1. Purpose of the program
'Draw' playfield graphics with Excel-sheet or text editor and convert
it to data statements for use with dasm assembler.

2. How to install the program
No installation required. Just unzip. Make sure, that text file to
convert is in same directory as playcode.com, since TP1 has problems
with \ is filename.

3+4. Status of program
Program is under GNU general public license 2.0 or later.
See www.gnu.org for further details.

5. How to contact me:
Peter.Sieg@gmx.de

See also the home page:
http://www.fortunecity.de/wolkenkratzer/telco/221/vcs/2600.html



This is the description of my litte project to support
the VCS2600 Atari Video Computer System. 

What I want is a nice little way to draw a playfield graphic
and automatically generate byte code from the drawing...

First I tried to understand the playfield graphics.
Thanks to Nick Benseema for his excellent source code for this
(see playfld.hdr)

See my investigations in the file: playdraw.txt.

Next I thought about writing a java applet for the edit and
code generation part.

But than I thought, that I could utilize my spread sheet for
the drawing/editing part and run the output through a code
generator program.

The Excel-sheet is in playdraw.xls.
The first 24 colums up to 192 rows are editable.
The next 24 colums will be repeated or mirrored, depending on the
switch, you can find an the right side of the top page screen.
0=mirrored; other=repeated.
The valid lines is only for information here...
Please keep in mind, that the first 4 columns are NOT used! 
So keep them empty!

Save this file as msdos txt file (extension *.prn!).
You can load this file with for ex. notepad and get a good feeling
about the result.

Of course, you can also use direct any text editor and make a text
file representing your playfield graphics drawing. See the *.prn file
to get the idea.

Now run the program playcode.
It will ask for the input file (the *.prn file) and the number of
valid line (the supplied asm code is for 24 lines. You must edit ii if you
use something different!)

The program will generate the file: playcode.out
This file just contains the byte codes for the graphic.

To make a full blown asm file to compile with dasm do:
copy playhdr.asm+playcode.out test.asm

Then compile it with:
dasm test.asm -f3 -otest.bin

(The above 2 steps can be done with the make.bat batch file)

Then try it with:
z26 - select test...


Hope this is of any use for you - Have fun.

Send any comments to:
Peter.Sieg@gmx.de

See also the home page:
http://www.fortunecity.de/wolkenkratzer/telco/221/vcs/2600.html

For Heike, Robin and Janis.

Peter Sieg
Rabishauerstr.9
37603 Holzminden
Germany