Newbie questions

[IHATETHEBEARS]

Ok, I’ve been toying with the idea of trying to create my own game for about a year now. I’ve read all the various links regarding Batari Basic. But I’m really at a loss as to where to begin. For someone like me with little to no programming knowledge, it all seems overwhelming.

 

The thing that’s holding me back the most is the simple process of getting started. No matter how much I’ve read, I can’t seem to get a clear idea as to which programs I should actually be downloading to get going. Again, I’ve read an awful lot of the links provided here. But I’m still confused. What I want to do is get every program on my computer I need, then sit down and figure out the programming aspect. That part I think I can handle with all the coding information here.

 

To that end, can someone advise me as to which programs I would need to start this project? I have a standard PC laptop. But if I wanted to work with a friend of mine (who has a Mac laptop) would he need different programs? Are they compatible?

 

Anyway, any help would be appreciated here. I just want to get started and start tinkering around and see what I can do.

 

Thanks!

[kamakazi]

The nice thing about current Windows and MAC computers is that some common files will work between the two. Your Atari game development files should not be any different. Just make sure that you save them in a common format used on both systems. If you are both using Batari BASIC then you should not run into any issues. If, however, you plan to develop your own code from scratch in Assembly Language someday you might want to look into a text editor that is available for both systems.

 

What I am using (I'm still learning as well so you are not alone) is Crimson Editor (now called Emerald Editor) for writing out code, DASM for compiling code, and Stella Atari 2600 emulator for trying out code. Emerald Editor and Stella have MAC versions. However I am not sure about DASM. There may be an alternative if DASM is not available for MACs. You will both need Batari BASIC if you plan to use that as your game development environment.

 

Look forward to seeing what you come up with for the 2600!

[+Random Terrain]

If you are going to be using batari Basic, there is a batari Basic forum:

 

atariage.com/forums/forum/65-batari-basic/

 

 

Some of these links might also be helpful:

 

http://www.randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories-batari-basic-commands.html#newtobasic

 

http://www.randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories-batari-basic-commands.html#parts_of_a_program

 

http://www.randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories-batari-basic-commands.html#basic_questions

[+SpiceWare]

DASM for Mac is in this topic.

One thing you'll need to be aware of is OS X and Windows use different characters to represent a newline - OS X (as well as Linux and Unix) uses just LF while Windows uses CR + LF. LF = chr$(10) while CR = chr$(13).

I don't have problems working with files from Windows, but I do know people have had problems taking my OS X files and putting them on Windows. Use something like Notepad++ to convert the file - there's an EOL Conversion option under the Edit menu. Try using it to convert the problem files to Windows Format.

[RevEng]

dasm binaries for OS X x86 are distributed with this version of bB. It also has a number of bug fixes. RT's previous links also reference it, so if you follow them you should be good.

 

If someone wants just DASM for OS X x86, I'd recommend grabbing the last binary package from sourceforge, which include OS X binaries, rather than the one in the thread. The one in sourceforge has a number of bugs fixed.

[+SpiceWare]

If there are bug fixes then I wonder why they haven't bumped up the version number. When I saw it was the same version as on my system I didn't bother downloading it.

[RevEng]

That's my fault. When I started fixing DASM bugs in that thread, I sub-versioned it with a date code on the end (2.20.11-2014-03-04) to distinguish it as an unofficial fork stemming from 2.20.11.

 

The unofficial fork became official thanks to Andrew, but we never changed the version style.

 

If I wind up doing another, I'll rev it up to 2.20.12.