houston and they just shrugged when I had them autograph their debut cd, like they did that all the time

[Peer]

Thanks a lot again for your feedback.

It was very encouraging to read your opinions, especially because I am giving this lecture for the first time. Its style is certainly not typical. Here is some more background information for you.

The official course language is English, as the lecture is also part of our international study program and can be attended by students from abroad as well as by regular students. All participants are able to communicate in English, though the individual language skills certainly differ from student to student.

I will notify them of the posts in this forum next time we meet.

Currently, we are using ParaJVE as emulator and ParaJVD as debugger (many thanks to Franck!!!). In order to run the games on my real Vectrex we use the VecFlash and VecMulti by Richard Hutchinson and Mateo’s Vectrex Multigame Cartridge.

Development is done in assembly language using the AS09 Kingswood assembler, or in C using gcc6809. By now, the C toolchain works really nicely, but it was a hard way to get there, and I am still trying to improve things. Any experts out there to help?

Selling the binaries to make some money is a nice idea. Originally we had planned to publicly release the results by the end of the semester. Please do not expect too much of the games, as unfortunately, the project time is limited and the students have other lectures as well. I am very curious about the outcome of this course. The whole thing is some kind of a test run, and the next course is already planned for spring term 2017.

Besides the gallery webpage, there is also homepage for the lecture itself. The link is at the bottom of the gallery page.

[VectorX]

May 12, 2016 13:59:24 GMT -5 Peer said:

Development is done in assembly language using the AS09 Kingswood assembler, or in C using gcc6809. By now, the C toolchain works really nicely, but it was a hard way to get there, and I am still trying to improve things. Any experts out there to help?

You can put up a separate post of this in the Vectrex programming and modifications discussions sub-forums here if you wish. I'm sure you'll get quite a bit of input/info that you need there.

[50tbrd]

Doesn't Der Luchs program in C?

[Der Luchs]

Nope, asm

[hcmffm]

Peer updated the Vectrex Project Gallery on 5th June and 22 June. Updates were mainly screenshots and a field "project status" has been added. I don't know when the current semester is over, but I guess the students are struggling to get their projects finished. Good luck to all students in this hot phase!

[Nic Lobo (pucpuc)]

nice! hope we will have the opportunity to play these games when they are finished.

[x]

What Programming Language does the Vectrex Use?

I am wondering about looking for a Software/Game Development Kit for one..

[50tbrd]

Batman vs Superman looks like a Bomberman style game.

[binarystar]

Assembly language or C. I'd recommend programming in Assembly as it's much more efficient.

Jun 29, 2016 16:33:30 GMT -5 x said:

What Programming Language does the Vectrex Use?

I am wondering about looking for a Software/Game Development Kit for one..

[mountaingoat]

Jun 29, 2016 16:33:30 GMT -5 x said:

What Programming Language does the Vectrex Use?

I am wondering about looking for a Software/Game Development Kit for one..

Use assembly, you will be glad you did in the long run.

Also, for a very nice IDE you could use the freshly released VIDE from Malban : vectorgaming.proboards.com/thread/1690/vide-rc-1-available

[Peer]

Apologies for having been silent for a long time.

Things have been crazily busy over here (Helmut knows the details), and thus I could not spend as much time on the Vectrex Project as I would have liked. I will try to fill you in with the details whenever I find the time to write a few lines.

Right now, the semester is drawing to a close. The Vectrex lecture itself was fun and went along pretty fine. Currently the students are writing the final exams of their other lectures (this week and next week). That is why most of them have temporarily put their projects on hold. They have to hand in the final versions of their Vectrex projects by mid-August, which will give them another four weeks to work on their projects after the exams.

It is likely that some of them will agree to release their games to the public. "Space Assault" is already in early beta status and plays quite nicely :-)

[hcmffm]

Thank you for posting an update, Peer. Good to read that the Vectrex projects will continue till mid-August; this will allow for completing some of the projects. Free binaries would be great and are always welcome! ;-)

[geoanas]

Thanks for posting this update !