New Coder seeking advice

[NovaCoder]

Assume I know nothing and you'll be very close to the truth

Just ordered my first Amiga (a 1200) so I can go play . I want to develop some games/demos for the AGA chipset. I've done some games/3D stuff with C++ on the PC and GBA. My assembler knowledge is minimal (e.g. I can spell it...I think?). My 1200 will initially be running OS3.1 but I'll upgrade it to 3.9 after I get an accelerator and some more ram.

So what's the best IDE to use both commercial and free? What's the best compiler to get the most out of the chipset (including FPU)? Do I need to use a different compiler for 3.1/3.9? And finally, what's the best way to learn some assembler for the AGA chipset and is it possible to imbed the assembler in the C++ code? In fact, I'm not sure if there are C++ compilers?

It seems to me that most AGA games were just rushed ports of A500/A600 titles and didn't push the hardware. I would love to see what can actually be done on a 1200 running say a 50MHZ 030 with FPU

[Minuous]

>So what's the best IDE to use both commercial and free?

Well, we use StormC 4.0 and SAS/C 6.58 here. Neither of which are strictly speaking free, but they are available for free if you know where to look Others use VBCC, etc.

>Do I need to use a different compiler for 3.1/3.9?

No.

>In fact, I'm not sure if there are C++ compilers?

SAS/C and StormC support C++, dunno about the other compilers.

[NovaCoder]

Ok thanks for that Minuous, I'll try and track down StormC 4.0/SAS 6.58...which one do you prefer?

[Cammy]

Hey NovaCoder! Have you heard about Underground Arcade? We're an international games development team working on new Amiga games, although most of us are Aussies. We have a few coders on the team, some code in C and Assembler, so they may be able to help you out if you're interested in joining the team.

We also want to see what the AGA chipset is capable of. There are a couple of games you may want to check out if you haven't already, which show at least some of what it's capable of, unfortunately some of them weren't released. ACSYS is one of them, it's like Turrican AGA!

Of course, the best examples of what it's capable of would have to be in the demo scene. There's a demo group in Melbourne called S.O.S. I hope you find the help you need, and if you're interested in joining Underground Arcade we'd love to have any new people onboard.

[NovaCoder]

Originally Posted by Cammy

Hey NovaCoder! Have you heard about Underground Arcade? We're an international games development team working on new Amiga games, although most of us are Aussies. We have a few coders on the team, some code in C and Assembler, so they may be able to help you out if you're interested in joining the team.

Yep might be interested but would need some help getting up to speed. Have you guys got a website linky?

[Minuous]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

Ok thanks for that Minuous, I'll try and track down StormC 4.0/SAS 6.58...which one do you prefer?

All depends really. AmiArcadia, Africa, Saga, Koules, Worm Wars are built with SAS/C. Report+, Handy and the various character editors are built with StormC.

SAS/C seems to generate tighter code and lacks the bugs of StormC.
StormC works better with ReActor, supports 64-bit integers, and has an IDE.