Doesn't Seem to be Any Programing Languages for AOS4 for the Average Person

@angelheart

Quote:

I use Cubic IDE on OS 4.x, and it works fine. There is an IDE in the works.

I don't think that we need a dev package that supports all Amiga OS variants in order for it to become popular again. OS3 hardware doesn't have the necessary CPU power for any of the stuff that I'm involved in, and the other systems all use GCC and are similar enough that you could write cross-platform software if you wished.

What I think would make it popular again is having modern functionality, and software libraries that make writing/porting software easier to do. Much progress has been made in this area, but we're still lagging behind in the 3D graphics department (amongst other areas).

@Atheist

C/C++ can be used by Average people; it just takes a while to learn, just like anything else. Try Hollywood if you want something that lets you create fancy effects quickly.

Hans

@Atheist

Shhhh... people will start to think we aren't elitests anymore...

Back in 1986 when everything Amiga cost an arm and a leg who couldn't be forgiven for feeling like they were standing on top of the world...

I would pay like $6000.00 for a single 060 accelerator for my B2000 etc etc etc... you don't want to know...

I could never understand why IBM users never had the top of the line IBM or Clone since in comparison they were pathetically cheap...

Now with the modern Age Amiga Hardware AmigaOS4.1 and Up can enjoy the cheaper way of life... and like back in 1986 I am still in control of my own money...

So bring on the 2g mhz and 8g Ram SAM... I'll buy one... heh

but on subject, I plan to learn C and then perhaps C++ but one step at a time...

@Atheist

You want to learn programming to create games, right?

If thats the case, then you might want to look at downloading Allegro for OS4. It's a gaming graphics/audio library, and its VERY easy to use. Stuff like draw_sprite(); or play_sound(); .. the only problem that you mentioned on IRC is that you struggle with anything that isnt AMOS.

Go to www.cprogramming.com and look for their tutorials. They're excellent. Once you can do all the stuff there, and once you've installed the Allegro files, you're ready to make Allegro games. Just ask for help on utilitybase.com for how to make a makefile for your game. (so that you can type "make" in an amiga shell to tell your compiler to create your program's executable file).

I get the feeling that half your problem is you dont want to use anything that isnt AMOS, so you wont allow your brain to learn anything else.

@angelheart

Quote:

so which assembler does support the... dunno 20 (just a guess, whatever linux supports) or so cpu's aros can run on it?

Quote:

try to compile your macos 9 software featuring ppc assemlber using the sprocket api on a macos x intel box. or infact as in terms of amiga os 3 vs amiga os 4, we are talking more of trying to compile your macos 7 software featureing 68k assembler on a os x intel.

try to get old 15 year old linux software running on a modern system.

windows 3.11 was released the same year that os 3 was. try to compile your windows 3.11 project on vista.

we are talking about years of development between os3 and os4, this is absolutely normal that you have to port you code to the new environments after such a long time.

cross plattform game programming is my bread and butter and it is hard enough to support more than 2 plattforms from the same timeperiod. creating a dev environment that supports hard- and software that is decades old is just impracticable, and in terms of assembler, which was specifically requested, impossible

@god64

Quote:
99% of WookieChat compiles without modification on OS3, OS4, MorphOS and AROS. Nearly all of the changes are just for different types, solved using typedefs.
Edit: oh, and different ways of creating all the hooks.

@tonyw Quote:
That is actually incorrect, a lot of Amiga games were written in BlitzBasic, a few of them even commercial. e.g. (Super) SkidMarks, and Zombie something-or-other. I think the first Worms (or at least it's prototype) was done in AMOS?

@Atheist Quote:
You do NOT need to know C to use PortablE! PortablE generates the C code for you, you give that to GCC, and then GCC gives you an executable.

With the latest (r3) release of PortablE, there is even a script (PE-GCC) which will call PortablE & GCC for you, so you do not even have that to worry about

Quote:

Quote:
Have you tried Jason Hulance's Beginners Guide to AmigaE? (Both ECX & PortablE are based on AmigaE, so you need to understand that first.)

Really, AmigaE is about as friendly as you can hope from a compiled language. Otherwise you will be stuck with much slower interpreted languages like Hollywood (which I think you should try), AMOS, etc.


