I Need Some Advice

[PSyMastR]

Well, at my school, there is only so much the computer department can teach me. I decided this year to do an independent study in assembly programming. I was told to get a book that covered from the basics to really specific and to outline a course that I would follow for the rest of the year. Any suggestions, and also, any good ones to learn? I was leaning toward ARM assembly once I got the basics down, but I really am new to this stuff. So... any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Shikaku]

Hmm... assembly is quite hard.

In any case, try learning NASM first (this is a 32 bit X86 assembler)

http://nasm.sourceforge.net/doc/html/nasmdoc0.html

It will remind you a lot of C in some cases, yet be very careful with it. The stack is a hard beast to tame, and you WILL see "Segmentation Fault" a lot.

After you master this, most assembly will be quite similar. However, the operator set can be different, and what you can do to optimize will be very different, depending on the architecture.

Edit: (I also have a PDF if you literally want a "book." It's 100% free.)

Also you have to have a good grasp of some programming language (up to things like recursion, arrays, making linked lists, etc.)

 

[PSyMastR]

Can you send a PM with the ebook? That would be great

Thanks Shikaku.

EDIT: Does anyone have a suggestion on a midway project and final project could be for this?

 

[Shikaku]

http://www.geocities.com/iwant2upload/nasmdoc.zip

Eh, I'll just upload a link. It's not that big anyway (no pictures =)

 

[Epicenter]

I'd make my 'midway' and 'final' projects simple ASM programs for the GP2X, due to its simple environment and good hardware documentation for what you need to do-- less complexity than a PC environment, really.

I'd just dive right into ARM assembler, but that's just me. I don't see the reason to bother with too many intermediary steps on a cramped timeframe; I doubt this is your only class. I'd make my 'halfway point' project a little demo that draws some sprites, checks input and lets you move a little sprite around, maybe draws some text and makes a little noise. For a final project I'd make a more advanced demo with some scrolling and more advanced effects and perhaps simple music, or just clone Pong or another very simple game.