It's alive! Alive! For someone who is "green" to this as you say, you explain it extremely well especially that I'm also used to 10, 20, 30.etc. Very interesting I had to watch it twice! Thanks for the links. You gave me a desire to also create a game. You're a good teacher! Can't wait to learn more!
It's alive but for the moment I'm not sure what kind of trouble Bob is going to be getting himself into. I've got a few ideas of course but imagining is easy, getting the ideas to work inside an Atari, not so much ;) I am happy that you liked the video enough to sit through it twice though (you really have to get yourself a life). But joking aside, programming is an awful lot of fun when you really start to get into it, if I had known I'd have started at it years ago and I'd encourage anybody to give it a try.
@@8bitsinthebasement 😂😂😂 I know I should get a life and stop watching YT videos! But what you may not know about me is that most of the videos I watch on YT, contrary to many, I watch from beginning to end. I always did the same with movies. And when I want to learn or find something interesting, I will watch it again. Also, I do find that you explained it very well. Not many can teach, that is an art on its own and God knows I cannot teach. Yes you are correct, ideas are not always as easy to translate into reality; when I was in high school, in computer class they thought us how to use LOGO programming language and I wanted to make a 3D walkthrough / Murder Mystery. Obviously something way too ambitious and not meant for LOGO but I worked so hard drawing the first room in 3D that I still got an A. 😂 I'm sure it will be very cool, already I love the character.
Thanks very much, it's great that you liked it. I'm happy too that it managed to bring back happy memories of graph paper fun for you. I'll get to work on the next episode next weekend, I've got the code examples more or less worked out so you shouldn't have too long to wait ;)
Thanks very much. I've found that bAtari has been an excellent way to enter into programming. It's not overly difficult and as it makes an assembly listing when compiled it's a fantastic way to open the door into to the witchcraft that is assembly language. Your videos are a huge help in my learning assembly. I've passed from "WTF" to "oooooh, ok I see what you did there" thanks to them and a host of pdfs from the colour computer archive. Please don't stop what you're doing buddy ;)
@@8bitsinthebasementYeah, getting an assembly listing from bAtari sounds like a nice educational feature. It's cool you're diving into assembly, I find it a fun form of puzzle solving where you're trying to achieve an objective under limiting constraints. And your reward is (potentially) the fastest possible code for the processor. I'm glad my videos have helped!
pretty interesting video, I didn't know about batari basic and I think it's a strange basic for the time, very weird but very powerful for a child at the time.
Thanks, I'm glad that you enjoyed it. bAtari basic is quite new, work started on it in 2005 and it's being improved ever since. It was designed as an aid to help learning machine code (as the basic code is transformed into ML and saved to a text file that you can read after compilation). It's great for people like me too, who could never get to grips with ML but would love to play around with coding on a machine like the Atari 2600. I have plenty more to learn about it so expect another few videos on this topic in the future ;)
As am I. I'm still not sure what the game will be exactly. I have of course got a whole bunch of ideas but no idea how (or indeed if it's even possible) to pull them off. They say that the 2600 is a limited system but in this case the guy programming it might be the bigger problem. I'll keep at it though ;)
Thank you very much. I really am loving getting to grips with this and getting the Atari to do the things I want it to. I'm (for now at least) finding bAtari much more welcoming than any of the BASICs I've played with before. But I suppose that it's down to the fact that bAtari is made for one type of program to be written with it : games. So it's geared up to do just that. Glad you like it ;)
@@8bitsinthebasement during lockdown I done a bit of programming on the Spectrum Next (Next basic is quite powerful compared to normal Speccy basic) but once I was back at work I struggled to find time to get back in to it. Atari Basic looks pretty interesting though, so I’ll be following your series. Might even give it a go myself 👍
Everything was very well explained, I have one question: When you set the sprite position, where on your sprite is that position (I assume top left corner, but assuming can often lead to problems!).
