AmiBlitz command reference?

[smartroad]

Hi all,


I've been wanting to get into programming the Amiga for some time, but until recently not had any real idea on what to do. I now have an idea for a game and have tentatively decided on AmiBlitz. One thing, is there a command/instruction reference for it?


I do some Python and program the Arduino's version of C so something like that would really help me get started!

[Daedalus]

99.9% of the original Blitz Basic 2 commands are also available in AmiBlitz, along with the original Blitz 3rd party libraries of additional commands, so any Blitz 2 reference will do the job for AmiBlitz 3 as well. The original Blitz 2 manual was quite good as a reference, though it didn't really cater so well for the fundamental concepts involved. There's an AmigaGuide version of the manual included with AmiBlitz which you can access from the help menu in the AB3 editor. You can also access a HTML version of the AmigaGuide version here. Additionally, there's some good examples and (hopefully) better explanations of some of the ideas available in the Blitz section of AmigaCoding.com.

In addition, pressing Help while the cursor is on a keyword will show you the syntax for the command in the screen's title bar, and pressing Shift+Help on a keyword will open that command's page from the AmigaGuide manual.

[BippyM]

You can dump all the commands from the blitz libraries using deflibman or similar I think.. I know there are just under 1000 commands in the acidlibs file, nevermind the deflibs and all the custom libs.

I am *slowly* working on a PC tool that is being designed to accomodate, process and work with libraries etc.. It is very early stages atm, but I have more time now to make a go of it!

[idrougge]

If you want to do a game, you probably want to steer clear of Amiblitz, since it requires an FPU for its executables.

[Nightshft]

Originally Posted by idrougge

If you want to do a game, you probably want to steer clear of Amiblitz, since it requires an FPU for its executables.

I'm using AB2 because I prefer the editor (and AB3 doesnt run on my setup). When it becomes a final version I load the code in BB2.1 and compile it there. Until now it worked everytime, the exe doesnt need an fpu and to my surprise also becomes much much smaller (last time 10 vs 50kb(!)).

One of the better references (although in german, sorry) is here.

[MickGyver]

Originally Posted by idrougge

If you want to do a game, you probably want to steer clear of Amiblitz, since it requires an FPU for its executables.

Originally Posted by Nightshft

I'm using AB2 because I prefer the editor (and AB3 doesnt run on my setup). When it becomes a final version I load the code in BB2.1 and compile it there. Until now it worked everytime, the exe doesnt need an fpu and to my surprise also becomes much much smaller (last time 10 vs 50kb(!)).

One of the better references (although in german, sorry) is here.

Good news in regards to this issue. Somebody (on the BB2/Amiblitz group on Facebook) that has done work on Amiblitz is working on removing the FPU requirements from Amiblitz 3 and compiled executables it creates.

[Nightshft]

Originally Posted by MickGyver

Good news in regards to this issue. Somebody (on the BB2/Amiblitz group on Facebook) that has done work on Amiblitz is working on removing the FPU requirements from Amiblitz 3 and compiled executables it creates.

Now that would be really cool! Although I still dont know how easy or hard it is to get AB3 running. Guess you need OS3.9 or WB3.1 and BetterWB.

[MickGyver]

Originally Posted by Nightshft

Now that would be really cool! Although I still dont know how easy or hard it is to get AB3 running. Guess you need OS3.9 or WB3.1 and BetterWB.

That's still much better than the fpu requirement. More importantly is the possibility to create executables for non-fpu machines without any hassle, let's hope he finishes it.

[Daedalus]

Other than the FPU thing (which will hopefully be removed soon!), Amiblitz 3 requires OS 3.0, a 68020 and some fast RAM. Very little software actually requires things like BetterWB, though they often require a component like reqtools.library which can be easily installed separately, without a heap of other stuff. It does prefer a larger screenmode though, even though it doesn't require it.

[ExiE]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Other than the FPU thing (which will hopefully be removed soon!), Amiblitz 3 requires OS 3.0, a 68020 and some fast RAM.

Is it really true or just merely wishful thinking?

Last answer I read from tomsmart1 was

Von meiner Seite gibt es im Moment keine Motivation an einer Weiterentwicklung.
Und nochmal für alle für NonFPU benutzt BlitzBasic II!

[MickGyver]

Originally Posted by ExiE

Is it really true or just merely wishful thinking?

