Full Quiet OSS

This is a collection of Python 3 scripts originally developed while building Full Quiet by Retrotainment Games. We are releasing them as free software to give back to the community of developers who use the cc65 toolchain to develop software for 6502 processors in assembly language.

These programs benefit all ca65 users:

• freebytes.py
  Given an ld65 map file, reads the segment list and totals the used and free space in each memory area.
• hotbssvars.py
  Given an ld65 debug file, finds which variables are most frequently accessed from code in the fixed bank. Moving these variables from BSS to zero page may make the code smaller.
• ld65ramuse.py
  Given a map file produced by ld65, finds the fraction of each ROM and RAM segment occupied by each object file. Useful for finding parts of a program to study for size optimization.
• rmcomments.py
  Removes comments from a ca65 project's source code. Useful for counting source lines of code.
• symdealias.py
  Given an ld65 debug file, finds one canonical name for each label and removes all others. Useful to work around quirks in some versions of Mesen and other emulators that load ld65 debug files.
• tracemake.py
  Wraps strace on Linux to find all files read or written while building a program.

These are more specific to projects targeting the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES):

• strips.py, metasprite.s, and metasprite.inc
  Given a sprite sheet image and a file specifying what rectangles in the image belong to each cel, converts each cel to a set of 8×16-pixel objects, packs them into 1 KiB CHR banks, and emits data tables of what objects make up each cel. Comes with sample code to draw a cel.
• nstripes.py
  Given a 4-color image and a file specifying what rectangles in the image belong to each background object, extracts a tile set and nametable fragments in Stripe Image format. Useful for making background objects to draw with the Popslide library.
• pack8k.py
  Given a set of object files and an ld65 configuration script template containing a list of 8 KiB memory areas, pack these object files' segments into unused spaces in these memory areas.
• prototype.py
  Adds a small graphic to a ROM representing a serial number. Useful for customizing numbered copies of a game.
• romusage.py
  Converts an NES CHR file to an image. Useful for converting an entire ROM to an image to visualize used and free portions or to visualize patterns that may be compressible. Optionally sanitizes the image for publication on a developer blog by reducing its pixel size by half, so that viewers cannot recover the ROM data, and labeling it with names of memory areas from an ld65 config file.

Licensing

This uses a mix of permissive licenses.

• Most files are under the Apache License 2.0.
• A few files, such as the metasprite sample code, are under the zlib License.
• The pagination solver used by strips.py is under the MIT (Expat) license.