What's stopping you programming the Jaguar?

[belboz]

Nothing should be stopping people from doing dev work on the Jaq.

 

Right now there are multiple dev frameworks. If your running Windows 9X,Vista or Windows 7 you can run the old Atari dev tools which means you can use their gcc/mac/aln combo for compiling/assembly/linking.

 

If your running Windows 2000/XP you have to use the newer dev tool set. It uses vbcc and smac/sln for the compiling, assembly, and linking. I also put vlink on there so you can use it instead of aln. It should be fine for most people starting out. And if you find a bug in smac or sln, you should be able to submit it to SubQ or we can look into it since the source is open.

 

Now if your running a Linux system your golden. You can use gcc, vbcc, mac, aln, smac, sln, vlink, etc, etc. They all work fine under Linux.

 

If your afraid of doing a Linux install you can use my Linux live boot CD on my site and just boot it. It has everything setup. You can access your PC's hard drive to work on projects on your Windows partition, or use a memory stick, etc. The live CD has everything gcc, vbcc, smac, sln, mac,aln, vlink, sebs library, rdbjag, wdb, and other tools.

 

People also keep overlooking Seb's library. It is a great little library that handles all the heavy lifting. It handles sprites for you, mod playback, sound play back, joystick input, and much more.

 

Two things I thought about putting together.

 

1) A video that shows how to use Seb's library to put a sprite up on the screen and move it around.

 

2) A virtualbox image of my Linux dev system so people can use the free virtualbox to run a Linux dev system under Windows (or OS X) and not need to boot it from a live CD.

 

Not sure if there is any interest in either.

 

If anyone is interested in the dev environments check out my site here.

 

http://www.hillsoftware.com/downloads

 

If you want to see a couple videos that show the two Linux live CD's I put together for developers....

 

http://www.vimeo.com/user2530735/videos

Edited July 2, 2010 by belboz

[potatohead]

Something just struck me while reading this thread. Took me a minute or two to sort it out.

 

There is working emulation. It's limited and really focused on a few, or even a coupla titles. I don't know that much about it, as I've not kept up with emulation for Jag at all.

 

Since that emulation does work well enough for something like T2K, it's good enough for the kind of environment I wrote about above.

 

Compiled BASIC type environments are EASY for people. They can read the code, they can verify their build works with the emulator, and they can modify code really easy. That's the core, and they don't need to know about make files, libraries (at least not at first) and a whole lot of other things.

 

It's possible on Batari Basic to just snag the thing, build the demo and or connect up the nice IDE, and move a sprite around with the game controller in a very short amount of time. That's the hook. People figure out that THEY can do stuff, and when they can actually see it, they get motivated and that's where a lot of good things start.

 

Why not build something like that targeted right at the emulation that does work? The finished product could run on a real machine, given some checking on the bounds of things. Leave the user in a little sandbox and let them play safely, with a low barrier to entry?

 

On a Jag, that kind of environment would rule!! One could have tiles, simple playfields, lots of colors, sprites sounds and controls. That won't get anybody the next Reboot project, but who knows what might happen? I know I've honestly enjoyed watching the various projects get done on the VCS, and some of them were gems, even with the very sharp limits on that machine.

 

Expanding that to say, NES quality tiles and sprites would flat out rock, and be within the scope of what one person can do in their spare time. No cables, no dev cart, just some downloads and an ability to share what got done. Start simple, get the hook set, then take the ones that catch the fever to bigger and better things, one step at a time. That's exactly what is happening with the VCS, and to a lesser degree 8 bitters.

 

On the Micro scene, we are doing that. I've been coding video drivers and others have been coding sound and I/O. People are taking those things and making games --sometimes interesting games, and they just do it within the limits of the tools that are there to play with. Could happen on Jag, and that's really what I was trying to get at earlier...

 

It's worth it to spend a coupla months getting a good video / tile / sprite driver done, because others will pick it up and do stuff. As they've been working, they asked for things. So that gets coded, and it's kind of a team deal that works organically. On the micros, there are BASICS, but nothing like Batari Basic. Really, that's getting done in C, or on the Prop SPIN, which is pretty easy really. There is now a compiled BASIC on the chips, and now that some support code for the basics has been written, I see people already doing stuff.

