I would like to start learning Assembler, but which one should I get, MS Macro Assembler or Turbo Assembler 5 ? Which one is better suited for example game development? Is TASM compatible with MASM? Has anyone any experience with NASM or Arrowsoft Assembler, if so, can they match MASM/TASM ? MASM can also be found from MS Win98 Driver Development Kit, if I use it, can I publish my progs? I mean is it FREE? What''s the difference with the purchased (separate) version? ... I am a bit confused with these....

Hi, my name is Ben. I use MASM for my whole game. It''s very nice and compatable with all the microsoft lib''s (Some other''s are too), It also has support for the option of some semi highlevel syntax without sacrificing speed. (.IF statements and such) Which are actually translated into conditional jump tables and such. Very nice. And yes it is completely 100% free off the microsoft site, it just doesn''t come with manuals or an instruction set reference and such (Which you can find elsewhere)

I''ve heard that TASM will compile faster (a couple seconds for several thousand line projects, where as my game can take a full minute or two) however it lacks compatability.

Oh yah, masm will do syntax checking with api''s and such, so it''s easier to get bug free code. Rather than pushing all the paramater on the stack and calling the procedure you just type something like:

invoke MessageBox,hWnd,ADDR MyMessage,NULL,MB_OK

and if you had the wrong number of parameters or something it''ll tell you, other compilers won''t your app will simply cause an illegal operation and windows will shut it down (OR possibly an overflow error. Both bad. :-)

Hope that helps!
See ya,
Ben

P.S. Check out Win32asm.cjb.net It''s got lot''s of good examples on how to do, structured exception hanling, multiple threads, and other cool stuff to use in games (Also all the basics like displaying a form!)(He also uses masm)

Also check out Chris Hobbs articel series on programming games in assembler here on gamedev.net (He also uses masm for his pc work, for linux he uses nasm, I think)