Atari BASIC Programming

[Koopa64]

Anybody here actually manage to do something with this back in the day? There were BASIC carts for most Atari systems. Why did Atari even release them way back when? Marketing?

 

Was BASIC even good for anything other than making a temperature converter? I very highly doubt you could make an actual game using it but what could you have done with it?

 

Not very well versed in Atari outside of general history lessons on the company itself and it's business ventures.

[Trooper]

There were many many games made in Basic for the Atari 8-bits, check out Atarimania and you shall be enlightened! One of my favorite games of all time, Galactic Empire, was made in Basic.

[vdub_bobby]

Virtually every home computer at the time was released with BASIC, mostly built in.

[Koopa64]

There were many many games made in Basic for the Atari 8-bits, check out Atarimania and you shall be enlightened! One of my favorite games of all time, Galactic Empire, was made in Basic.

 

...

 

O_O

 

Are you kidding me? How'd they make graphics with just a simple compiler? There had to have been graphics libraries included.

[vdub_bobby]

Are you kidding me? How'd they make graphics with just a simple compiler? There had to have been graphics libraries included.

First of all...BASIC is interpreted, not compiled.

 

Second of all, you obviously don't understand how the 8bit computers work at a low level. Sprites are generally tricky in BASIC - though not impossible - and there are lots of fancy tricks (e.g., DLIs) you can't do in BASIC, but most everything else is fair game.

 

The main issue with BASIC is that it is sloooow and the overhead eats up a lot of memory.

[Ransom]

Anybody here actually manage to do something with this back in the day? There were BASIC carts for most Atari systems. Why did Atari even release them way back when? Marketing?

 

Was BASIC even good for anything other than making a temperature converter? I very highly doubt you could make an actual game using it but what could you have done with it?

 

Not very well versed in Atari outside of general history lessons on the company itself and it's business ventures.

 

Are you talking about the Atari 2600 "BASIC Programming" cartridge, or the Atari 8-bit computer (400/800/1200XL/800XL/etc) "BASIC Computing Language" cartridge?

Edited May 14, 2009 by Ransom

[Almost Rice]

My brother and I learned to program in BASIC Xe back in the day. He made a text game and Tetris clone. So yes BASIC could be used for games. There are many magazine type in games from the early 80s

[Koopa64]

Are you kidding me? How'd they make graphics with just a simple compiler? There had to have been graphics libraries included.

First of all...BASIC is interpreted, not compiled.

 

Second of all, you obviously don't understand how the 8bit computers work at a low level. Sprites are generally tricky in BASIC - though not impossible - and there are lots of fancy tricks (e.g., DLIs) you can't do in BASIC, but most everything else is fair game.

 

The main issue with BASIC is that it is sloooow and the overhead eats up a lot of memory.

 

Well... Umm... Guess I'm putting my foot in my mouth now, but no I haven't actually tried BASIC. I assumed that it was just a programming language, like C. And in C, from what I gather, requires libraries to provide graphics. The coding is used to create the fundamental structure of the game. Graphics I don't think can be created in a compiler (or interpreter in this case).

 

But then again, I probably should talk since I was only assuming. Feel free to enlighten me further.

 

 

Anybody here actually manage to do something with this back in the day? There were BASIC carts for most Atari systems. Why did Atari even release them way back when? Marketing?

 

Was BASIC even good for anything other than making a temperature converter? I very highly doubt you could make an actual game using it but what could you have done with it?

 

Not very well versed in Atari outside of general history lessons on the company itself and it's business ventures.

 

Are you talking about the Atari 2600 "BASIC Programming" cartridge, or the Atari 8-bit computer (400/800/1200XL/800XL/etc) "BASIC Computing Language" cartridge?

 

Yeah, I'm talking about Atari BASIC. Actually, I thought I read that Atari actually had their own version of BASIC, not just a re-labeling of the base language.

 

My brother and I learned to program in BASIC Xe back in the day. He made a text game and Tetris clone. So yes BASIC could be used for games. There are many magazine type in games from the early 80s

 

...

 

O_O

 

So back in the day, any old joe could program in BASIC? I find that hard to believe.

 

Wasn't BASIC made when programming in general was insanely difficult? More so than today? (or even in the 90s). So how is it people could program in BASIC when programming in general was hard, but it's somehow more difficult today (using stuff like Java or C) even though the tools are easier to use.

Edited May 15, 2009 by Koopa64

[frenchman]

Yes, anyone could program in BASIC, but again, you had to learn it.

BASIC was hugely important back in the days.

Guess which richest company in the world was founded on selling 'BASIC' languages.

[else]

Guess which richest company in the world was founded on selling 'BASIC' languages.

 

Exxon-Mobil used to sell BASIC?

[danwinslow]

Basic was pretty easy to learn. In fact, it was created with that in mind at Dartmouth in...63? maybe earlier. Since you could affect machine memory directly with PEEK and POKE it was very easy to create graphics and games and so forth on early home computers.

 

C requires libraries to do almost anything. The actual C language itself is quite small. Most people think that the standard libraries like stdio and so forth are part of the language, but they are technically not.

[Herbarius]

Wasn't BASIC made when programming in general was insanely difficult? More so than today? (or even in the 90s).

Yes, however, one of the motivations of the BASIC language was being easy to learn. Hence the name, which also stands as an acronym for "Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code".

 

On 80s Home Computers BASIC was usually part of the Operating System, so every "computer buff" could at least program some simple program that converts units of measurement, solve simple mathematics problems, help them manage their record collection or something like that. These kinds of programs could even be easily ported from one home computer to one of another brand, only minor changes to the codes or no changes at all were needed.

 

But it indeed could also be used for games, even graphical games, you just needed to know which areas of the system RAM are responsible for generating Sprites or backgrounds or colors or whatever (the manual of the computer is imperative) and just "POKE" the necessary data in there... This stuff is a level harder than just text-based stuff, and it heavily depended on the hardware, so no "easy ports" here, you would have to mostly start from scratch on the new machine. But it's still easier to get into than using Assembly. The biggest drawback of BASIC was the slow speed, which was the main reason why most commercial games were "machine code" (making piracy harder was a smaller reason).

 

 

However, if you're talking about the Atari 2600 cartridge "BASIC PROGRAMMING", this is something completely different. It's not even the BASIC programming language, the title, written in normal upper/lowercase, would most likely be "Basic Programming", and not "BASIC Programming".

This cart can help demonstrate the simplest principles of computer programming, but is not suitable for ANY serious application, let alone games. The lack of RAM of the 2600 is propably the main reason for that.

 

 

And yes, it's quite different from langauges like C, especially if you look at the versions from the 80s. To illustrate the difference imagine one factory, where products are produced in a sterile room by people wearing white labcoats using high precision equipment, everything planned ahead, this would be C; while in the neigboring factory the products are assembled by bare hands and clumsy tools, the hands covered in oil, if something doesn't fit at once, they have to improvise, but in the end, it works and everyone had fun working on it - that's BASIC.

 

 

 

On one last note:

First of all...BASIC is interpreted, not compiled.

Yes for the 80s and early 90s that's true, but there have been BASIC compilers around for quite a while today, and there are even some that dropped the option of running it interpreted.

Edited May 15, 2009 by Herbarius

[Segataritensoftii]

Guess which richest company in the world was founded on selling 'BASIC' languages.

 

Exxon-Mobil used to sell BASIC?

Microsoft.

[else]

Guess which richest company in the world was founded on selling 'BASIC' languages.

 

Exxon-Mobil used to sell BASIC?

Microsoft.

 

I just knew somebody wasn't going to get my joke.....