 

As the projects get done, somebody will want something. Might be another sprite, some colors, scrolling, who knows? From there, the old guard, or those with some real know how can carve that out with the lower level tools, package it up, and update the BASIC environment. IMHO, something like C will attract some people, and I totally agree about it being something that should be done. Gaming on ATMEGA chips is happening in C, and it's happening with a core kernel set of services like I describe.

 

One layer down to BASIC would open it up to most anybody. Lots of creative types that will just kind of shudder at C, will look at BASIC and think, "I can do this" That's what we want, and we want it no matter what our fave console is.

Edited July 2, 2010 by potatohead

[Gorf]

0) Tools, Tools, Tools... The Jag is crying for a decent dev tool set, sadly the odds of that happening are close to nil

 

1) Distribution Medium... As mentioned above, too few JagCDs, and carts are expensive. Need a simple flash board.

 

2) Community... Too secretive and adversarial. This seems to be getting a little better

 

3) Techniques... Follows on from 2, but but much of "how to accomplish X" hasn't been disclosed, and isn't readily discovered. On other platforms, people share new discoveries and techniques, not so much on Jag. (Tutorials on JS2 are a start, and the main code discussion has been very informative)

 

4) See 0!

 

 

Who's being secretive? I think that is yours and everyone elses inagimation.

Those Lessons on JSII are mine and so is the mani RAM GPU execution, so who

is this being secretive? Please....do tell us what is this 'X' and who has

not disclosed it? Should I just upload every piece of source code I have

written or ever write? not that it would matter since no one has done one

damn thing with the tons of source readily available to the masses.

 

 

I call shenanigans on you and anyone else who tries/cries this nonsense!

 

I am working on LIBS that WILL greatly benifit those who have the balls to

use them...unfortunately no one wants to do any work unless you hold their

hands every step of the way.

 

The only one you have any hope for being correct on is 0. The rest is

you repeating the typical sour grapes of those that feel we write code

for thier pleasure. I really dont see what anyone else can expect that

has not already been handed to them. There are TONS of resource for any

one with a pair to get rolling on coding the JAguar. No on is going to

write it for you.

 

Now please....prove me wrong....good luck on that.

Edited July 2, 2010 by Gorf

[potatohead]

For a small project one could probably get away with the simplest single input makefile and just "include" or "incbin" the relevent sub components and get on with learning the machine? That might make it more palatable.

 

IMHO, that's not a bad way to go. A while back, actually quite a while back now, I had a similar experience with OpenGL and C on SGI. Used to jam on those computers professionally and I really liked them. One day, I was reading something about OpenGL, and stumbled on a really great Oreilly demo code. It had just the basics, keyboard, mouse, and a graphics loop. I think it drew a cube, or something simple. Basically, it was turn on the lights, setup the polys, do your transforms, and such... The code filled maybe two screens.

 

It was enough to build on, so I did. At first, I did my own shapes, then I built up an array of polygons with cool colors and had a few hundred of them spinning and moving on the screen. It took a bit to get each thing done. File I/O, graphics, etc... and ended up producing a nice little STL file viewer that was actually useful. On a modern machine, it can render maybe half a million polys no sweat, and do so at a reasonable frame rate.

 

Viewstl is the project name, and it's still out there, if you want to see the rank amateur I am

 

My point is that took maybe a few months to get done, and it was fun, and it was possible for somebody willing to think it through a little. I know there isn't something cool like OGL on the Jag, but maybe there could be.

 

That spinning cube, or maybe sticking with 2D, sprites moving and bouncing maybe with the game controller might just get people cooking. The key is to take as many of the barriers away, leaving people with something they can just chip away on, getting stuff done.