Thanks Ken. That's a good question, I assumed that it was the top left corner as you did. I've just ran a few tests to make sure and as far as I can figure the position is in fact set from the bottom left corner of the sprite. I still have loads and loads to learn ;)
Thanks Josip, I'm getting on much better with this than I ever did with BASIC on any of the systems I've used before. To be honest I think that the reason is because bAtari was developed to just write games with so most of the commands are directed to doing game type things, like sprites and joystick / paddle control. Basic for the C64 and others are not quite as friendly or as easy to get into as you have to learn how to do things from scratch. The thing with bAtari that is going to pose a problem for me later on is when I try to put everything I've learned together. The 2600 doesn't have a whole lot of memory or processor resources so things have to be optimized, that's going be quite a challenge. Should be good for a laugh though ;)
@@8bitsinthebasement Yes, this is the basic with specific commands for the 2600 and that makes it a whole lot easier to create all game segments and control the player/enemies. But You are right, it will be a bit of a challenge to optimize the code to fit in a very small amount of memory, so plenty of adventure to come :)
Good man, give it a go and burn your bin file onto a ROM. It's an oddly satisfying feeling to see a sprite you drew yourself on a real honest to goodness Atari 2600 ;)
Aah! I managed to impress someone with my pen and paper art making skills. It's not Crysis but ya gotta start somewhere. Thanks for the sub too, legend!
Hey, Gman. I'm more or less wondering where I'll get with it too. But Bob's alive and kicking at this stage so we've jumped the first hurdle, so as to speak. The last test will be to play what I've come up with on real hardware. It seems that Atari emulators are a lot more forgiving cycle wise when running code, so to be sure that what I've made works it'll have to be put on a cartridge. Thanks as always for the support ;)
Thanks man, I'm glad you liked it ;) the language that I'm using here is bAtari basic, it's a basic written in 2005 to allow easy game programming on the Atari 2600 (as well as being a stepping stone to machine language coding). It's not the same as (or compatable with) Atari basic which was used on the 600, 800 and XL machines. The beauty of bAtari is that it's geared up for writing games and little else so a lot of game things like sprite creation, joystick / paddle movement and scoring are much easier to do. I'm just starting out with it but so far I'm having a great time. In the end I'm hoping to have a new original game featuring Bob :)
Thanks Rach. Just designing little characters and thinking about what they could do in a game is a lot of fun. I'm enjoying trying to figure out how to make the ideas a reality within the 2600 too. Go get yourself some graph paper if the feeling takes you ;)
I would love to make my own atari 2600 games. I know a guy who can put them on an actual cartridge. Would I be able to use the programs to make the games on a laptop?
Of course you can, the bAtari basic compiler is available for Windows, Mac and Linux and should work on all versions of windows from XP onwards. So any computer system from about 2005 or later should be able to run the bAtari compiler for you. In fact, all you need to write a program is a simple word processor like window's notepad. Once you've finished writing your code you save it out and then send the saved file to the bAtari compiler. The compiler will make a .bin file for you (as long as your code has no errors) which you can burn onto a ROM chip for use in an Atari cart. So really there's nothing stopping you ;)
You're passionnate and I love watching you. I want to see the end of the game so fast 😭. I hope you're not gonna create DLC at 20€ for a skincolor of Bob ................. 🙃
You can, once you've wrote your code and compiled it you'll have a bin file that you can use on a real Atari. You'll need to make your own cartridge or use one of those sd card reader cartridges to get your file running on a real 2600 but to be honest it's really not all that difficult.
I just got this setup and I was able to compile the first color test but when i go to compile the skull i get errors. it seems like there is whitespace with batari? like python? i can't seem to get the same spacing you have to compile successfully. Great video though, just learning how this stuff works.
Yeah, bAtari likes to have it's code indented in just the right way or you'll get compile errors. There is a bAtari IDE available for a number of platforms that will format the code and also help out with sprite creation, animation etc. but personally I prefer in the beginning to do all that on my own (it helps me learn it better). I haven't used bAtari for very long but I remember one short enough program that I wrote had me stumped for a good 15 minutes before I figured out I needed to put a space at the beginning of a line. It's all part of the fun ey? I'm glad that you found the video and that it's gotten you playing around with coding for the 2600 a little. Hope you have as much fun with it as I am ;)
@@8bitsinthebasement yea i agree it is nice to see things work at the most basic level with the bare bones, but yea i think as i get more into it i'd like to see about an IDE.. i'm on a mac, which narrows my IDE options, but hopefully i can find a decent one for mac. I can run parallels though so I could do win10 or xp if i really need too.
