In this post I will describe the process of reading the joystick, changing the sprite position, horizontal flip, Sega Genesis emulator and potentially the console itself.
Reading of presses, processing of “events” of the Sega joystick occurs according to the following scheme:
- Request for combination of bits of pressed buttons
- Reading bits of pressed buttons
- Processing at the game logic level
To move the skeleton sprite we need to store the current position variables.
RAM
Game logic variables are stored in RAM, people haven’t come up with anything better yet. Let’s declare variable addresses, change the rendering code:
skeletonYpos = $FF0002
frameCounter = $FF0004
skeletonHorizontalFlip = $FF0006
move.w #$0100,skeletonXpos
move.w #$0100,skeletonYpos
move.w #$0001,skeletonHorizontalFlip
FillSpriteTable:
move.l #$70000003,vdp_control_port
move.w skeletonYpos,vdp_data_port
move.w #$0F00,vdp_data_port
move.w skeletonHorizontalFlip,vdp_data_port
move.w skeletonXpos,vdp_data_port
As you can see, the address available for work starts at 0xFF0000 and ends at 0xFFFFFF, so we have 64 KB of memory available. Skeleton positions are declared at skeletonXpos, skeletonYpos, horizontal flip at skeletonHorizontalFlip.
Joypad
Similar to VDP, joypads are handled via two separate ports – the control port and the data port, for the first one it’s 0xA10009 and 0xA10003 respectively. When working with a joypad, there’s one interesting feature – first you need to request a combination of buttons for polling, and then, after waiting for the bus update, read the required presses. For the C/B buttons and the cross, it’s 0x40, an example below:
move.b #$40,joypad_one_control_port; C/B/Dpad
nop ; bus sync
nop ; bus sync
move.b joypad_one_data_port,d2
rts
The state of the buttons pressed or not pressed will remain in the d2 register, in general, what was requested via the data port will remain. After that, go to the Motorola 68000 register viewer of your favorite emulator, see what the d2 register is equal to depending on the presses. You can find this out in the manual in a smart way, but we don’t take your word for it. Next, processing the pressed buttons in the d2 register
cmp #$FFFFFF7B,d2; handle left
beq MoveLeft
cmp #$FFFFFF77,d2; handle right
beq MoveRight
cmp #$FFFFFF7E,d2; handle up
beq MoveUp
cmp #$FFFFFF7D,d2; handle down
beq MoveDown
rtsПроверять нужно конечно отдельные биты, а не целыми словами, но пока и так сойдет. Теперь осталось самое простое – написать обработчики всех событий перемещения по 4-м направлениям. Для этого меняем переменные в RAM, и запускаем процедуру перерисовки.
Пример для перемещения влево + изменение горизонтального флипа:
move.w skeletonXpos,d0
sub.w #1,d0
move.w d0,skeletonXpos
move.w #$0801,skeletonHorizontalFlip
jmp FillSpriteTableПосле добавления всех обработчиков и сборки, вы увидите как скелет перемещается и поворачивается по экрану, но слишком быстро, быстрее самого ежа Соника.
Не так быстро!
Чтобы замедлить скорость игрового цикла, существуют несколько техник, я выбрал самую простую и не затрагивающую работу с внешними портами – подсчет цифры через регистр пока она не станет равна нулю.
Пример замедляющего цикла и игрового цикла:
move.w #512,frameCounter
WaitFrame:
move.w frameCounter,d0
sub.w #1,d0
move.w d0,frameCounter
dbra d0,WaitFrame
GameLoop:
jsr ReadJoypad
jsr HandleJoypad
jmp GameLoop
After that, the skeleton runs slower, which is what was required. As far as I know, the most common option for “slowing down” is counting the vertical sync flag, you can count how many times the screen was drawn, thus tying it to a specific fps.
Links
https://gitlab .com/demensdeum/segagenesisamples/-/blob/main/8Joypad/vasm/main.asm
Sources
https://www.chibiakumas.com/68000/platform2.php
https://huguesjohnson.com/programming/genesis/tiles-sprites/