[matmook]

@potatohead : I think Seb's lib is perfect for that. You can use it using c or asm and his lib use the GPU. There is also basic example for sound/sprite animation/rotation/frame buffer ... : The Removers

Edited July 2, 2010 by matmook

[Christos]

What's stopping me is that I have a problem with C. I've coded in it, have working programs etc but I don't understand it. And you can't do game coding mechanically... I wish someone would create a working dev environment with the removers lib, preferably with something like codeblocks and even more preferably something that would work with a falcon . AHCC for example

[+poobah]

{snip long response comparing jag scene to other platforms, decided it wasn't worth it}

 

bottom line: there's a difference between "hand holding" and a helping hand. If the goal is more Jag devs, there has to be an easier run at it. We all don't have time to tear apart code running on multiple processors to figure out how to use the machine, or spend days/weeks/months prodding the hardware to see what does work well, especially if there are experts that already know this stuff.

 

The tutorials, discussion of techniques (like code in main) and libraries are absolutely necessary to expanding the dev scene. I thank you for those resources! If more devs shared their favorite Jag techniques and libraries as you are, the scene would grow tremendously.

[Gorf]

I see you've had no answer there poobah. Not suprised ..... however.....

 

I've blown my Jag up a million times crashing the system running code with trial and error. There is absolutely no

reason why anyone else can't do that now. Especialy now that you have 100 times the info and examples I ever had when

I started to code this machine > 15 years ago. It sounds like laziness and a true lack of will to me. It sounds also

as if everyone wants to wait around until someone does it for them. Grab the tools and use the examples and go for it.

This is the only real hope you have. Of course you can ask questions which I will always be happy to answer but I

dont even see any one(besides JagCris and one or two others) actually even bothering to do that. All I see is a bunch

of wannabees complaining about stuff that is not even true. Now stop being wannabees and be doers. I am, and you can to.

JUST DO IT!

Edited July 3, 2010 by Gorf

[Gorf]

{snip long response comparing jag scene to other platforms, decided it wasn't worth it}

 

bottom line: there's a difference between "hand holding" and a helping hand. If the goal is more Jag devs, there has to be an easier run at it. We all don't have time to tear apart code running on multiple processors to figure out how to use the machine, or spend days/weeks/months prodding the hardware to see what does work well, especially if there are experts that already know this stuff.

 

The tutorials, discussion of techniques (like code in main) and libraries are absolutely necessary to expanding the dev scene. I thank you for those resources! If more devs shared their favorite Jag techniques and libraries as you are, the scene would grow tremendously.

 

You are right it's not worth it...it's just plain foolish to compare this machine with any before it. It's a completely

different playing field. The only thing Jag has in common with the consoles before it is they are consoles. After that

it's an entirely different way of thinking due to the multiprocessor nature of the Jag.

 

On others helping:

 

They have! What more else do you want? What is not out there that you need to start a game? Just name one thing!!!

 

You can't because all you need to write a game is readily availbe on this site and many other sites. TRust me,

People want it handed to them....they helping hand has been give 100 fold over and over. Ther eis no more excuses

and it's clear to me those that complain the loudest are the ones who bother the least.

 

 

You keep complaining about this but you have yet to site one example of it.

Edited July 3, 2010 by Gorf

[Gorf]

For a small project one could probably get away with the simplest single input makefile and just "include" or "incbin" the relevent sub components and get on with learning the machine? That might make it more palatable.

 

IMHO, that's not a bad way to go. A while back, actually quite a while back now, I had a similar experience with OpenGL and C on SGI. Used to jam on those computers professionally and I really liked them. One day, I was reading something about OpenGL, and stumbled on a really great Oreilly demo code. It had just the basics, keyboard, mouse, and a graphics loop. I think it drew a cube, or something simple. Basically, it was turn on the lights, setup the polys, do your transforms, and such... The code filled maybe two screens.

 

It was enough to build on, so I did. At first, I did my own shapes, then I built up an array of polygons with cool colors and had a few hundred of them spinning and moving on the screen. It took a bit to get each thing done. File I/O, graphics, etc... and ended up producing a nice little STL file viewer that was actually useful. On a modern machine, it can render maybe half a million polys no sweat, and do so at a reasonable frame rate.