The Pacman and the ghosts stuck to the TV set are something I picked up the last time I was back in Ireland. It's just a gimmicky little thing that I think looks nice and I have to admit, I like a lot. It's got three "modes" of lighting : always on, cycling through ghosts (that's the setting I like most) and sound activated (which doesn't work very well). I found a video about it here ruclips.net/video/98LQSde3n_U/видео.html&ab_channel=ArcadeUSA Thanks for watching ;)
I had not heard a word about it until your comment. I've taken a look and it looks great. A fully working machine you can build yourself, the only problem I see is that you have to source two very hard to find chips for it. The pokey chip and the sally CPU the 6502C. But maybe there are new alternatives available for those by now. Thanks for the heads up on it, I love that kind of stuff and I might just decide to build one for myself in the future.
I could listen to this guy say "sprite" all day long. Great, great video!
sprite, sprite, sprite, sprite, sprite. Thanks very much for your kind words ;)
It's alive! Alive! For someone who is "green" to this as you say, you explain it extremely well especially that I'm also used to 10, 20, 30.etc. Very interesting I had to watch it twice! Thanks for the links. You gave me a desire to also create a game. You're a good teacher! Can't wait to learn more!
It's alive but for the moment I'm not sure what kind of trouble Bob is going to be getting himself into. I've got a few ideas of course but imagining is easy, getting the ideas to work inside an Atari, not so much ;) I am happy that you liked the video enough to sit through it twice though (you really have to get yourself a life). But joking aside, programming is an awful lot of fun when you really start to get into it, if I had known I'd have started at it years ago and I'd encourage anybody to give it a try.
@@8bitsinthebasement 😂😂😂 I know I should get a life and stop watching YT videos! But what you may not know about me is that most of the videos I watch on YT, contrary to many, I watch from beginning to end. I always did the same with movies. And when I want to learn or find something interesting, I will watch it again. Also, I do find that you explained it very well. Not many can teach, that is an art on its own and God knows I cannot teach. Yes you are correct, ideas are not always as easy to translate into reality; when I was in high school, in computer class they thought us how to use LOGO programming language and I wanted to make a 3D walkthrough / Murder Mystery. Obviously something way too ambitious and not meant for LOGO but I worked so hard drawing the first room in 3D that I still got an A. 😂 I'm sure it will be very cool, already I love the character.
Amazing video mate. That graph sheet to draw a sprite brought delicious memories to me 😀. Cannot wait for the next episode !!!
Thanks very much, it's great that you liked it. I'm happy too that it managed to bring back happy memories of graph paper fun for you. I'll get to work on the next episode next weekend, I've got the code examples more or less worked out so you shouldn't have too long to wait ;)
Bob and Alien Fire Flies has inspired me to write my own 2600 game; these videos are very helpful!
That's great news, I look forward to giving your game a go when it's finished ;)
Excellent video and work! It's very exciting to see how this works. Thanks for sharing, and I am looking forward to your next video.
Thank you Rudy, I'm having much more fun with this than I should be. The next episode will be along in a little while ;)
This is a neat intro to atari basic, which I'd never used before. Thanks for putting together this series!
Thanks very much. I've found that bAtari has been an excellent way to enter into programming. It's not overly difficult and as it makes an assembly listing when compiled it's a fantastic way to open the door into to the witchcraft that is assembly language. Your videos are a huge help in my learning assembly. I've passed from "WTF" to "oooooh, ok I see what you did there" thanks to them and a host of pdfs from the colour computer archive. Please don't stop what you're doing buddy ;)
@@8bitsinthebasementYeah, getting an assembly listing from bAtari sounds like a nice educational feature. It's cool you're diving into assembly, I find it a fun form of puzzle solving where you're trying to achieve an objective under limiting constraints. And your reward is (potentially) the fastest possible code for the processor. I'm glad my videos have helped!
pretty interesting video, I didn't know about batari basic and I think it's a strange basic for the time, very weird but very powerful for a child at the time.