P.S. I'm not sure what you mean by "Programing Languages for ... the Average Person". I started by learning BASIC on ZX Spectrum & ZX81, then Amiga Basic on an A500, then AMOS on my A1200, before deciding to use a real programming language & learning AmigaE. If *you* are able to learn one programming language, then you can learn another one. If you *can't* then IMHO I think it is you not being prepared to learn a language that doesn't look like AMOS.

@angelheart Quote:
What do you mean by "GFX/SND portability"? AmigaOS support of these should be the same. Not to mention that E has commands like Plot() for drawing graphics to windows.

@jahc

Quote:

morphos and aros are attempts to recreate os3, os4 is an attempt to get os3 to the new millenium, so as long as you stay close to the amiga os api without using custom chips or assembler, you might get far, but on game programming it is crucial to use graphics, sound and cpu as much as you can, no matter what os is running on it... and well, things have changed quite a bit since os3.

btw: i also have planned to port my project sge2d to aros, but i did not find some kind of 'general' development environment, can you give me a hint where to search?

@all

Amiblitz can compile 68k programs who work on old amigas untill last one and morphOS (with the help of the thilo kohler libraries who complete replace old blitz2 libraries).

You can make a game who work on a window with CGX and P96 on all amigas with amiblitz3.

Amiblitz3 work on classic amigas and on new amigas NG and pegasos machines.

@jahc

Learning solely from stuff found on the net is supposedly one of the worst ways to learn C. This seems a general opinion on the C mailing lists I subscribe.
If you're really into it, entering a C course or buying a couple of good books is the best way to learn.

I did it both ways and I'm still stuck at "basic" level. :(

Example: I tried a couple of GUI examples from the net, but they were outdated (relating to OS4). The good out of this is that I managed to update them myself, which made me quite proud. Not sure if my fixes were clean, though.

C is a blunt object, you really have to learn it well.

Hi Capehill,


My favorite kind. An RPG.

It would be like the old SSI gold box AD&D, Ultima, Legend of Faerghail, Black Crypt, and Might and Magic, type games.

Turn based. So, not exactly system taxing, even uncompiled PPC based basic will be JUST fine.

But, Brandy had commands that didn't work and also I couldn't control the whole screen. For instance, I made a text based program, and when you resize the shell based display to make it smaller, and resize it again to the previous large size, the text that was printed is gone! How useful is that? Also I couldn't make it save and retrieve data from a file, tried as I might. Of what use is that?!? And I probably wasn't able to read the mouse pointer either. Quite useless.

Hi ChrisH,

from
http://cshandley.co.uk/JasonHulance/beginner_90.html
----- start
x[].banana.basket[6]:=3+full(9)
----- end

The above makes no sense to me.


----- start
WriteF('x is now \d\n', x:=1+(y:=(z:=fred(3,5)/2)*8))
----- end

I'm clueless. Is it an equation? Is it an assignment?? Is it printing a line???



Frome page 16 of your PortablE PDF. (http://cshandley.co.uk/portable/PortablE.pdf)
Updated Dec 25, 2008.
----- start
Proc writeF(string: ARRAY OF CHAR, param1=0, param2=0) IS Print (string, pram1, param2) BUT PrintFlush()
----- end

writeF I think is write to a disk file, but everything else is ununderstandable. In fact, it's just assumed that I should somehow know what this does. Okay, I see that this isn't really the users manual, but I thought it was. Shows how much I know. I thought that with your languge would come a guide on how it works.
I extremely appreciate that you've made PortablE, but it's not not usable by the "average" person.


For instance on page 25.
----- start
if test
WHILE foo() = FALSE
test := bar()
ENDWHILE IF test = NIL
ENDIF
----- end
WHATEVER (very very clueless as to what it achieves, or how it works) the above means, I'm sure I could code the identical ALOT easier in Basic.


You see:
A$="Hello World"

Makes sense to me. Heck, it's even a complete computer program. That ONE line. Does practically nothing, but it's EASY to understand. Why is this against the "Coder's Law"??? While C and PortablE and most of the other languages have oodles of overhead involved in such a simple construct as asking that a toke becomes some group of 8 bit characters.

