Swift Game Development Starter Kit.

[Neil]

Hi all,

as you might of seen on the site announcements - Sparse Invaders has been released on RetroSoftware, here's the links;

http://www.retrosoftware.co.uk/sparseinvaders
http://www.retrosoftware.co.uk/wiki/ind ... rs:_Source

This includes the the complete source (under GPL license) using the Swift Development Tool;

http://www.retrosoftware.co.uk/swift

Please also note, I've included a shell project, that will allow game development to start straight away - please read the above links if you want to know more.

I'll repost my summary here, this hopefully will get your creative urges flowing, just think - within a few minutes you could have Sparse Invaders building and running on your machine, allowing you to study and CHANGE the various modules. There is little more reward then seeing YOUR software running on your machine!!

Thanks - Neil




Introduction

Having not developed on the Beeb, I thought it was about time. Within a matter of minutes I had a document containing the 6502 instruction set , SWIFT installed with P65 and I was watching the videos supplied by Steve. Thus 'sparse invaders' was born.

To develop a game or application on the Beeb, the following knowledge is needed:

1. The idea - as in the game or app you want to develop!
2. Patience!

All else can be learnt, by reading and also asking questions. That's what I did, as I'm sure a lot on the forum will agree! Please do not be put off by the fact that it's 6502 assembler.

From my experience the only other assembler as easy as the 6502 is the 8080 (this is from memory as I last did that in 1984). It has limited register and instruction set, simple to pick up - however it does enable you to do some pretty wonderful stuff on the BBC B. I only need one example, ELite!

Tools for this development -

Swift :http://www.retrosoftware.co.uk/wiki/index.php/SWIFT
Beebem :http://www.mikebuk.dsl.pipex.com/beebem

Swift is perfect for starting your first project. It contains project management, text editor for the source, graphic editor for the sprites and with a simple click on an icon - it will build your app and create the disk THEN launch the BBC B emulator so you can see it playing.

How EASY is that!!

Going back to Sparse Invaders, I picked Space Invaders as my game of choice, as to be honest it's a simple game to write, but not that simple as to not supply a little challenge while writing it.

Final thought, when developing, as long as you understand what you need to code, it's fun. If you have any confusion then it's time out to comtemplate the problem and discuss the issue.

Programming on the BBC should be fun!!

[Wouter Scholten]

How EASY is that!!

Not very easy, since I don't use windows...

[Samwise]

Only the SWIFT IDE requires Windows, all the other components - Neil's Shell, Ophis/BeebAsm and BeebEm have all been ported to most major platforms.

There are people quite happily using BeebAsm with Vim and Emacs, so don't let that stop you.

Sam.

[Dave Footitt]

There are people quite happily using BeebAsm with Vim and Emacs, so don't let that stop you.
Sam.

Me included

[Wouter Scholten]

There are people quite happily using BeebAsm with Vim and Emacs, so don't let that stop you.
Sam.

Stop me from doing what?

As I wrote elsewhere on this forum months ago, I wrote my own assembler whs_as6502 to get around all the limitations and bugs in other assemblers.

I'm not going to downgrade...

[Neil]

I also develop using Linux. However downgrading or not, the percentage of window users is massive, this link shows the percent of the systems just used in schools -

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp

Using Swift IDE opens more doors, hopefully allowing more new developers to experience the joys of the great BBC B. I expect most of us oldies remember switching on our BBC B's for the first time - I know I do.

The whole point of this execise is to encourage others to at least take a look at the building process for a game and maybe start something new themselves.

Thanks - Neil

[sorvad]

A version for Linux is planned but it's unfortunately a long long way down the pipeline.

[flyerblade]

Hi. Is the Swift IDE still being actively developed ?
The last version seems to date to 2011 and my Windows 10 machine doesn't want to play the AVI format tutorials.
The integrated debugging looks nice, especially for us newbies.

If not, what do folk use ? VS Code ?

[tricky]

I haven't seen anything on SWIFT since then and I think VSCode + BASIC and ASM syntax highlighting + beebasm is the recommended setup.
Personally, I use Visual Studio + beebasm.

[cardboardguru]

Yeah, I use Visual Studio Code + the Beeb VSC plugin which gives 6502 syntax highlighting + BeebASM. It produces a disk image that I pass on to an emulator.

It's decent for the actual process of coding in assembler, or I believe BASIC, though I haven't tried that. But there's no debugging facility beyond what comes in the emulator.

[RobC]

I did manage to get Swift running again a few months ago (on a Windows 10 laptop). I think I had to use the Wayback machine to find a suitable version of the assembler it needs as the latest versions wouldn't work with Swift.

It's a shame it isn't being maintained as it was a very nice environment.

[cardboardguru]

It's a shame it isn't being maintained as it was a very nice environment.

It does seem like a shame that something something that looks so useful has been abandoned. Is the source available? I could only see an exe.

[Arcadian]

It does seem like a shame that something something that looks so useful has been abandoned. Is the source available? I could only see an exe.

I've just messaged Steve on Facebook to enquire about the availability of the source ... will keep you posted...

[sorvad]

Well, hey, I'm still around. Sorry I didn't reply earlier. I suppose it does look totally abandoned and to some extinct it is/was. However behind the scenes over the last 5 years, on and off I've been re-writing it in C#. It was originally written in Delphi with extra third party widgets, some of which probably don't exist anymore. So releasing the source and expecting anyone could do anything with it seemed a bit hopeful. I've re-written probably around 50%. The original source and set up now exists on a virtual machine as I can't get Delphi re-set up myself.

I'll keep you posted on progress and thanks for the nudge. I'm going to go back to it Once done, I'll release full source.

[cardboardguru]

That's great news Steve!

[sorvad]

OK, I've booted up my XP install and also recovered my conversion from its backup. I'd decided to simplify the set up and I'm going to stick with that. When I wrote the original I envisaged flexibility covering more than just the Acorn computers. This made the system more complex but it seemed the way to go at the time. However I've decided that this will be a Beeb tool for the foreseeable future and as such the newly ported version only supports BeebASM and BeebEm. On launch all seems to run OK from where I left it. Just need to get try re-compiling it and ensuring that set up works ok.

[flyerblade]

Cool thanks

[Neil]

Hello all,

well, it's been 12 years, but I thought I'd have another go at writing for the BBC B!

I'm not sure if you remember SPARSE invaders and the shell I left for anyone to use.

It's sad that SWIFT has not been updated in the last 10 years, I loved using that, hmm I have a copy here and can not get P65 asm to work. Has anyone got this to work using the latest version of Ophis?

Or has anyone got the P65 python script I can set up SWIFT with?

Is Steve still around to help out here?

Wow, so much as changed and happened, I hope all are safe!

Over to you, Neil

[sorvad]

I'm still here but not very active, I have been working on swift very infrequently rewriting in C#
To simplify it now exclusively supports beebasm and beebem and nothing else. The version I have I don't think is suitable for a release but I'll check. I think there's too much missing.