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Ah ok, thanks lidnariq!! Why is it limited to 129 bytes forward? It uses positive and negative numbers maybe... so oh ok, windows 10 calculator in programmer's mode is fantastic!! So if... how does that work? How does it differentiate between forwards and backwards? Well, it must use positive and negative numbers... I remember it using negative numbers when it went backwards. But 129 is 1000 0001 and 126 is 0111 1110... but it's confusing to me beyond the fact that those two numbers are inverses. Help? *NVM tepples answered!

Thank you so much tepples!! Makes sense!

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found Loopy's new site (from Memblers) (through google): http://3dscapture.com/NES/

I'm trying to get a new screen to load when our lady reaches the top of the screen (oY == 00). Almost everything works; as soon as oY reaches 00, currFloor is decremented and stairs is jsred. Stairs tries to disable vblank by anding my copy of $2000 with #01111111b. Then see is jsred correctly.

The only problem is that see never finishes because a vblank is activated and see is called again... the hex editor shows the stack is constantly decremented because see keeps being run because vblanks keep being called.

My function see sets up the screens before the game starts. It works wonderfully. Do you have any advice for me to turn off vblanks successfully? I have found where the wiki advises reading $2002 before turning on bit 7 of $2000, but I`m trying to turn bit 7 of $2000 off.

I'm of the opinion that it's better to leave NMIs always on and control what happens each vblank entirely in software. You can even use the shadow $2001 register to detect when rendering is off, in which case the vblank handler skips all code related to the PPU (after updating register $2001 with the shadow value, that is), so it doesn't interfere with any PPU operations the main thread may be doing (e.g. large updates between levels), but still updates the APU so that music and sound effects aren't interrupted by screen transitions.

That's brilliant tokumaru!! Will definitely try using shadow $2001; I didn't even consider the music needing vblank updates. Thank you!

If you wanted to disable rendering for a big update using this method, you'd first change the $2001 shadow value, and then wait for vblank (using whatever communication system you have between the main thread and the NMI thread), when $2001 will effectively be written to and rendering will be disabled. From then on you can update VRAM freely (keep in mind that palette and OAM updates should only take place during vblank, to completely avoid colorful glitches and OAM corruption), because the NMI thread will know not to do any PPU operations other than copying the shadow $2001 value to register $2001, a write that should be harmless even if it interrupts other PPU operations the main thread might be doing.

So I need to wait for NMI so soft2001shadow can be copied to $2001 because then rendering will be disabled. And that will help me to be able to run see in the main thread! That`s so cool!

Is it ok to just set $2001 each vblank without checking first to see if I can? All the pointless cycles wasted; it makes me so happy to not waste cycles. Thank you tokumaru for all of your wisdom you share.

Rewriting $2001 in every vblank is perfectly fine. So is $2000 as long as the main thread isn't in the middle of a bulk upload.

As far as I know, yes. Writing to $2001 shouldn't have any undesirable side effects, even if it happens in the middle of other PPU operations. But you do need to test whether rendering is on or off to decide whether to do other potentially dangerous PPU operations (updating VRAM, setting the scroll, etc.). Your NMI handler could contain something like this:

Just wanted to quickly say that your helpful advice made the screen appear. It's not the correct screen, but it is a screen! Tons better than the black screen. Thank you tokumaru so much!!

Have to go make supper; thanks tepples for confirming that 2001 can be assigned every frame.
Thank you all so very much!

Thank you tokumaru for this extra help! Someone recommended I name my 2001 shadow variable soft2001; I also like your PPUMaskShadow but soft2001 is less characters. That won't affect the ROM size, but it will cause my trace log files to be smaller when I want to write the variable name before its address; that helps me to quickly read through certain sections of code when I return to the file.

edit: I made a mistake. I posted somewhere that trace log files would be smaller if they were recorded before hitting frame 1000, but that isn't true because there are 6 characters allotted for the frame #. If it is frame 1 then there's a "1" followed by five spaces. I didn't notice this when I made that untrue statement; I'm sorry. I'm using FCEUX 2.2.2

I've never understood what the colons are there for in the code

Is that what y'all mean tepples and tokumaru?

The function of the colon is described in ca65 Users Guide: Unnamed labels. The + goes on the same line as the :, not on the next line.

This code:


Is equivalent to this code:

Thanks tepples! :+ doesnt work in asm6 and + is one character less

edit: (Fewer characters to look at makes it easier for me to comprehend what is going on. )

In ASM6 that'd be:

+ (plus) is for forward references, - (minus) is for backward references. If you need more than one unnamed label in the same area you can use ++, +++, and so on.

You shouldn't use these types of labels too much, otherwise your code can get really confusing. I only use unnamed labels for really short jumps and in the same "logic block".

I guess you already know this, tokumaru, but I use unnamed labels most of the time. They really help with padding!

+jDS means to me that the label is only branched to from < #$81 bytes before the label. +jDS jmp DrawSprite is paddable afterwards because everything reaching it will jump to DrawSprite.