Retro Game Coders - code a game in C

Whilst looking at setting up come C programming for the old Atari 800 XL (as you do!), I stumbled over this website that looked awesome and contains a nice snapshot of information.

https://retrogamecoders.com/

Setup by a gentleman, bit like myself, who was doing some spring-cleaning during the covid-19 pandemic and re-kindled some of that old computer magic days from the 80/90s, back before it got boring, serious & out-sourced :-D

Oh looksie - Atari ST Coding (looks familiar)

What am I looking at on there?  Well....just using Altirra emulator and looking at using some C coding, although I might dip my toe into using CC65 and cross-compiling, so I can code on the PC machine and produce output to then deploy onto/into the Atari 800 XL..... let's see!

https://retrogamecoders.com/learn-code-c-programming/

Coding, done properly (none of that Python stuff).

Will probably end up documenting my journey of setting stuff up, how to get the environment working etc... who to write some simple C code, how to make, build, deploy and test in emulator and then onto real hardware and then look at some "proper" C coding stuff.... maybe not a game, but who knows.

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There's also another awesome site: https://8bitworkshop.com/

Although I couldn't initially get the in-browser emulator to work OOTB:

Might give it a little look later on....

UPDATE:

Ah, it looks like it was just because I was wanting to use the Atari800XL emulator, whilst it does load the machine in the embedded MAME player on the right, the code files are not present...

However, a quick change to just a normal Atari800 and oh looksie here:

I also now have a copy of the book, even though it is focused on the Z80 chip (time to fire up my old Amstrad CPC 464 emulator!), the C code looks to be generic enough to modify.  Good times.

and yes, those of you with hawk-eyes, checking out my open tabs will notice that I am setting up a LlaMa chatGPT on my local laptop - I do wonder what that will be used for / by? cough cough cough - putting a node-red front-end on it and it can then be called by ANYTHING, including Atari 800 FujiNet machines or, well, anything that can call a REST API :-D

UPDATE: UPDATE:

After digging through this a LOT more, it is pretty darned amazing!  There are a lot of different machines that can be emulated and coded for, Amstrad CPC 6128, the Commodore 64, the Spectrum, even 8086 DOS.... it is actually very slick.

My current favourite has to be the MSX (BIOS) that has a 1966 version of chatGPT running called Eliza (CLICK HERE for the background info)

I just love the last comment in our discussion:

"OH, I KNOW CHATGPT!?"  - funny... kinda....