My thoughts on what could be done with the Amiga.

[SamuraiCrow]

If you want to make ECS games for Amiga you can download AmosPro Basic programming language and the compiler from here.  It used to be available on Back to the Roots but that site has since vanished.  The manual is (or at least was) available at Software Hut for $21.95 USD.  If you need help with it you can get help at The Amos Factory website.  And if that weren't enough there is a mailing list on Yahoo that sees a little more traffic than the Amos Factory at Amos List.  It isn't very upward compatible to emulators since it bangs the hardware very much but there's a non-hardware-banging sequel to it coming out called Mattathias Basic that will allow you to compile versions of your game for the PC and newer Amigas with graphics cards, etc.

[SamuraiCrow]

Plaz wrote:
@SamuraiCrow

So if I wanted to try a little PD game on Amos, I can rework the same code one day with Mattathias Basic to use on PC or RTG Amigas. Hmmm, sounds like I might give it a try. Is the comment about the crummy graphics true though? Will Amos allow me to splice in ASM or ML? I'm thinking of some things I have done in C already. I could compile that to ML then tag it in to Amos. I inherited a set of Amos boxes a couple of years ago with all disk and documentation for 1.2 and 1.3. I'm guessing it's all still relavent for 2.0

Plaz

If you mix machine language with your code on Amos I can guarantee it won't work on a PC.  You may have to start over in Amos or port your C code to use SDL for the graphics-card compatible version.

Also remember that Mattathias is still in the early development stages and not a usable compiler yet.  When it's done it will likely be a cross between GCC and AmosPro with code borrowed from sdlBasic for the runtime library.  It will have object oriented features to allow it to mix some code from C++ as extensions but the main idea is to be able to write extensions in object-oriented languages.

-edit-  The comment about crappy graphics in Amos is based on the fact that Amos is limited to ECS graphics with little HAM mode support meaning you're limited to 63 foreground colors in low-res mode and copper rainbows to give nice backdrops to go with your foreground graphics.

Mattathias will likely be SDL-based for the non-AGA support and will have a minimum of 256-color graphics.  The AGA version will be supporting the copper as well as the bitplanes.  It will be an example of where Amos would have been had its development continued into the present.

[SamuraiCrow]

@Hyperspeed

DevPac is not a C compiler.  It is a 68000 macroassembler for the classic Amigas.

As for what languages to learn, I'd stick with C as a professional and maybe learn some C++.

If you want to write code for other than Windows (which I would assume is the majority of the coders here) then I'd use SDL with OpenGL as the APIs of choice.  Remember to always use OpenGL for the 2d graphics as well as the 3d since the Windows version of SDL stinks.

[SamuraiCrow]

A macroassembler converts from the Assembly language to raw binary or object files.  Assembly is a representation of raw machine language that is different from one processor series to the next.  In the case of DevPac, for example, it works only on the 680x0 microprocessors.  It is useless to somebody on a PowerPC-based AmigaOne or a Pentium series PC.