The one who is working on it recently got back into Amiblitz. He is apparently a former developer of Amiblitz. He was now sad to see the FPU requirements etc. so he wanted to fix this. This is the latest post from him in the Facebook group:

Project: AmiBlitz3 FPU-less

There is progress!

Compiler & IDE start now without FPU, but there are some problems left. Work on it continues.

[tolkien]

oh man! this is a ver good new! I dont use facebook but will look at here if you can do some info update. Thanks!

[ExiE]

Great news. Thanks for info.

[MickGyver]

Originally Posted by BippyM

You can dump all the commands from the blitz libraries using deflibman or similar I think.. I know there are just under 1000 commands in the acidlibs file, nevermind the deflibs and all the custom libs.

I am *slowly* working on a PC tool that is being designed to accomodate, process and work with libraries etc.. It is very early stages atm, but I have more time now to make a go of it!

Can't figure out how to do this in deflibman. The "viewlibs" command line tool can list commands for all "external" libraries. Does somebody know a tool that can list all commands (with parameters) in acidlibs?

EDIT: Just found the right tool for the job it seems. It's called "Blitz Stripper" and can be downloaded here: http://www.david-mcminn.co.uk/blitz-...rchives/tools/

It outputs a text file with commands for deflibs or acidlibs in this format:

      Blitz Stripper v1.01 Output.
    Coded by D!ck (Dick@emarkt.com)
    -------------------------------
LoadAnim                    Anim#,Filename$[,Palette#]
InitAnim                    Anim#[,BitMap#]
NextFrame                   Anim#
Frames                      (Anim#)
CreateRexxMsg               MsgPtr=CreateRexxMsg(ReplyPort,Exten,Host)
DeleteRexxMsg               rexxmsg.l
FillRexxMsg                 rexxmsg,&FillStruct
ClearRexxMsg                rexxmsg
CreateArgString             ArgString=CreateArgString(String)
DeleteArgString             argstring
SendRexxCommand             rexxmsg,CommandString,ActionCodes
ReplyRexxMsg                rexxmsg,Result1,Result2,ResultString
GetRexxResult               Result=GetRexxResult(rexxmsg,ResultNum)
GetRexxCommand              String=GetRexxCommand(rexxmsg,ARGNum)
GetResultString             String=GetResultString(rexxmsg)
RexxEvent                   rexxmsg=RexxEvent(PortAddress)
IsRexxMsg                   Boolean=IsRexxMsg(rexxmsg)
RexxError                   ErrorString=RexxError(ErrorCode)
DiskPlay                    Filename$,Channelmask[,Vol1[,Vol2...]]
DiskBuffer                  Bufferlen
LoadSound                   Sound#,Filename$
Sound                       Sound#,Channelmask[,Vol1[,Vol2...]]
Volume                      Channelmask,Vol1[,Vol2...]
...

[MickGyver]

Originally Posted by tolkien

oh man! this is a ver good new! I dont use facebook but will look at here if you can do some info update. Thanks!

Originally Posted by ExiE

Great news. Thanks for info.

Sven wrote this over at FB regarding Amiblitz:

Ok, time for another situation report!

We have three problems relating the FPU-dependencies:
1. FPU-native code in certain blitzlibs-calls
2. FPU-native generated code by the compiler
3. FPU-native code in the compiler itself

The first one is relatively easy to fix, as the old Amiblitz3-team collected most of the sources, and the code is in on place to change.

The second one is hard to "fix" as you have to understand the asmcode that produces asmcode.

The third one is a mixture of FPU-native commands to speed the compiler up and a result of the festure thst the compiler compiles his own code and injects code from dependency 2.

In my last post I informed about the fact, that the IDE runs without FPU. Now we have reached a state that the compiler does compile simple sources and those programs run without FPU.

I solved some problems so far:
One problem was a feature implemented by Bernd Roesch, that you may declare optional parameters in statement or function definitions by using the @-symbol:
Statement DoSomething{value1.b @value2.b}
value2 is an optional parameter that may be omitted in a statement-call.
The handling of that code produced FPU-related code.
And this feature is used a lot in the includes that are used by the IDE/compiler itself!

I am on the way.

[MickGyver]

Another update.

Another small progress is done:
The Val()-function works now without FPU again.
It will check the optimize-flag and will use FPU-code only when FPU-optimization is turned on!

[tolkien]

Originally Posted by MickGyver

Another update.

Thanks for the info MickGyver.