hm, difficult, where to start?
There are two good starters you should read:
the introduction texts of the two "Chris"s
1) go to menu: Library→Programming→Tutorial Christopher Tumber
2) go to menu: Library→Programming→Tutorial Malban
The first emphasises assembler for starters
The second emphasises vectrex/vectrex BIOS for starters
in relation to VIDE open a vedi panel (menu: Tools→vide)
create a new project (button NEW→ new Project)
give your trial project a name, and check create game loop
now you have your first "hello world" program, with the two reads from above you should start to experiment
Again there are (at least) two options, for both - open vedi and:
First:
Create a project without checking "create game" loop
right click the root of the project and select add file, select the asm file you want, it will be copied to the project directory
right click on the file and select "set as main"
now click the build button
Second:
click on the Open File button, select the source you have. It will open in a new editor
click the assemble/run button
Look at the answer to the last question, both work.
build a project and select add and all files, set the "main" as main
all the other files are included by the assembler
Yep that might be true. Optimizing is sometimes tricky. And since I did not develope the core code of assi myself, I felt sometimes restrained to change the very core of it (or in other words I did not dare). Anyway I think a good solution is to let the programmer do optimization - I don't think any assembler (or compiler) can be as good as a programmer.
Yes. If you use extended addressing with a variable (ram location e.g.) that is defined further down the source (or an include file loaded at a later stage), that address is not optimized to direct addressing. This also has to do with the inner working of assi. The decision whether an instruction is direct or extended is made in pass 1. In pass 1 also the includes and variables are evaluated. If a variable comes later down the line it is at that stage "unkown" and a decision whether the DP-register is the correct one can not be made. Doing extended addressing is the save path. The correct way for assi would be to do a pass in between and try to assert all "fixed" variables so at least they can be evaluated - I have not done that yet! Two fixes are possible for that particular "optimization":
do not use variables before they are declared!
"force" direct addressing with the "<" prefix
If the files represent different banks for bankswitching, create a new project according to your bankswitching scheme. Set to each bank the according file as main (this can only be done from the project properties panel)
Easy answer, well than don't - umpf! (so much work wasted....)
Not so easy answer...
You don't have to, but building and error editing in vedi won't be as comfortable.
Each file can have it's own properties. Even your main ASM file. Create a property file for your main ASM file(s):
right click in the tree on that file and select "Properties"
check the "no internal processing" button (with that you switch assi for that file off)
to still assemble the file with the "build" button, you can/should configure a script for pre build commands
an example is provided for a MS Windows calling of AS09 to configure/view it:
press configure script
select the class "Utility"
select name: "execute Win command"
than the script sources are displayed, the script as it is shovels the current file to as09 (which is expected to be in the same directory, if you have some "central" position, edit the script)
output is done to Vedi-Messages, but you can not jump to errors with double clicks etc...
There are actually two easy ways:
generate the data in vecci, all data is after generation available in the system clipboard, so you after generation you can PASTE the data
in vedi go to the place you want to insert the data, right click with the mouse in the editor and select "insert vectorlist". A filechoser appears where you can chose any saved vectorlist. If it is exportable you can chose the export method and the generated code is inserted to the selected position in vedi.