I'm a newbie at Batari.

[Syzygy1]

I really want to program a game, but I have no knowledge of Batari. Can someone help?

[+Random Terrain]

Start at the very beginning of the page. It's a very good place to start:

 

randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories-batari-basic-commands.html

[+Atarius Maximus]

Here's some tips to get you started.

 

1. Get the files. Download and install all the files that you need.

 

· Get the batariBasic files. This AA thread has the latest version of bB.

· Get the Visual batariBaic files. As a beginner, you'll definitely want to download Visual Batari Basic. It includes graphical editors for sprites and playfields, support for the titlescreen kernel, and a music editor.

· Get an Emulator. I recommend Stella. It's cross platform and offers the highest level of compatibility with batariBasic features.

2. Read the Tutorials. AtariAge members CurtisP and SeaGtGruff wrote some excellent tutorials and posted them to the batariBasic forums.

 

· From CurtisP: Programming Tutorial

· From SeaGtGruff: Tutorial Session 1 | Tutorial Session 2 | Tutorial Session 3

· If you're new to Basic, I'd highly recommend starting with Random Terrain's batariBasic page (which he just linked to above). His page is very well organized with lots of answers to beginner questions. Once you're more familiar with batariBasic his page is also the best place to go for up to date commands and syntax. His site is like the bB bible.

3. Learn from Example. You can download a whole lot of codes samples I wrote here at AtariAge.

 

4. Ask for Help! When you get stuck, there's lots of us around to help answer questions.

[Papa]

I would recommend printing a lot of the online manuals and studying them diligently. Copy anything you type into notepad or word (notepad is what I use) and any time you make a major change, copy that into a new file. I have around twenty different notepad files for Titan Axe alone. While coding it I would run into a setback and then revert to my last successful code and start from there. Once the problem was solved I would save it as a newer file. This keeps you from getting really far in your code and then finding out something is wrong that happened early on.

 

Check your screen updates on real hardware and, if you can, on several televisions. Progressive scan will handle things differently than HD or CRT. Even digital CRT's can have different results than older ones. Certain emulators won't work with DPC+ games, and emulators don't jitter (bounce the screen like a simulated earthquake) like real hardware on a television might. Just because your scan rate may fluctuate a bit (original Atari games can wreak havok on the scan count, but still look perfect on a television) doesn't mean it won't look okay on real hardware. ALT-L will show your scan count in Stella. I've tested many old Atari games that I know work on real hardware (obviously) that kick the scan count like a soccer ball, so it's not that it has to be perfect all the time. You just want to make sure it doesn't waver too much or too often.

 

Have a great time learning BASIC and don't forget to post your work!

[George Washingtoad]

Im new to programming as well, however my problem isnt involving the materials. I need help with starting up and using the materials. You know of the dasm compiler right? Well my problem is that the moment I try to open this program it closes out! I cant compile my games in order to test them without this compiler. I ended up trying it on my windows xp computer as well (I first tested on windows 7) and it still didnt work! Help me!

[+Random Terrain]

Im new to programming as well, however my problem isnt involving the materials. I need help with starting up and using the materials. You know of the dasm compiler right? Well my problem is that the moment I try to open this program it closes out! I cant compile my games in order to test them without this compiler. I ended up trying it on my windows xp computer as well (I first tested on windows 7) and it still didnt work! Help me!

 

Do you have the latest version of batari Basic?

 

randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories-batari-basic-commands.html#gettingstarted

 

Are you using it with Visual batari Basic?

[George Washingtoad]

No on visual Batari, Yes on using Batari Basic

For my IDE I have been using the 2600 IDE. But I dont mind using notepad.

[George Washingtoad]

Also, I tried using visual Batari Basic because you mentioned it. Once I tried to compile it still didnt work. Im just adding a little bit more information for my predicament

[+Random Terrain]

Also, I tried using Visual batari Basic because you mentioned it. Once I tried to compile it still didn't work. I'm just adding a little bit more information for my predicament

 

If you got the latest version of bB, double clicked on the file "install_win.bat" and had Visual batari Basic set up properly, a program that doesn't have an error should compile.

 

Did you try compiling any of the example programs on the bB page without making any changes to them?

[George Washingtoad]

Hey! wow it compiled now! It must have been me I guess sorry about that.