Thanks, I'm glad that you enjoyed it. bAtari basic is quite new, work started on it in 2005 and it's being improved ever since. It was designed as an aid to help learning machine code (as the basic code is transformed into ML and saved to a text file that you can read after compilation). It's great for people like me too, who could never get to grips with ML but would love to play around with coding on a machine like the Atari 2600. I have plenty more to learn about it so expect another few videos on this topic in the future ;)
I'm looking forward to seeing this develop.
As am I. I'm still not sure what the game will be exactly. I have of course got a whole bunch of ideas but no idea how (or indeed if it's even possible) to pull them off. They say that the 2600 is a limited system but in this case the guy programming it might be the bigger problem. I'll keep at it though ;)
An great start and well explained 👍
Thank you very much. I really am loving getting to grips with this and getting the Atari to do the things I want it to. I'm (for now at least) finding bAtari much more welcoming than any of the BASICs I've played with before. But I suppose that it's down to the fact that bAtari is made for one type of program to be written with it : games. So it's geared up to do just that. Glad you like it ;)
@@8bitsinthebasement during lockdown I done a bit of programming on the Spectrum Next (Next basic is quite powerful compared to normal Speccy basic) but once I was back at work I struggled to find time to get back in to it. Atari Basic looks pretty interesting though, so I’ll be following your series. Might even give it a go myself 👍
Everything was very well explained, I have one question: When you set the sprite position, where on your sprite is that position (I assume top left corner, but assuming can often lead to problems!).
Thanks Ken. That's a good question, I assumed that it was the top left corner as you did. I've just ran a few tests to make sure and as far as I can figure the position is in fact set from the bottom left corner of the sprite. I still have loads and loads to learn ;)
Great video Peter! Bob animation looks superb :) I'm starting to like atari basic :) ha ha
Thanks Josip, I'm getting on much better with this than I ever did with BASIC on any of the systems I've used before. To be honest I think that the reason is because bAtari was developed to just write games with so most of the commands are directed to doing game type things, like sprites and joystick / paddle control. Basic for the C64 and others are not quite as friendly or as easy to get into as you have to learn how to do things from scratch. The thing with bAtari that is going to pose a problem for me later on is when I try to put everything I've learned together. The 2600 doesn't have a whole lot of memory or processor resources so things have to be optimized, that's going be quite a challenge. Should be good for a laugh though ;)
@@8bitsinthebasement Yes, this is the basic with specific commands for the 2600 and that makes it a whole lot easier to create all game segments and control the player/enemies. But You are right, it will be a bit of a challenge to optimize the code to fit in a very small amount of memory, so plenty of adventure to come :)
I used to make this sort of programs moving letters and using randomize
Cool, what system did you make them for? The Atari or something else?
Amazing. Sat at work with graph paper. Can’t wait to have a go at this 😊.
Good man, give it a go and burn your bin file onto a ROM. It's an oddly satisfying feeling to see a sprite you drew yourself on a real honest to goodness Atari 2600 ;)
Very cool Peter! Your an Atari 2600 developer now!!
You're right Matt, I could call myself a developer now. I'll have to give myself a raise ;)
@@8bitsinthebasement lol!
using pen and paper to make art? this is gaga brain stuff, lmao. Great video subbed!
Aah! I managed to impress someone with my pen and paper art making skills. It's not Crysis but ya gotta start somewhere. Thanks for the sub too, legend!
Interesting...I'm deadly curious about how far you'll get with this. Need to see it on a real cart of course ;-)
Hey, Gman. I'm more or less wondering where I'll get with it too. But Bob's alive and kicking at this stage so we've jumped the first hurdle, so as to speak. The last test will be to play what I've come up with on real hardware. It seems that Atari emulators are a lot more forgiving cycle wise when running code, so to be sure that what I've made works it'll have to be put on a cartridge. Thanks as always for the support ;)
Great video :) I still got my old Atari Basic Program tech manual :)
Thanks man, I'm glad you liked it ;) the language that I'm using here is bAtari basic, it's a basic written in 2005 to allow easy game programming on the Atari 2600 (as well as being a stepping stone to machine language coding). It's not the same as (or compatable with) Atari basic which was used on the 600, 800 and XL machines. The beauty of bAtari is that it's geared up for writing games and little else so a lot of game things like sprite creation, joystick / paddle movement and scoring are much easier to do. I'm just starting out with it but so far I'm having a great time. In the end I'm hoping to have a new original game featuring Bob :)
This looks great, seems to make perfect sense. Makes me want to go out and buy some graph paper! 😂
Thanks Rach. Just designing little characters and thinking about what they could do in a game is a lot of fun. I'm enjoying trying to figure out how to make the ideas a reality within the 2600 too. Go get yourself some graph paper if the feeling takes you ;)
I would love to make my own atari 2600 games. I know a guy who can put them on an actual cartridge. Would I be able to use the programs to make the games on a laptop?