 

Viewstl is the project name, and it's still out there, if you want to see the rank amateur I am

 

My point is that took maybe a few months to get done, and it was fun, and it was possible for somebody willing to think it through a little. I know there isn't something cool like OGL on the Jag, but maybe there could be.

 

That spinning cube, or maybe sticking with 2D, sprites moving and bouncing maybe with the game controller might just get people cooking. The key is to take as many of the barriers away, leaving people with something they can just chip away on, getting stuff done.

 

 

This was done years ago with my getting started lessons of JSII. They were available to everyone at one point. JagChris

is the only one that ever bothered to use them. They were as simple and self explanitory as you could get. I even had

idiots complaining about how 'pedantic' they were!!!! Imagine that!! Clearly I was'nt pedantic enough.

[potatohead]

"People want it handed to them..."

 

Yes. Exactly right. They do.

 

From what I've read and seen, programming this system is harder than the experience I had, which frankly, was not all that hard. That's hard enough to pose a problem for many who might have an interest in that it takes a lot to get anything gratifying happening --too much probably.

 

Barrier to entry is brutal on these things. Either people find something worth it, or not, and that's just how it is. If that barrier is high enough, there is always something else to do that gets one having fun and all that other stuff that comes with banging around on old hardware.

 

My posts were aimed right at that. Frankly, I see the pool of stuff linked here as a nice starting point for another layer of abstraction and simplification. Of course, each time that is done performance goes down, limits increase, but so what? The limits on the console are high anyway. Lowering them several notches still leaves room for some good times.

 

Anyway, I'm done on this topic.

 

It might be the machine is too difficult, or too different to really capture attention at this time. It might also be the work to simplify that renders it less than worth working on that way too. Don't know. Thought I would toss it out there, given what has been seen elsewhere, that's all.

 

Happy days all, no worries here, and thanks for the info. Appreciated.

[rush6432]

"People want it handed to them..."

 

Yes. Exactly right. They do.

 

From what I've read and seen, programming this system is harder than the experience I had, which frankly, was not all that hard. That's hard enough to pose a problem for many who might have an interest in that it takes a lot to get anything gratifying happening --too much probably.

 

Barrier to entry is brutal on these things. Either people find something worth it, or not, and that's just how it is. If that barrier is high enough, there is always something else to do that gets one having fun and all that other stuff that comes with banging around on old hardware.

 

My posts were aimed right at that. Frankly, I see the pool of stuff linked here as a nice starting point for another layer of abstraction and simplification. Of course, each time that is done performance goes down, limits increase, but so what? The limits on the console are high anyway. Lowering them several notches still leaves room for some good times.

 

Anyway, I'm done on this topic.

 

It might be the machine is too difficult, or too different to really capture attention at this time. It might also be the work to simplify that renders it less than worth working on that way too. Don't know. Thought I would toss it out there, given what has been seen elsewhere, that's all.

 

Happy days all, no worries here, and thanks for the info. Appreciated.

 

 

I started back in 97-98 learning assembly for the jaguar and tore apart examples and modified code and played with it and tried to combine examples and such and learned it by trial and error. it took quite a while but over the course of a year or two tinkering and writing simple programs and slowly advancing i ended up learning quite a bit about the machine and how to control various parts of it.

 

i use a litle bit of all the processors and ive come up with simple 2d games that can have some pretty decent effects. However like gorf said, there are plenty of exmaples out there. you just have to be willing to dig through code in the downloads section of JS2 and a few other places and try it all out for yourself and see if you can learn from it. Personally there is no better way to learn than to get a basic program like the atari bpeg example and play around with it and make changes and clean the code up and customize it and improve on it. Hands on gets you pretty far. start with simple things and move on..

 

I suggest looking at maybe native source code, slam racer, some of starcat's original simplified JDC object list examples, atari bpeg/jagpeg examples, and possibly some of the 3d atari engine stuff. sure some of it is not ideal but.... nothing really is. like i said this is just a starting point to get familiar with how things work and you can definatly see similarities between the examples/programs.

