Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: XDelusion on March 17, 2011, 04:16:16 AM
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Which is the best for the guy who wants to do the least to make a quality retro video game?
Also, does anyone know if Blitz2 supports MOD or MED sound tracks?
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My vote is for AMOS since my oldest brother used to program games for it like crazy. You can probably do a good conversion if you program good. Wish I could peel some examples from my brother, but he did some damn good stuff.
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If you want quality, youre probably better off with Blitz. This isnt to say I dont like AMOS, I actually do, it's a lot of fun, and if you chose your game style/game play carefully it can still produce results better than its reputation (check out Babeanoid for example).
They are quite different though. Blitz can be completely system friendly if a person choses for example (although it does have its own "blitz mode" that hits the hardware more directly). Using it in a system friendly way gives you access to all sorts of nice things like opengl, sdl, mui,reaction,etc.,etc. Basically if you can do it with C/C++ you can do it with blitz, and honestly, unless you use older amiga specific compilers, often faster. Blitz can also use inline assembly directly (I think AMOS can to, but I dont recall it being as "Seemless" as with Blitz).
One observation Ive noticed with AMOS that isnt often mentioned though, is that it seems to scale very well to the hardware its running on (ie. games will often perform proportionally to the hardware its runing on). Naturally most code regardless of language will be faster on a quicker system, but for whatever reason it really stands out with AMOS. Having said this though, Blitz will be faster 9 times out of 10 anyway.
Personally I'd suggest it comes down to your plans. If you just want to knock out a few games to have some fun with no plans to make bigger projects down the track then AMOS is probably the way to go, but if you want to attempt some "serious" projects then in humble opinion, Blitz is actually one of the best languages to make classic amiga games with.
edit. Ah, I just thought I should point out that you dont really have full access to AGA with AMOS.
Technically its an OCS/ECS product, but there are (unofficial/undocumented) ways to take partial advantage of AGA with AMOS. For example you can still ony use up to 32 colors, or ehb, or ham6, plus youre limited to 16 strengths stil per rgb channels, but you can have 64 color or ham6 640x512 screens. You can also use double bandwidth (AGA) modes. Again this isnt officially, so you'll have to hunt around aminet for all these sorts of tidbits and examples. There's an archive I found called "allplaton" that's a good source for these sorts of tibits (although it might be an ida to get your head around AMOS itself before you start using these things :)).
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AMOS Pro + AMOS Compiler is the only way to go if you want to try AMOS.
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Yeah, I agree there as well. Also definately worth using the updates up to at least 2.0.
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Anyone would be crazy to use AMOS now. Blitz is faster, better hardware support, better debugging, better operating system support, has proper data structures, inline assembler, and yes it has plenty of 3rd party libraries including mod and med players... :)
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Anyone would be crazy to use AMOS now. Blitz is faster, better hardware support, better debugging, better operating system support, has proper data structures, inline assembler, and yes it has plenty of 3rd party libraries including mod and med players... :)
Whatever happened to PureBasic? Last I heard they had ported it to Mac.
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Blitz Basic by far, especially if you want to use AGA features.
It's also far more system friendly. TED (the editor) isn't half bad either.
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Not long ago I was facing the same dilemma and somehow was forced to go the AMOS way. I was (and still am) into a text adventure project which will eventually have a spanish version, and Blitz2 editor happened not to support spanish characters. Amiblitz solved that, but It is oriented to expanded high level machines with the latest KS and WB, and I wanted my stuff to work at least in a 1 MB A500. So mine was an easy choice!
Once into AMOS It's got its limitations. No OS friendly, no official AGA support... But in other aspects it manages to make your programming-newbie life easier. If your emphasis is in the "do the least" bit I recommend it. If you're worried about "quality" then remember quality not only depends on which language you're using but also on having resources like access to skilled graphics and music authors (without that your game will look amateurish no matter what you wrote it with!)
Are you planning to make a game? Tell us about it! :)
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Whatever happened to PureBasic? Last I heard they had ported it to Mac.
Yeah, I did try PureBasic about 10 years ago or so... But by then I was getting into C/C++ and SDL, which had better cross platform support and all te advantages of the C languages... Also I don't think PureBasic ever got a UniversalBinary compiler... :-/
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Despite being a bit of a Blitz fan, I've always had a bit of a fantasy to try to make a big project in AMOS Pro. I get a kind of a peverse pleasure in trying to get good results within a softwares restrictions. I even started trying to write an OS in AMOS Pro some years ago (I still have it actually). It's the whole mismatch thing that appeals to me.
For "serious" stuff I like Blitz, but for my own little pointless projects I find I still do fire up AMOS Pro from time to time :)
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Hmmm, just checked... PureBasic still seems to lack UB compiler support and also note that AmigaOS is depreciated, figures I guess :-/
I would have to point out that AMOS's lack of data structures is a killer for any real project... You can mitigate that to some degree with AMAL, which will allow you to encapsulate all your enemy data (and execution) in simple arcade games :)
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Well...
...my plan is not to just knock out a couple quick and generic titles. I'd really like to create a thing or two that I would like to play my self, as opposed to something I download off Aminet, check out for a couple seconds then delete thinking, Hmm, so that's all Blitz2 can do? How lame!
That's not to say I'm going to produce a quality title, but that is my goal. :)
I have already began learning Blitz2 with a collection of guides from old Amiga Magazines. So far I have not learned very much, but my understanding is growing little by little.
