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Lander on the Acorn Archimedes

Useful links

Here's a collection of links that I've found useful or interesting when working on this project.

General
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Technical information
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  • ARM assembler - An excellent and very succint guide to ARM2 assembly language from the RISC OS 3 Programmer's Reference Manual
  • Arthur and RISC OS application discs - Images of the application discs that were bundled free with every Archimedes from 1987 to 1991, and which brought us Lander (and lots of other goodies)
  • Hacking Zarch on Stardot - An astonishing thread on Stardot in which Zarch is hacked to be faster, bigger and better
  • RISC OS 3 Programmer's Reference Manual - This online version of the PRM doesn't specifically cover Arthur or RISC OS 2, but it's still a wonderful resource for understanding the Archimedes operating system
  • Archimedes ARM2 Graphics Programming - A gentle but thorough introduction to poking screen memory on the Archimedes
  • Fourier transforms of images - A brilliant explanation of the maths behind Fourier transforms in image analysis, which is essentially the method used to generate the landscape in Lander

Emulators
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  • Arculator - The best Archimedes emulator for anyone working with Arthur and RISC OS 2 on Windows or Linux
  • Archimedes Live - A web-based version of Arculator that's particularly handy for Mac users and for websites trying to demonstrate the game that they're talking about

Assemblers and disassemblers
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  • RISC OS disassembly in Python - I used this very effective script to convert the Lander game binaries into ARM assembler, and its simplicity and flexibility was just what I needed
  • vasm - This free multi-platform assembler works nicely with ARM1 and ARM2 code and was a good choice for reassembling the disassembled source
  • GNU assembler - Details of the GNU assembler syntax, which is used by the vasm assembler to build Lander