[Phantom]

Originally Posted by Oktai-Wanda

Two issues here:

1. I'd like to write a simple (but perhaps graphically hardware-demanding) Amiga 500-compatible game at some point but I would like to do the programming without any real Amiga 500 hardware. In other words, I would like to do the programming either in Windows or in an emulated Amiga environment (where the host OS is Windows). I would, of course, begin everything by writing some simple scripts and other software for the Amiga 500 because games are demanding and require one to learn a lot of stuff in one go so to speak.

If I intend to do all the programming either on my Windows OS or an emulated Amiga, what kind of IDE, SDK or set of programs should I use? Could Amiga Developer CD 2.1 come in handy? I mean the one sold at least at http://www.vesalia.de/e_developer2.htm

How you will create a graphically-demanding and beyond Amiga game without programming it under a real Amiga? Programming in Amiga is great fun.

Furthermore, if I follow the usual practice of programming games for the Amiga 500, should I write my stuff in a low-level language or straight in assembler? At least most C64 games were written in assembly for performance reasons if I'm not mistaken -- the game had to work fast enough and interpreters were too slow to be used even though using a more human-understandable programming language would have been tempting. I wonder whether the A500 had the same performance-related problems and whether interpreters have been improved to the extent that games could be written in, say, C or some other widely-used language (although C is sometimes referred to as a low-level language). I would not be surprised to find out that *most* A500-compatible games were written in a very low-level language or directly in assembler. Personally, I prefer high-level languages but if the performance is still an issue, I'm ready to delve deeper into this low-level stuff.

68k assembly all the way, thus you can fiddle straight with the Amiga's superior custom chips and you will have total control. Your best friend for this would be definetely the Holy Bible (aka Amiga Hardware Reference Manual).

In case that you haven't program in assembly before, don't be scared, it's not very difficult. Since you get the grips with it, it's really fun.

Notice that I would like my game(s) to work on a real Amiga 500 as well. I do not believe in making software that can only be run on emulators as the emulation may not be entirely accurate. Running such games on real hardware could result in an undesirable outcome.

A real Amiga 500 then will be your best friend.

Maybe A500 games could be decompiled to assembler but figuring out the code and being able to make changes (that actually work) would probably be extremely demanding and time-consuming, not least because I suspect that you don't get any of the explanatory comments that the source code most likely contained. While dealing with these kinds of cases with any platform I would also have to learn the instruction set of every processor and all addresses for every I/O and so on. Unfortunately, I'm a total neophyte at this kind of stuff. Besides, as far as I know, Amiga kernel reference manuals are the size of multi-volume encyclopedias.

You can't just disassemble a code and start changing this in random without knowing what you're doing. Even the slightest change can transform your listing into a mess, and of course into non-running code.