Why is the homebrew scene on the Amiga not as impressive...

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by Megol

(don't we all have a third hand? ;P)

If you really know your sci-fi, the third hand is known as the "Gripping hand"

D.

[Retro1234]

It seems fishy is phsically not well but im not going to have a guilt trip- Ive said he can connact me and its not personal, I still feel the same and wont discuss it any further.
Fish all the best.

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by beezle

Not sure who mentioned it, but a newline in a string in blitz, if I recall correctly is much the same as in c (ie. "/n")

Nope. Print writes the string without advancing to the next line, while NPrint adds a line break.

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by ReadOnlyCat

Ah! I had forgotten Skid Marks was written using Blitz, thanks for pointing it out. It's an example of a fantastic game made with the language indeed but even a few example do not make a trend.
I persist in thinking that you have to be a good programmer in the first place to make anything good in Blitz, because as a novice you will not have enough background to understand where and why it is innefficient nor work around it without compromising your program's structure.

You're closing in on the problem here. The lower you put the cost of entry. the more shit you will have to sort through. A language or environment that caters to unexperienced programmers will inevitably lose reputation because so many amateurish works owe their existence to it. Experienced programmer will not want to use the beginner-friendly language, and in every group of 100 beginners, there may be only one who has what it takes to become a good programmer.
Blitz had Paul Burkey, who made Foundation in Blitz. He went on to program in C afterward, for several reasons. Others went on to nothing. But if the barriers of entry are low enough, you will see floods of shit. Megalomaniacs who dream of conquering the world and boast about their upcoming mega game will seldom choose to do so using assembly language, because their ego can't take it.

And in the end, it takes a good programmer to make a good program in any language. If you want to make a good game, you must also be a good game designer. But I still entertain the thought that there are some programmers who aren't very good but still good enough not to embarass themselves or give up if encouraged by a more helpful language than the ones used by the programmer élite.

Originally Posted by ReadOnlyCat

my point is that newcomers should avoid Blitz if they want to acquire good coding habits and grow as coders. As you said it, the language as a proven track record of allowing great programs to be conceived but that does not mean it is suited to the EAB roaming bunnies who want to learn what code is all about and try to make their own games.

I think Blitz has all you need to acquire good coding habits. It's structured, it has useful datatypes, it's extensible and it also has the limits that force you to choose between pure academic elegance and raw power. In this way, it's very unlike AMOS.

[Tigerskunk]

If I may weigh in my .02 cents after having some game coding experience with the C64 and now the Amiga as well (also Vectrex and Atari VCS).

It's very easy to get started on the C64. There is a lot of documentation about getting you started in cross development. Getting an assembler running on windows and starting a game directly in Vice after clicking on it in your windows explorer. After a day, you would probably be able to change charsets which you edited in one of the very good windows editors, the same for sprites.

Getting Sprites going is very easy as well. Just put the sprite somewhere, fill some colour and position registers and set the sprite pointer (which is a bit obtuse compared who easy everything else is, but understandable).

So it's kind of very accessible on the C64. If you just aim for a one screen game with your own graphical charset elements and some Sprites wandering around, you will be able to achieve that in a day or two.
Plus, people who'd play your game are much more forgiving when it comes to design, since with the C64s rigid 16 colours and resolution, people are not expecting Arcade quality graphics usually.

On the Amiga, just getting started is LOTS more complicated.
Most of the stuff like pixeling is still done on the Amiga itself. Tools are made to be used on the Amiga. Not so easy to get a cross dev environment going.

Then, on the coding side, switching off the OS, configuring Bitplanes, understanding the copper, and then blitting, with its Sources, Minterms and Destinations, plus that not that easy to grasp modulo concept, is super complicated for a beginner. Sprites are nearly unusable if you not really know what you are doing.

On the other side, if you get past the initial phase, you will probably encounter difficulties on the C64 after that, since resources on it are super limited.

With the Amiga, you will have lots of resources and creative possibilities at your disposal to play with after you get past the initial learning curve.

tl;dr: C64s capabilities are easy to learn and use, but after that you will struggle to get the last 20 percent out of it.
On the Amiga, you will scratch your head at the beginning a lot, but after that hard period you will have lots of possibilities.

[E-Penguin]

I consider myself a competent coder and am well versed in low-level hardware concepts but I'm finding it difficult to get started on the Amiga. Blitz is weird but I think worth the effort as it will take care of the hardware stuff. I'm not sure I'd know where to start with blitting in c.

[alpine9000]

Originally Posted by E-Penguin

I consider myself a competent coder and am well versed in low-level hardware concepts but I'm finding it difficult to get started on the Amiga. Blitz is weird but I think worth the effort as it will take care of the hardware stuff. I'm not sure I'd know where to start with blitting in c.

Using C for something like a blit is a matter of reading the hardware reference manual and then directly interfacing with the hardware via structures mapped over the hardware registers.

It ends up being pretty much line for line the same as doing it in ASM.

