What assembler do you use for NES development?

ericandrewlewis · Post by **ericandrewlewis** » Wed Jan 16, 2019 9:21 pm

I am new to NES development and this forum. Hello!

I'm curious what assemblers folks use to work on NES games.

I saw this question was asked a few years ago, and think it would be good to get an updated temperature check on the topic.

koitsu · Post by **koitsu** » Wed Jan 16, 2019 9:33 pm

I voted Other. Answer: ca65 (cc65), asm6 (in the past), and asm6f (present-day). The assembler I pick all depends on what type of work/project I'm doing.

If you asked me which of those assemblers is my more common go-to, the answer would be asm6f.

cppchriscpp · Post by **cppchriscpp** » Wed Jan 16, 2019 10:18 pm

Welcome!

cc65/ca65 are my go-tos.. it takes a little bit more work to set up, but I use macros in assembly a lot, and ca65 does them well. I also like how it has you organize your code/banks/etc. At this point I'm also super used to the syntax.

For C, cc65 is also sorta unparalleled in NES dev.

tokumaru · Post by **tokumaru** » Wed Jan 16, 2019 10:34 pm

Voted "other" because I'm kinda "assemblerless" at the moment. My favorites are ASM6 and ca65, but both have limitations that bother me terribly, so I've been trying to write my own, with the features I use most from both of them.

ASM6 is great for getting small things done fast, but its "nameless" and local label systems leave something to be desired, specially because they're incompatible with each other. It also lacks any sort of bank management functionality (I like to extract bank numbers from labels).

ca65 is very powerful and versatile, but I find it annoying having to plan out my .cfg files every time I start a project, because I end up needing to use another .cfg for reference and/or look into ld65's documentation. I also hate the limitations imposed by it being a single-pass assembler.

My ideal assembler should have the simplicity of ASM6 and NESASM, the ability to assign/retrieve bank numbers to/from labels, and versatile enough scoping capabilities. That's what I'm aiming for.

NOOPr · Post by **NOOPr** » Thu Jan 17, 2019 3:53 am

I used to use asm6, then asm6f. Now I'm working with the cc65 toolchain.
IMO since you're polling about assemblers, ca65 (assembler) would be a better option rather than cc65 (compiler/toolchain).

nesrocks · Post by **nesrocks** » Thu Jan 17, 2019 4:51 am

I voted "other" because I use ca65, I don't use cc65.

never-obsolete · Post by **never-obsolete** » Thu Jan 17, 2019 6:29 am

I voted other because I forked asm6. Mostly because asm6f didn't create usable mlb files for Mesen, but also to add a few things asm6 was missing.

Sumez · Post by **Sumez** » Thu Jan 17, 2019 6:29 am

I voted "cc65" because I use ca65.

Obviously, the "cc65" option refers to ca65, which is a part of the cc65 package.

nesrocks · Post by **nesrocks** » Thu Jan 17, 2019 6:37 am

Yeah but it could imply that I know C, but I have no idea how to write a single line of C code.

ericandrewlewis · Post by **ericandrewlewis** » Thu Jan 17, 2019 8:18 am

Sorry for leaving CA65 out. I just learned that it is part of the CC65 toolchain last night.

I updated the poll to switch CA65 in for CC65 which wiped out everyone's votes, which I guess makes sense. Can you re-cast your ballots?

tokumaru · Post by **tokumaru** » Thu Jan 17, 2019 8:34 am

It looks like all votes are still there...

Post by **tepples** » Thu Jan 17, 2019 8:37 am

Those who vote in this poll might not be representative of the broader NES community now that NESmaker has standardized on ASM6.

Punch · Post by **Punch** » Thu Jan 17, 2019 8:49 am

NESASM. No shame!

It helps that NESASM is basically PCEAS2 since I use that very often, too.

Bregalad · Post by **Bregalad** » Thu Jan 17, 2019 8:56 am

I use WLA-DX but if I were to start new projects I'd probably use ASM6 instead. I like the idea of the assembler being very simple and portable, because that's the point of assembly language. Feature-creeped assembler should be frowned upon as a general rule, unless you have a very specific feature you need.

Also I'm sure we already have had this poll at least once, if not twice or thrice, but I agree the results could change over time, and that the search function of this forum is lacking.

gauauu · Post by **gauauu** » Thu Jan 17, 2019 9:46 am

tepples wrote:Those who vote in this poll might not be representative of the broader NES community now that NESmaker has standardized on ASM6.

This really depends on what the goal of the poll is. If it's about what assembler do you actually write code for, it wouldn't apply to the majority of nesmaker users. If it's about what assembler the most games get built with, then it probably would.

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