 

There is no easy starting point, you really just have to jump in and learn and absorb as much as possible and decypher it. Like gorf said, you'll compile and load code only to have it crash a million times even though you think what you coded perfectly error free (no joke) its dificult to program for. no one said it was easy.

Edited July 3, 2010 by rush6432

[saboteur]

Belboz's live cd makes setting up for developing a snap.

 

The Skunkboard is also a godsend.

 

Now all i need is someone to invent a machine that makes time so I can do something with it

 

Perhaps we could set up a code repository and people could upload snippets of code for others to use/learn from.

 

Something like batari would, imho, get more 'casual' programmers interested in the jag, and once interested you've got em for life mu ha ha ha ha.

 

My two penneth.

 

cheers

[stalepie]

I would love to make a video game, but have never been able to understand programming well. Have tried C, 6502, 68000 and others out of curiosity...

[Tursi]

Just time for me. I have two things I need to work on but they are just being pushed aside by general life issues.

[+Stephen Moss]

My answer to the first question was that I don't really have time, which is currently true at least as far as games go (plus I can't draw sprites to save my life which is why I stuck with STOS 3D on the ST/Falcon) as my Jaguar focus is hardware although I have started to do a little Jaguar Assembly programming as I need it to test the hardware.

 

As for the second question, I think more/better tutorials might help but they be hard to grasp espically when they are in a language you do not understand (C in my case). It may be helpful if tutorials showed the code in BASIC, Assembler and C as having code for all three languages side by side can both help understanding and make it easier for those who want/need to convert their programming skills from one language to another.

Personally I would like to be able to program the Jag in BASIC as I don't really have the time and probably the intelligence to learn anything else and BASIC is both a language that is easy to learn and one I am already familiar with it plus I think it produces much nicer and easier to read code than C for example...

 

BASIC is...

Print "Hello" ' Print Hello

 

C is...

_Hello(void)

{

fprint("Hello"); */Print Hello /*

}

 

or something close to that.

 

To me C seems to require a lot of extra typing and syntax just to do the same thing as BASIC and I find all those damn brackets just make the code messy, confusing and difficult to read and that is for simple stuff never mind when they are nested as that gets even more confusing. For me BASIC just does things so much better, no opening and closing of comments or functions, no semicolon to indicate the end of the line, you don't have to tell BASIC to include the instructions before you can use them as they are always available but maybe thats just me.

[carmel_andrews]

This was done years ago with my getting started lessons of JSII. They were available to everyone at one point

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Can you please stick up some links either in this thread or in the programming section (with it's own thread) that's pertinent to this series of tut's you did on some website

Edited July 6, 2010 by carmel_andrews

[minuS]

I studied engineering and computer science at university, and while I could take the time to brush-up on my skills, I have other things that I'd rather be doing. As much as I've always loved the intrinsic problem-solving of programming, it will always be an idle hobby for me, as there is little appeal to tackling a project so overwhelming as developing a proper game... I'd much rather play games than make them.

 

I did, however, buy a SkunkBoard v2 with aspirations of someday developing something of my own, but quickly ran into an interesting problem with each concept I explored: The Jaguar already has everything I want. I would like to make something other than a puzzle game or a shoot-'em-up, and I have no experience with vector-based 3D engines, so I decided to create a killer 2D action game with a real focus on animation and visual effects instead of detailed sprites. It didn't take long for me to realise that Pitfall and Rayman already have things well taken care of on the 2D action game front (and Bubsy and Zool 2 ain't bad). The more I tried to find a genre that appealed to me that hadn't already been covered by previous Jaguar developers, the more discouraged I got. Sprite-scaling racing games (Atari Karts, Super Burnout), fighting games (Fight For Life, Ultra Vortek), shoot-'em-ups (Raiden, Zero5), FPSs (AvP, DOOM, Wolfenstein), etc...