[Samurai_Crow]

Originally Posted by alpine9000

Using C for something like a blit is a matter of reading the hardware reference manual and then directly interfacing with the hardware via structures mapped over the hardware registers.

It ends up being pretty much line for line the same as doing it in ASM.

That or use Graphics.library...

[alpine9000]

Originally Posted by Samurai_Crow

That or use Graphics.library...

Haha, yes of course.

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by Steril707

On the Amiga, just getting started is LOTS more complicated.
[...]
Then, on the coding side, switching off the OS, configuring Bitplanes, understanding the copper, and then blitting, with its Sources, Minterms and Destinations, plus that not that easy to grasp modulo concept, is super complicated for a beginner. Sprites are nearly unusable if you not really know what you are doing.

This is very important. Getting the Amiga set up to start doing things is a huge pain in the ass, you have to deal with SO much stuff, whereas the C64 you just basically throw data to registers and they do stuff immediately, there 's no real "setup" to do. besides probably the interrupts.

Right now I am trying to do things on my software and I just can't deal with the initialization and the system stuff, it's doing my head in and stopping me from developing an further.

With that said, once you are part that ugly part, I would think it becomes less of a drag.

There's a few tries at making an Amiga game engine out there, but they mostly focus on high level languages like AMOS and Blitz Basic which are already pretty easy to use, at least much easier than assembler. I wish someone would make an engine (or rather, a full "initialization package") in assembler so people can focus on making games. Assembler itself isn't really hard, but dealing with the Amiga system structure is. If you had the "rough bits" dealt with by the engine, I can see more people getting into making games using the language the Amiga is meant to be programmed with.

Also more open source projects with extensive commenting on them, most of teh sources I found are never commented or poorly commented.

[Tigerskunk]

I recommend "Solid Gold" by PHX for that.

Includes also a lot of useful command line tools.

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by Steril707

I recommend "Solid Gold" by PHX for that.
Includes also a lot of useful command line tools.

I forgot about Solid Gold having its source available, thanks! Will have to look at it. Not gonna help me at this point maybe, but you never know.

[OmegaMax]

I agree with Akira,even with programming experience the amiga is quite confusing.The community could use the amount of tutorials,commented source that is available for c64.I have found some source and code snippets which are helpful'with a lot of thinking and trying to figure out what's happening' along with reverse engineering some game routines on my own as there is no good resources like the c64.I am sharing what I learn though for others that are interested

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=83836&page=5

[Brick Nash]

Speaking as someone who is just really starting out in Amiga programming I'd say it is quite tricky to get in to, and I'm still just tinkering around in Amos really. I bought loads of books on ASM plus the Hardware Reference manual but I think it takes a very particular type of mind to comprehend what's going on, or previous knowledge of the language.

I find that manuals tend to give vague examples which are a little too advanced sometimes and also they are often described with no real context as to where they can and cannot live within the program and how they work in relation to other examples. I have dyslexia though plus I'm a Kinesthetic leaner so manuals are particularly tricky for me and I learn much faster by visual and practical example.

I think a lot of folk get into coding just to make games, but often tutorials focus on the finer details of the more techy side of things and that can lose people quickly as it ends up trying to force a technical understanding of the hardware first rather than hook someone with something fun and game related. I realise you have to crawl before you can walk, but doing something which resembles what you are trying to achieve rather than exercises in changing registers or making a raster line for the sake of it would be better for drawing people in at the start. I realise those could technically be game related but it's not the same as a specific task to do something recognisable for a layman.

I'd personally like to see a video series which does step by step methods specifically for making a game in assembler. People don't need to know the technical ins and outs or what the hardware is doing at that point. All they need to know is that "This does that for our game" and a few quick notes on good code ettiquete with labels and indentation.

Basically, just get something that they can get on the screen which resembles a very basic game and the step by step process which achieves that. After they figuratively have something in their hand then the finer details of what is happening to achieve what is on screen can be looked into, perhaps with a sister video which takes what was done in the other one and technically breaks it down rather than try to do both at the same time in the same video.

it's a totally spoon fed method but for beginners that's what's needed.

For the basic series you could have something like:

Part 1 could be about setting up memory for the game
Part 2 could be about setting up a screen or screens for the game
Part 3 could be about making a background for the screen for the game
Part 4 could be setting up a bob or sprite for the game
Part 5 could be about mapping controls for the game

Later videos could go into palettes, animation, scrolling, modular techniques and storage/compression or other things like that as well as using Dpaint, but the point is that it stays game related and doesn't wander off into hardware lectures. At the start, people don't need to know how many cycles the CPU is doing or sit through a 15 minute talk of how the blitter works if all they want to do is make something they can play.

"It moves things in the game and this is what you type" is plenty for someone who is nervously staring at a code editor screen for the first time.

That's just my take on things. We're all different and learn things in different ways.

[demolition]

Originally Posted by Brick Nash

I'd personally like to see a video series which does step by step methods specifically for making a game in assembler. People don't need to know the technical ins and outs or what the hardware is doing at that point.