To be sure I'll be posting back for help.
And no, I've no clue what I'm going to make at the moment. I've got a few ideas...
All credit goes to DJCruicky and his inspiring thread here:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=58134
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Oh, and does Blitz2 support 2 button and CD32 Controllers?
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I always loved amos pro and still use it.
Amos pro is very easy to learn and use, and it can make
great quality games like 'valhalla' vulcan software.
I used blitz too, but it was very hard to learn and use.
Amos Pro is so easy you can learn to code a game
with little effort, and still get commercial quality games.
I would go for amos pro.
Rednova
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I'd be curious to see some AMOS tutorials.
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Anyone would be crazy to use AMOS now. Blitz is faster, better hardware support, better debugging, better operating system support, has proper data structures, inline assembler, and yes it has plenty of 3rd party libraries including mod and med players... :)
Hi,
I totally agree.
and besides that I likes the name
smerf
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Blitz = Skidmarks series, Gloom series, etc.
AMOS = Vallhalla series
'nuff said :P
Blitz is faster, system friendly, AGA compatible, rtg compativle, ahi compatible, etc., etc.
AMOS is,... err,..... fun :)
Blitz is limited only by the hardware its running on. AMOS itself limits what a person can do.
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I thought that total wormage (the Worms prototype) was also written in Blitz... Or am I having FMS?
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Can one use any editor they like with Blitz or does it force one to use the builtin Blitz editor?
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Technically you can use any editor with either Blitz or AMOS.
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Then why is it that when my friend sends me Blitz source code, its all a bunch of gobbledygook. Like its all been tokenized or compressed. I can't edit his Blitz source in my CED. :(
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Well, I say technically 'cos you have to save as ascii and then import that into blitz (same with AMOS) :)
I believe TuiTed is an exception here.
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Technically you can use any editor with either Blitz or AMOS.
Both, by default, save out in a tokenised format... Which has its advantages... But both also import ASCII files just fine.
I seem a bit harsh on AMOS in this thread, so I want to add that I personally spent a lot of time with AMOS (read my blog), and owe it my entire basis of computer programming understanding.
Blitz on the other hand I only got hold of after I was already quite competent in ASM, and while I didn't spend much time using it, it is clearly the more powerful of the two languages. :)
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I'll echo what others have said here - Blitz is far more flexible and advanced, and has so many advantages against AMOS that it's almost a non-brainer. If you ever want to do anything system-friendly, AMOS gets tricky quite fast. Blitz is still developed now, and there is a rather excellent set of includes now bundled with it which cover things like MP3 handling, AHI etc. If you're good with assembly it supports that (you can even include PPC assembly for PPC-equipped machines).
To answer your question, yes, Blitz supports CD32 and 2-button controllers, and the 4-player adaptor for the parallel port IIRC. And with the bundled includes it has most of the OS constants and scructs, so you can use OS calls relatively easily.
Check out HD-Rec (http://www.hd-rec.de/HD-Rec/index.php?site=home) for an example of system-legal Blitz software.
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I thought that total wormage (the Worms prototype) was also written in Blitz... Or am I having FMS?
Ah, of course. I forgot about that one. Worms was born as Total Wormage as an entry into a competition Amiga Format had in which people had to create a game with the cover disc mounted version of Blitz Basic2.
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Does anyone know where I can download the Blitz 2.1 manual? I have the original but it has about 12 pages missing...the pages to do with blitter and screen manipulation of all things *face palm*
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Does anyone know where I can download the Blitz 2.1 manual? I have the original but it has about 12 pages missing...the pages to do with blitter and screen manipulation of all things *face palm*
IIRC Blitz came with a brilliant set of examples and Demos... I was able to pick up the syntax and commands quickly from them, and the F1 help ;)
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When I write a game I do it in algorithms and so I need to know basic abilities up front using traditional manual pages :)
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There's a Blitz 2 manual at the Amiga Manuals Website (http://amiga-manuals.npage.de/index.html) (section "Aplications") but I'm not sure if it's 2.1 specific.
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If you install a recent version of AmiBlitz (from http://www.amiforce.de) it has the full 2.1 manual in AmigaGuide format included. I also like to have the paper version, but it's nice to have the whole lot at your fingertips... And as Bloodline pointed out, the examples and tutorials are excellent, and have been added to a lot since toe 2.1 days. For example, if you load in any of the new includes, it will contain a small example which simply compiles and works, and is usually very easy to understand...
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As much as I liked Amiblitz, Id recommend using the Ultimate Blitz CD if youre using a more modest "real" Amiga. It contains Blitz 2.1 and a shedload of updates, plus lots of good examples. In regards to the manual the page recommended in this thread (http://amiga-manuals.npage.de/index.html) has good copies of everything in PDF scans (manual, reference guide, user guide, etc.). Bare in mind though that it's spread between both applications and ebooks. An AmigaGuide version of the manual itself is also included on the Ultimate Blitz CD (which is quite easy to find (Back To The Roots has it for example)).
Blitz itself also has good "intergrated" help. Pressing help will give you the syntax for any command that the cursor is currently occupying in the editor for example.
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Then why is it that when my friend sends me Blitz source code, its all a bunch of gobbledygook. Like its all been tokenized or compressed. I can't edit his Blitz source in my CED. :(
Yeah, it's tokenised. The Blitz editor highlights keywords, and by default saves tokenised. However it does have an option to save and edit as plain text IIRC.