 

So while I've yet to find a real impetus to get to work on Jaguar development, my experience so far has put the quality of the Jaguar's library into perspective. I'm a pretty discerning collector, really only buying games that I will play and enjoy, and when I look at my Jaguar collection alongside my 32X, 3DO, Genesis, NES, PCE, PS1, SEGA CD, Saturn, and SNES collections, I see that they're all pretty close in terms of quality titles worth owning

[Atari_Owl]

I studied engineering and computer science at university, and while I could take the time to brush-up on my skills, I have other things that I'd rather be doing. As much as I've always loved the intrinsic problem-solving of programming, it will always be an idle hobby for me, as there is little appeal to tackling a project so overwhelming as developing a proper game... I'd much rather play games than make them.

 

I did, however, buy a SkunkBoard v2 with aspirations of someday developing something of my own, but quickly ran into an interesting problem with each concept I explored: The Jaguar already has everything I want. I would like to make something other than a puzzle game or a shoot-'em-up, and I have no experience with vector-based 3D engines, so I decided to create a killer 2D action game with a real focus on animation and visual effects instead of detailed sprites. It didn't take long for me to realise that Pitfall and Rayman already have things well taken care of on the 2D action game front (and Bubsy and Zool 2 ain't bad). The more I tried to find a genre that appealed to me that hadn't already been covered by previous Jaguar developers, the more discouraged I got. Sprite-scaling racing games (Atari Karts, Super Burnout), fighting games (Fight For Life, Ultra Vortek), shoot-'em-ups (Raiden, Zero5), FPSs (AvP, DOOM, Wolfenstein), etc...

 

So while I've yet to find a real impetus to get to work on Jaguar development, my experience so far has put the quality of the Jaguar's library into perspective. I'm a pretty discerning collector, really only buying games that I will play and enjoy, and when I look at my Jaguar collection alongside my 32X, 3DO, Genesis, NES, PCE, PS1, SEGA CD, Saturn, and SNES collections, I see that they're all pretty close in terms of quality titles worth owning

 

2D rpg?

Edited July 6, 2010 by Atari_Owl

[The_Laird]

The Jag dosn't have a single scrolling Beat 'em up either

[philipj]

My answer to the first question was that I don't really have time, which is currently true at least as far as games go (plus I can't draw sprites to save my life which is why I stuck with STOS 3D on the ST/Falcon) as my Jaguar focus is hardware although I have started to do a little Jaguar Assembly programming as I need it to test the hardware.

 

As for the second question, I think more/better tutorials might help but they be hard to grasp espically when they are in a language you do not understand (C in my case). It may be helpful if tutorials showed the code in BASIC, Assembler and C as having code for all three languages side by side can both help understanding and make it easier for those who want/need to convert their programming skills from one language to another.

Personally I would like to be able to program the Jag in BASIC as I don't really have the time and probably the intelligence to learn anything else and BASIC is both a language that is easy to learn and one I am already familiar with it plus I think it produces much nicer and easier to read code than C for example...

 

BASIC is...

Print "Hello" ' Print Hello

 

C is...

_Hello(void)

{

fprint("Hello"); */Print Hello /*

}

 

or something close to that.

 

To me C seems to require a lot of extra typing and syntax just to do the same thing as BASIC and I find all those damn brackets just make the code messy, confusing and difficult to read and that is for simple stuff never mind when they are nested as that gets even more confusing. For me BASIC just does things so much better, no opening and closing of comments or functions, no semicolon to indicate the end of the line, you don't have to tell BASIC to include the instructions before you can use them as they are always available but maybe thats just me.

 

There's a book called "Atari Player Missle Graphics in BASIC" that I've been reading and following on and off. I did a couple of examples in it and found it pretty rewarding in renewing my interest in learning how to program. I still have a great deal to go as far as understanding how it works, but I find it somewhat simplistic. I first became interested in BASIC when I ran into this book called "Animation How-To," which used a raytracing program called "Polyray (the raytracer that existed before POV Ray). This book used QBASIC as a visualation tool to plot scenes before porting it over Polyray language to actually render the 3D scenes. It was a cheap alternative for plotting scenes at a time when DOS was the normal on 286 and 386 PCs was considered an average computer; unless you had a couple of thousands of dollars to get a high end 3D program in the early 90s, programs like Polyray and POV Ray was the next best thing. I didn't know a thing about BASIC, but I always wanted to learn just to use Polyray. These days I'm using BASIC to learn how the Antic and GTIA work beyond just reading about what all it can do.

