I haven't used Nbasic or looked at it at all.  But I don't really like the idea of applying a HLL to the NES for the simple reason that the NES is dreadfully slow, and seemingly simple tasks can burn up tons of CPU time if they're not compiled just so.  Not to mention the added difficulty involved in debugging -- since you have to look at the 6502 in a debugger to see what's going on, and it's no fun having to decipher a compiled version of your own code.

Also, a HLL pretty much makes any timing work impossble.

I can understand wanting to use a HLL to cut down on the boring repetitive stuff that you have to do repeatedly -- but that's what macros are for -- and any assembler worth using has them.


Using a HLL for a quick test program or something is fine I guess... but if you want to code something that needs to have decent performance (ie:  a game), I just can't see a HLL being the way to go -- the NES just isn't fast enough to absorb the compiler overhead.  And being familiar with the subtle things the NES does makes all the difference not only in terms of tricks you can do, but also debugging capabilities (hard to track down bugs like spilling out of VBlank, or framerate slowdown when you don't have any idea how much time your code is taking).  You lose a lot of performance and potential when you move to an HLL.

But take that for what it's worth.  In the end I guess it only matters what you find useful.  So if you like nbasic -- then use it!  :thumbsup:

I really do not like it at all. and NESDEV.COM's BBS says it is not good at all, especially the incompatibility with the REAL NES console. I already wrote a review for that utility.

If you want a new, but better NES basic: modify the source code from Batari Basic instead. Although it is used for ''Atari 2600 VCS'' ASM code, It can be recoded to output NES code using DASM.

Here is Batari Basic (with source code included): http://bataribasic.com/batari_Basic_version_1.0.zip

And you can find DASM here: http://dasm-dillon.sourceforge.net/ (This can be used to create NES games. Although it is primarily configured to Atari 2600 VCS and FairChild Channel F ROM files.)

I actually meant to mention NESHLA in my previous post but it slipped my mind.

I'm not all that familiar with it, but I know it was developed and used by that guy who was working on that Grand Theftendo game (that never actually came about).  From what I understand, it's not really a full HLL, but just an assembler with several additions (similar to what frantik described NBasic to be).  But again I haven't actually used it -- that's just my impression of it.

Something like that is probably very usable.  I'd probably still personally prefer to stick to the lowest level possible... but I'm insane like that.  I'm just mainly against something that completely seperates you from the 6502 (like the cc65 C compiler -- but it's bundled ca65 assembler is great).