That video series you're asking for is pretty much what Scoopex have already done (and I highly recommend watching these if you want to get into assembly programming on the Amiga), although he uses demos as the basis:
[ Show youtube player ]

The change from demos to games is quite small in my opinion and is basically related to handling joystick inputs and building the game logic.

If you want to do games/demos in assembly, I think there is no way around knowing the technical 'ins and outs' as you call it. Even a single bit in a system register can be paramount towards getting the functionality that you expect from the chip, so having the HRM ready is extremely useful when you have to figure out why your code does not do what you expected it to (and that will happen very often).

If you want to avoid getting too deep into the inner workings of the hardware, you have to choose a higher level language like AMOS or Blitz.

[Brick Nash]

Originally Posted by demolition

That video series you're asking for is pretty much what Scoopex have already done (and I highly recommend watching these if you want to get into assembly programming on the Amiga), although he uses demos as the basis:
[ Show youtube player ]

The change from demos to games is quite small in my opinion and is basically related to handling joystick inputs and building the game logic.

If you want to do games/demos in assembly, I think there is no way around knowing the technical 'ins and outs' as you call it. If you want to avoid getting too deep into the inner workings of the hardware, you have to choose a higher level language like AMOS or Blitz.

I never said avoid the technical working of the hardware, I said that for a beginner it isn't necessary to have to sit through descriptions and exercises which at the start can seem unrelated to game making, and it's better to have something to hook them first and THEN go into the details. I'm not just taking about myself, I'm taking about people who are starting out from scratch.

Scoopex's videos aren't game specific though and there's no way that a beginner could tell that a demo could be tweaked to make a game and so doing that would seem like going in maybe the wrong direction to someone who didn't know any better and would be more likely to get put off.

Changing things from one tutorial to do another thing, no matter how small, isn't the same as specifically having a tutorial which targets making a game by name.

It may seem really stupid if you are experienced, but remember beginners know nothing and "pretty much" isn't the same as "exactly" .

[Tigerskunk]

I think it's definitely a plus, if you have some experience in a less complicated platform, eg C64 or especially the Vectrex, which is like a bit more complicated than learning BASIC, since the ROM has already most of the routines you need for making games.

For example, all you need to display a vectorlist (kind of the Vectrexes Sprites) there is a:

lda #20 ;y position
ldb #40 ;x position
ldy #nameOfVectorList
jsr routineThatDisplaysVectorlist

And you don't need to care about masks, Minterms and all that stuff.

if you mastered that, come back to the Amiga.
Going from zero to coding a game on the Amiga is nigh impossible in my humble opinion.

I was already struggling a lot, and I have decades of ASM coding experience.

[MartinW]

This may well not be the best place to put this but there seem to be a lot of knowledgeable people contributing to the thread. Can anyone point me to a C sample that does some something simple like open a full screen window just like a game would (so presumably suspend the OS?) and move an object about the screen? I'm looking for an object that is drawn as lines really but I'll take a sprite too.

I am looking myself. I found a small series by Samurai Crow on AmigaCoding.de last night. It was an interesting read but only lasted for 3 small sections.

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by Brick Nash

Scoopex's videos aren't game specific though and there's no way that a beginner could tell that a demo could be tweaked to make a game and so doing that would seem like going in maybe the wrong direction to someone who didn't know any better and would be more likely to get put off.

This is true of any programming language, man. Learning how to make games takes an extra set of skills that have nothing to do with your programming language of choice.
Someone who cannot realize the transferable skills present in a tutorial based on the creation of demos, maybe should reconsider making games for Amiga and start training in programming in general and also try to understand game design first.

I guess this kind of people end up using garbage like Backbone in the rush to make a game but not learn the necessary skills to control the platform, and end up making something that isn't good.

demolition's point is that there's a basis that any programming rests on, and that is the Amiga hardware map, and you can learn that from Photon's tutorials. And IMO this is the Amiga's most annoying step in learning how to program it. Even if you go for something high level like Blitz, you still need to know what the hell you are doing with the computer, its capabilities and how it works, to be able to come up with ideas that work with those hardware specs.

I also recommend starting with a simple machine, assembler is in essence easy, but if you start with an Amiga, it will seem like a mindfuck. On something like a C64, you put a value somewhere and it does things. Very abridged explanation, I know, but my point is that it is a much simpler machine that could make your "assembler scare" go away. It did to me.

Amiga is still scary though

[OmegaMax]

Originally Posted by Steril707

I was already struggling a lot, and I have decades of ASM coding experience.

Same here Steril707,I've programmed c64,nes,master system,pc engine and I'm struggling with the amiga,it's not exactly one read through the manual and done.I also agree that it would be near impossible for someone with no programming experience to succeed.

Originally Posted by Akira

I also recommend starting with a simple machine, assembler is in essence easy, but if you start with an Amiga, it will seem like a mindfuck. On something like a C64, you put a value somewhere and it does things. Very abridged explanation, I know, but my point is that it is a much simpler machine that could make your "assembler scare" go away. It did to me.

Amiga is still scary though

Well said