Step 12: Programming softwares (AsmOne, Devpac, basic, …)

28 Sep, 1989 | Demo

If you want to program on Amiga you can use many tools and many langages. I’ve used a lot Assembler K-Seka then Asm-One (I’m still using it today).
For assembly some of my friends were using DevPac. And beside assembler, there are some nice basics on Amiga. You can use GfaBasic (coming from Atari ST), Amos and Blitz Basic. Here are some details of what you could used in 1989, and then some improvments made years later.

Amiga – Basic

Amiga basic was the basic delivered with Amiga 500. It was written by Microsoft. I never used it but it looked a bit primitive and slow.

Link

Assembly – K-Seka

K-Seka is a simple « all in one » editor and assemler tool. I used it a lot because it was very simple and powerfull. With one key you can go into the editor, then assembly your source code and run it. Lot of features were missing but it was a nice tool to start with. Later, it was replaced by Asm-One.

Assembly – DevPac

The first version of DevPac (1.2) was nice but the various tools were not integrated in the same tool (editor, assembler, debugger). In 1989 english company HiSoft released DevPac2 and it was a much better tool. All were integrated in the same tool. I personnaly did not used DevPac but some of my friends
used it. It was surely more complete than K-Seka. As DevPac was edited by a british company waybe it was most used in UK.

Basic – Gfa Basic

GFA Basic was released in 1986 for the Atari ST. It is a quite fast and easy basic.
It have been ported to Amiga.
For the game Another World, Eric Chahi wrote a tool in GFA Basic.

More info on GFA Basic : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GFA_BASIC

Basic – Amos

Amos is a tool written by François Lionet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMOS_(programming_language)
With Blitz Basic, Amos was the most powerful basic for those that did not want to write assembly.

Amos was a fast execution tool. Even a 3D version have been done (Amos 3D). A version with a compiler was released later.

Here is a sample of games

Basic – Blitz Basic 2.1

Later, Blitz basic was release (1993). I liked a lot that basic. Version 2.1 was released in 1995.
Nice basic, easy and faster than Amos. I used it a lot to create tool or animations.
Article in french : http://obligement.free.fr/articles/blitzbasic21.php

Programming in C

On amiga it was possible to develop in C or C++. C was very slow so I never used it.
In 1988 there were some tools like Lattice C (then renamed SAS C in 1992).

(SAS C 5.10 1991 , Source : http://obligement.free.fr/articles/sas_c_510.php )

Extra

Asm-Pro

I do not know this version but it seem to be an improved version of AsmOne. More about it here : https://www.amigacoding.com/index.php/680×0:AsmPro

About me

Hello. My name is Christophe KOHLER. Norn in 1973, I'm 50 year old (in 2024) and working as video game creator till 2000. When I was young, I've been involved in the Amiga demo scene during 9 years (from 1989 to 1998). I was 16 years old at the time and had really lot of fun using Amiga computers.
I took much pleasure writing these pages. First because it reminded some good memories. And secondly because I wanted to explain how the amiga computer worked and what have been our work on them.