Hydra Manual Question

Zetsu

How much PASAM does the manual cover and how is it presented? I have a friend that is wanting to get started in Microcontrolers and has asked me to recommend a book to learn assembly, well what better way to learn it then with a Microcontroler. I mean I can lend him my college ASM text books but I think his eyes might gloss over ?? Maybe game design is more practical for someone with out the background ?

Oldbitcollector (Jeff)

Here's a copy of the Hydra Manual. Have a peek.
http://www.parallax.com/Portals/0/Downloads/docs/prod/prop/HydraGameDevManual-v1.0.1.pdf

OBC

Zetsu

Without reading the whole thing my self, I am tying to find out if its worth it or not, I could easily link a dictionary to someone and say your answer might be in here... Or I could be cool and be like although this is a dictionary it only briefly touches on the subject you are referencing, but here is a Encyclopedia that has much to offer. After briefly skimming the surface of the manual, I don't see any actual discussion of assembly. So I guess the store description is off.

Mike Green

The Hydra Manual is not something that will teach you assembly language. There's some discussion of it, maybe 40-50 pages so the webstore description is not incorrect, but it's more of a reference than a tutorial.. There's a great deal of discussion of the Propeller hardware and how video works. There's a lot of discussion of video game construction techniques with emphasis on the video aspects. You could learn Spin from the Hydra Manual and, if you already understood some microcontroller assembly, you should be able to learn the Propeller's.

For learning the Propeller assembly language, deSilva's assembly tutorial is quite good. I don't suggest starting to learn about microcontrollers nor the Propeller particularly by learning assembly language. If this person knows C, have them start with either Catalina C or the GCC C compiler for the Propeller. Have them learn about the hardware and its features. If they don't know C, they should start with Spin and the Propeller Tool. The Propeller Education Kit labs are good ways to start.