Programming basics for ZX-evo tsconf

[Mills]

Hi.

I love the ts-conf having hadrware sprites and two background layers, so I want to program homebrew using it.
But I just can't find anything around the web, apart from russian groups and a few sources in this web http://prods.tslabs.info/ which I don't really understand because I have to start from much simpler code.

Are there any totorials, samples (both asm and c)?

Can I compile code for ts-conf using z88dk?

Thanks a lot!.

[Alcoholics Anonymous]

Can I compile code for ts-conf using z88dk?

You can target the original zx (48K / 128K) or a generic z80 when compiling code. The generic z80 target can have multiple memory banks (the 128K too -- it defines the 128's BANK 0-7 with the ability to add others) but there is no notion of how the extra banks should be put together to make an executable. So the output would be raw binaries and then you can use another tool to put those in the right form, probably as a trd disk image.

There is also no library of special code in z88dk for the ts-config so you'd have to supply that yourself.

I've always meant to add a target for ts-config but my time is way too limited and now taken up by the Next stuff so it won't be for a while.

[bob_fossil]

Don't know if this post is of any help?

[Mills]

Thanks.

I realized there is no special way for creating spectrum programs, if the hardware or emulator have enhanced GPU, you just have to tell the z80 to write to ports and rams/vrams etc.

I contacted tslabs, the creator of tsconf and he helped me. (and also confused me). He told me about EVO SDK, and he said it had no ts conf suppont... And then I see a lot of the ts conf demos are compiled with that evo sdk...

I also got confused because samples from evo sdk, seem to use "page flipping" like modern hardware with framebuffers. But it looks like there is no framebuffer, just tiles and planes, so weird .

For the moment I'm going to see if the evo sdk has the features I want (the two tilemap layers and the sprites).

[Alone Coder]

I am one of the authors of Evo SDK. Evo SDK is made for ATM-Turbo 2 compatibles, such as Turbo2+, ZX Evo baseconf, Pentagon 2.666LE, and ATM3. As a regular Speccy clone, ATM-Turbo works with screen as a memory block, and has two such blocks. Thus Evo SDK has double buffering. Tiles and sprites in Evo SDK are virtual and rendered by software.
Evo SDK was hacked to recompile several Speccy games (XNX, Innsmouth, Project ROBO...) to tsconf platform, but the Evo SDK core remained the same, and the games remained the same.
You don't need tsconf to use Evo SDK.

[Mills]

I am one of the authors of Evo SDK. Evo SDK is made for ATM-Turbo 2 compatibles, such as Turbo2+, ZX Evo baseconf, Pentagon 2.666LE, and ATM3. As a regular Speccy clone, ATM-Turbo works with screen as a memory block, and has two such blocks. Thus Evo SDK has double buffering. Tiles and sprites in Evo SDK are virtual and rendered by software.
Evo SDK was hacked to recompile several Speccy games (XNX, Innsmouth, Project ROBO...) to tsconf platform, but the Evo SDK core remained the same, and the games remained the same.
You don't need tsconf to use Evo SDK.

Thanks a lot for the info!.

So, does the ts-conf have "real" tiles and sprites? That's what i'm interested in.

[Alone Coder]

Yes, it does.

[introspec]

The documentation has been lagging behind, but there is an attempt to prepare the full technical documentation is English, see the partial translation here: https://github.com/tslabs/zx-evo/blob/m ... conf_en.md

VBI wrote a series of tutorials on key components of the TS-Conf. They are written in Russian, but I believe that Google translate is getting better every day, so you should have no particular difficulties figuring it out: https://hype.retroscene.org/tag/ts%20docs/
Some of the images there are missing, this is due to the site recently having to change the host. It'll all get back to normal within the next few weeks.

I do not know your level of preparation; I believe that many TS-Conf hackers preferred to learn it from the examples in the standard TS-Conf repository here: https://github.com/tslabs/zx-evo/tree/m ... tevo/demos