Of course you can, the bAtari basic compiler is available for Windows, Mac and Linux and should work on all versions of windows from XP onwards. So any computer system from about 2005 or later should be able to run the bAtari compiler for you. In fact, all you need to write a program is a simple word processor like window's notepad. Once you've finished writing your code you save it out and then send the saved file to the bAtari compiler. The compiler will make a .bin file for you (as long as your code has no errors) which you can burn onto a ROM chip for use in an Atari cart. So really there's nothing stopping you ;)
You're passionnate and I love watching you. I want to see the end of the game so fast 😭. I hope you're not gonna create DLC at 20€ for a skincolor of Bob ................. 🙃
Don't worry Jordan, I'd never create DLC for 20Euro. My DLC will cost much, much more ;)
so could you make an Atari game that plays on console with this program? it looks pretty awesome.
You can, once you've wrote your code and compiled it you'll have a bin file that you can use on a real Atari. You'll need to make your own cartridge or use one of those sd card reader cartridges to get your file running on a real 2600 but to be honest it's really not all that difficult.
@@8bitsinthebasementthat is so cool, thank you I’m gonna try this. Will you be releasing more atari guides? Trying to find info on it is quite hard.
I just got this setup and I was able to compile the first color test but when i go to compile the skull i get errors. it seems like there is whitespace with batari? like python? i can't seem to get the same spacing you have to compile successfully. Great video though, just learning how this stuff works.
OK I got it. wow yes very particular about the use of spaces and such.
Yeah, bAtari likes to have it's code indented in just the right way or you'll get compile errors. There is a bAtari IDE available for a number of platforms that will format the code and also help out with sprite creation, animation etc. but personally I prefer in the beginning to do all that on my own (it helps me learn it better). I haven't used bAtari for very long but I remember one short enough program that I wrote had me stumped for a good 15 minutes before I figured out I needed to put a space at the beginning of a line. It's all part of the fun ey? I'm glad that you found the video and that it's gotten you playing around with coding for the 2600 a little. Hope you have as much fun with it as I am ;)
Glad you got it sorted out :)
@@8bitsinthebasement absolutely! man batari can do a lot. have you seen Lucky Chase? a fantastic Lock n' Chase port for the 2600.. all batari.
@@8bitsinthebasement yea i agree it is nice to see things work at the most basic level with the bare bones, but yea i think as i get more into it i'd like to see about an IDE.. i'm on a mac, which narrows my IDE options, but hopefully i can find a decent one for mac. I can run parallels though so I could do win10 or xp if i really need too.
Tell me about the ghost and Pac you have above your screen!
The Pacman and the ghosts stuck to the TV set are something I picked up the last time I was back in Ireland. It's just a gimmicky little thing that I think looks nice and I have to admit, I like a lot. It's got three "modes" of lighting : always on, cycling through ghosts (that's the setting I like most) and sound activated (which doesn't work very well). I found a video about it here ruclips.net/video/98LQSde3n_U/видео.html&ab_channel=ArcadeUSA Thanks for watching ;)
Dood have you seen the new company that is making an exact full working Atari 800XL replica?
I had not heard a word about it until your comment. I've taken a look and it looks great. A fully working machine you can build yourself, the only problem I see is that you have to source two very hard to find chips for it. The pokey chip and the sally CPU the 6502C. But maybe there are new alternatives available for those by now. Thanks for the heads up on it, I love that kind of stuff and I might just decide to build one for myself in the future.