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Add visualization tutorial
Defined a simple monochrome bitmap format, and created some pieces for a Tic-Tac-Toe game. Wrote a tutorial that explains how to visualize them. Also, updated some comments.
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@@ -23,6 +23,7 @@ manual is recommended.</p>
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<li><a href="#advanced-features">#2: Advanced Features</a></li>
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<li><a href="#address-tables">#3: Address Table Formatting</a></li>
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<li><a href="#extension-scripts">#4: Extension Scripts</a></li>
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<li><a href="#visualizations">#5: Visualizations</a></li>
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</ul>
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@@ -203,9 +204,9 @@ comment, and hit Enter. Your comment appears in the "comment" column.</p>
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<p>Select the line with address $2003 ("CMP #$04"), then
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Actions > Edit Operand. This allows you to pick how you want the
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operand to look. It's currently set to Default, which for an 8-bit
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operand to look. It's currently set to "Default", which for an 8-bit
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immediate argument means it's shown as a hexadecimal value. Click
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Binary, then OK. It now appears as a binary value.</p>
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"Binary", then "OK". It now appears as a binary value.</p>
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<p>The operand in the LDA instruction at line $2000 refers to an address
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($3000) that isn't part of the file. We want to create an equate directive to
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@@ -375,6 +376,8 @@ it should always match exactly.)</p>
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<p>At this point you know enough to work with a SourceGen project. Continue
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on to the next tutorial to learn more.</p>
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<hr/>
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<h2><a name="advanced-features">Tutorial #2: Advanced Features</a></h2>
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@@ -573,6 +576,8 @@ used extensively in Microsoft BASICs, such as Applesoft.) When you see the
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extra symbol in the opcode field, you need to look closely at what's going
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on.</p>
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<hr/>
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<h2><a name="address-tables">Tutorial #3: Address Table Formatting</a></h2>
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@@ -654,6 +659,8 @@ code entry point hint -- but did several of them at once.</p>
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<p>We don't want to save this project, so select File > Close. When
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SourceGen asks for confirmation, click Discard & Continue.</p>
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<hr/>
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<h2><a name="extension-scripts">Tutorial #4: Extension Scripts</a></h2>
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@@ -681,7 +688,7 @@ you'll see that it's looking for a JSR to a function called
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"PrintInlineL1String". So let's give it one.</p>
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<p>Double-click the JSR operand ("L1026"), click "Create Label", and
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enter "PrintInlineL1String". Remember that labels are case-sensitive;
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you must enter it exactly as shown. Hit OK to accept the label, and OK
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you must enter it exactly as shown. Hit "OK" to accept the label, and "OK"
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to close the operand editor. If all went well, address $1003 should now be
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an L1 string "How long?", and adress $100D should be another JSR.</p>
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@@ -692,7 +699,7 @@ and add the script "InlineNullTermString.cs".</p>
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that starts with "PrintInlineNullString". So let's give it a couple of
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those.</p>
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<p>Double-click the operand on line $100D ("L1027"), click Create Label,
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and set the label to "PrintInlineNullStringOne". Hit OK twice. That
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and set the label to "PrintInlineNullStringOne". Hit "OK" twice. That
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formatted the first one and got us to the next JSR. Repeat the process
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on line $1019 ("L1028"), setting the label to "PrintInlineNullStringTwo".</p>
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@@ -706,6 +713,127 @@ strings and clean up the disassembly automatically.</p>
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some programming experience. See the
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<a href="advanced.html#extension-scripts">manual</a> for more details.</p>
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<hr/>
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<h2><a name="visualizations">Tutorial #5: Visualizations</a></h2>
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<p><i>This tutorial covers one specific feature.</i></p>
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<p>Many programs contain a significant amount of graphical data. This is
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especially true for games, where the space used for bitmaps is often
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larger than the space required for the code. When disassembling a program
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it can be very helpful to be able to see the contents of the data
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regions in graphical form.</p>
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<p>Start a new project with "Generic 6502", and in the SourceGen Tutorial
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directory select "Tutorial5". We'll need to load an extension script from
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the project directory, so immediately save the project, using the
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default name ("Tutorial5.dis65").</p>
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<p>Normally a project will give you some sort of hint as to the data
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format, e.g. the graphics might be a platform-specific sprite. For
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non-standard formats you can glean dimensions from the drawing code. For
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the purposes of this tutorial we're just using a simple monochrome bitmap
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format, with 8 pixels per byte, and we'll know that our images are for
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a Tic-Tac-Toe game. The 'X' and the 'O' are 8x8, the game board is 40x40.
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The bitmaps are sprites with transparency, so pixels are either solid
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or transparent.</p>
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<p>The first thing we need to do is load an extension script that can
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decode this format. The RuntimeData directory has a few, but for this
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tutorial we're using a custom one. Select Edit > Project Properties,
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select the Extension Scripts tab, and click "Add Scripts from Project".