[minuS]

2D rpg?

The Jag dosn't have a single scrolling Beat 'em up either

Both genres are undoubtedly unrepresented on the Jaguar, but I was being subjective, since the topic was asking a personal question:

 

The Jaguar already has everything I want.

 

The more I tried to find a genre that appealed to me that hadn't already been covered by previous Jaguar developers, the more discouraged I got.

...See?

 

An RPG seems like it would be a massive undertaking... Perhaps one day, but I can't see it happening in the foreseeable future.

 

A 2D beat-'em-up is intriguing though... Something like Streets Of Rage or Castle Crashers would be fun.

Edited July 6, 2010 by minuS

[Atari_Owl]

2D rpg?

The Jag dosn't have a single scrolling Beat 'em up either

Both genres are undoubtedly unrepresented on the Jaguar, but I was being subjective, since the topic was asking a personal question:

 

The Jaguar already has everything I want.

 

The more I tried to find a genre that appealed to me that hadn't already been covered by previous Jaguar developers, the more discouraged I got.

...See?

 

An RPG seems like it would be a massive undertaking... Perhaps one day, but I can't see it happening in the foreseeable future.

 

A 2D beat-'em-up is intriguing though... Something like Streets Of Rage or Castle Crashers would be fun.

 

 

Yes that's why i posed the response as a question.

 

Other communities of course have combined efforts to do this (Pier Solar springs to mind)one wonders if its something the Jag community could do?

[busterm]

Nothing should be stopping people from doing dev work on the Jaq.

 

Right now there are multiple dev frameworks. If your running Windows 9X,Vista or Windows 7 you can run the old Atari dev tools which means you can use their gcc/mac/aln combo for compiling/assembly/linking.

 

If your running Windows 2000/XP you have to use the newer dev tool set. It uses vbcc and smac/sln for the compiling, assembly, and linking. I also put vlink on there so you can use it instead of aln. It should be fine for most people starting out. And if you find a bug in smac or sln, you should be able to submit it to SubQ or we can look into it since the source is open.

 

Now if your running a Linux system your golden. You can use gcc, vbcc, mac, aln, smac, sln, vlink, etc, etc. They all work fine under Linux.

 

If your afraid of doing a Linux install you can use my Linux live boot CD on my site and just boot it. It has everything setup. You can access your PC's hard drive to work on projects on your Windows partition, or use a memory stick, etc. The live CD has everything gcc, vbcc, smac, sln, mac,aln, vlink, sebs library, rdbjag, wdb, and other tools.

 

People also keep overlooking Seb's library. It is a great little library that handles all the heavy lifting. It handles sprites for you, mod playback, sound play back, joystick input, and much more.

 

Two things I thought about putting together.

 

1) A video that shows how to use Seb's library to put a sprite up on the screen and move it around.

 

2) A virtualbox image of my Linux dev system so people can use the free virtualbox to run a Linux dev system under Windows (or OS X) and not need to boot it from a live CD.

 

Not sure if there is any interest in either.

 

If anyone is interested in the dev environments check out my site here.

 

http://www.hillsoftware.com/downloads

 

If you want to see a couple videos that show the two Linux live CD's I put together for developers....

 

http://www.vimeo.com/user2530735/videos

 

I for one would love to see a video demonstration of sebs library. I watched a few other videos on using your tools and they were all very helpful on setting up a dev environment. Same witht he virtual box image.

 

Granted Im not pro more like a preschooler when it comes to developing. But Im learning bit by bit....Basic would be awesome for the jaguar

Edited July 7, 2010 by busterm

[minuS]

Yes that's why i posed the response as a question.

 

Other communities of course have combined efforts to do this (Pier Solar springs to mind)one wonders if its something the Jag community could do?

Clearly, you did. My apologies for appearing to be contentious.

 

As for assembling a team, it all comes down to questions of cooperation and commitment... Unfortunately, the latter would likely prove difficult for me, given my non-Jaguar-related endeavours