A NEW "C" is needed. One that is EASY to use. Same with assembler.

As far as I can comprehend, it's like C was made to become an exclusive club.

It's not like I can't understand programming, I made a 500K program in AMOS Pro. But it was just methodical "okay do this, do that, if that happens, do that, offer these choices.....", isn't that programming, or am I missing something?

Hi jahc,

Allegro still involves C?

I'd learn Chinese before I could learn C.


There's NOTHING "normal" about C.

Hi Slayer,

LOL!


People were JUST getting into 2 Megs of ram on their 386's in 1990 (insane power users had 4 megs. LOL!!!*) when I got my Amiga 2000 in 1989, and in 1990 bought a GVP Impact ram board and SCSI 1 controller.

Ram was $70 per Megabyte and I bought a full 8 Megs and had 1 Meg chip on the A2000.

WOW!!!!!

Amiga computing was a DREAM compared to ms-dos3.3/win3.11.


The GVP cost $300, the ram $560, and I bought a Fujitsu 180 Meg SCSI 1 for $900 (Canadian).

Never had enough to own an accelerator, though.


* I have a m-s mouse that says it needs 25 megs of HD space free!!!! Don't know why, don't care why.

Hi BrandonLee,


Yes, the coding examples seem to be "the same", but yet "different" for YOUR version of C?!?

To demonstrate an example of the problem of why "C" isn't normal or easy at all, how would I go about saying the variable "number" is now "5"?

@Atheist

Sorry if "I'm pushing always the same key" but, why don't you try Hollywood, I'm sure that is what you're searching for.

I'm planning to write an isometric turn-based RPG with Hollywood, I've written down some ideas and when I've finished ScuiLib and some utilities I'm working on I'll start to port a 2d particle engine I've written some time ago in Blitz, then I will test Hollywood how can handle a basic isometric engine, if this is the case I'll start with Hollywood otherwise I will do the job in E.

I've played with E many years ago and IIRC it's much more simple and "natural" then C.

If you are interested we can join our forces in a such neverending task :)

@Allanon

Quote:

I don?t agree, and I don?t like how E uses () where C uses [], E uses old Pascal Equal symbol := where C uses =.
I really don?t see the benefit of the Amiga E language over C.

C uses { and } symbol to indicate start of some thing and end of some thing, it might be confusing at first, but once you have read a few C source codes is not that hard to understand.

"For" example in C:

For (a=0;a<=100;a++)
{
printf(?counter %d\n?,a);
}

"For" example in Basic.

For a=0 to 100 step 1
Print ?counter ?;a
Next a

Procedure example in C

Void my_procedure( int value1, int value2 )
{
} // end of procedure

Procedure example in AMOS

Procedure my_procedure[value1,value2]
End procedure

@Atheist Quote:
Well, you DID pick the most complex example out of a lot of simpler ones. And those are just supposed to be examples of HOW you use [] .. := etc - I have no clue what it is supposed to do either . But unlike C we can just read this left to right, so it is very easy to understand what each part is doing, even if we don't know why:


x[] is the same as x[0] and means take the first (0th) value from the array called x. This value is then used by the next part...

.banana means get the member called banana from the object (whose value we got from the previous part).

.basket means get the member called basket from the object (whose value we got from the previous part).

[6] means take seventh (6+1) value from the array (whose value we got from the previous part).

:= means we are storing a value rather than retrieving it, so we are actually storing at value at the seventh item of the array (see previous).

3 + full(9) is the value we are going to store, and you can read it as saying "add 3 to the value returned by full(9)". full() is some procedure, and we are passing the value 9 to it.


So for the above to make sense, it would have to be part of a program that looked like this:

PROC main()
DEF x[10]:ARRAY OF aaa

x[].banana.basket[6]:=3+full(9)
ENDPROC

OBJECT aaa
banana:PTR TO bbb
ENDOBJECT

OBJECT bbb
basket[10]:ARRAY OF LONG
ENDOBJECT

PROC full(ccc) IS 2*ccc ->anything you like here

However, since the above program still does not seem to be doing anything meaningful, it would not be surprising if you still went "eh?". It would be much better to try to understand a real program that does something meaningful.