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Double-click on "VisTutorial5.cs", then click "OK".</p>
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<p>The address of the three bitmaps are helpfully identified by the
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load instructions at the top of the file. Select the first one at
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address $100A, then Actions > Create/Edit Visualization Set. In
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the window that opens, click "New Bitmap".</p>
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<p>We're going to ignore most of what's going on and just focus on the
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list of parameters at the bottom. The file offset indicates where in
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the file the bitmap starts; note this is an offset, not an address
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(that way, if you change the address, your visualizations don't break).
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This is followed by the bitmap's width in bytes, and the bitmap's height.
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Because we have 8 pixels per byte, we're currently showing a 1x1 image.
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We'll come back to row stride.</p>
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<p>We happen to know (by playing the game and/or reading the fictitious
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drawing code) that the image is 8x8, so change the value in the height
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field to 8. As soon as you do, the preview window shows a big blue 'X'.
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(The 'X' is 7x7; the last row/column of pixels are transparent so adjacent
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images don't blend into each other.)</p>
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<p>Let's try doing it wrong. Add a 0 to make the height 80. You can see
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some additional bitmap data. Add another 0 to make it 800. Now you get
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a big red X, and the "Height" parameter is shown in red. That's because
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the maximum value for the height is 512, as shown by "[1,512]" on the
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right.</p>
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<p>Change it back to 8, and hit "OK". Hit "OK" in the Edit Visualization
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Set window as well. You should now see the blue 'X' in the code listing
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above line $100A.</p>
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<p>Repeat the process at line $1012: select the line, create a visualization
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set, create a new bitmap, set the height to 8, click "OK" twice.</p>
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<p>Repeat the process at line $101A, but this time the image is 40x40
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rather than 8x8. Set the width to 5, and the height to 40. This makes
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a mess.</p>
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<p>In this case, the bitmap data is 5 bytes wide, but the data is stored
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as 8 bytes per row. This is known as the "stride" or "pitch" of the row.
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To tell the visualizer to skip the last 3 bytes on each row, set the
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"Row stride (bytes)" field to 8. Now we have a proper Tic-Tac-Toe grid.
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Note that it fills the preview window just as the 'X' and 'O' did, even
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though it's 5x as large. The preview window scales everything up.</p>
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<p>Let's format the bitmap data. Select line $101A, then shift-click the
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last line in the file ($1159). Actions > Edit Operand. Select
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"densely-packed bytes", and click "OK". This is perhaps a little too
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dense. Open the operand editor again, but this time select the
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densely-packed bytes sub-option "...with a limit", and set the limit
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to 8 bytes per line. Instead of one very dense statement spread across
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a few lines, you get one line of code per row of bitmap. If you prefer
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to see individual bytes, you can use Edit > Settings, select the
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Display Format tab, and check "use comma-separated format for bulk data".
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This can make it a bit easier to read.</p>
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<h4>Animations</h4>
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<p>Some graphics represent individual frames in an animated sequence.
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You can convert those as well. Double-click on the blue 'X' to open
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the visualization set editor, then click "New Bitmap Animation". This
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opens the Bitmap Animation Editor.</p>
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<p>Let's try it with our Tic-Tac-Toe board pieces. From the list on the
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left, select the blue 'X' and click "Add", then click the 'O' and click
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"Add". Below the list, set the frame delay to 500. Near the bottom,
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click "Start / Stop. This causes the animation to play in a loop. You
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can use the controls to add and remove items, change their order, and change
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the animation speed. You can add the grid to the animation set, but the
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preview scales the bitmaps up to full size, so it may not look the way
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you expect.</p>
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<p>Hit "OK" to save the animation, then "OK" to update the visualization set.
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The code list now shows two entries, one of which has a blue triangle
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superimposed. You can have as many bitmaps an animations on a line
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as you want.</p>
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<p>If you have a lot of bitmaps it can be helpful to give them meaningful
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names, so that they're easy to identify and sort together in the list.
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The "tag" field at the top of the editor windows lets you give things
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names. Tags must be unique.</p>
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<h4>Other Notes</h4>
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<p>The visualization editor is intended to be very dynamic, showing the
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results of parameter changes immediately. This can be helpful if you're
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not exactly sure what the size or format of a bitmap is. Just keep
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tweaking values until it looks right.</p>
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<p>Visualization generators are defined by extension scripts. If you're
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disassembling a program with a totally custom way of storing graphics,
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you can write a totally custom visualizer and distribute it with the
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project. Because the file offset is a parameter, you're not limited to
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placing visualizations at the start of the graphic data -- you can put
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them on any code or data line.</p>
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<p>Visualizations have no effect on assembly source code generation,
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but they do appear in code exported to HTML. Bitmaps are converted to GIF
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images, and animations become animated GIFs.</p>
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<hr/>
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<h2>End of Tutorials</h2>
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