How where Atari 2600 games programed back then?

[haveYouCodedInBatariToday22]

I was born in an age where there are many development tools like ides and emulators with things like debuggers, git support, code highlighting, and plugins. It's kinda crazy to me how people generations before

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(who probably now have hair loss, bald, or dead)

me were able to make playable games without something like sublime text! I don't even know if they even use a text editor at all. If they did have a dedicated program to save and write text files, what did they run it on? If not, what did they use?

[tschak909]

1 hour ago, haveYouCodedInBatariToday22 said:

I was born in an age where there are many development tools like ides and emulators with things like debuggers, git support, code highlighting, and plugins. It's kinda crazy to me how people generations before

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(who probably now have hair loss, bald, or dead)

me were able to make playable games without something like sublime text! I don't even know if they even use a text editor at all. If they did have a dedicated program to save and write text files, what did they run it on? If not, what did they use?

I have....exhaustively gone over this, please read the thread.

 

With that said...

 

Text editors? Depends on the host system:

 

* With PDP-11's running UNIX, you had 'ed', and BSD added 'vi'.

* PDP-10's had a plethora of text editors, but the most used was EMACS, which ran on top of TECO, KED, EDT, DEC-SED, many more.

* PDP-11's running RT-11/RSX or RSTS/E had 'EDT' for line based editing, and later (late 70s), 'KED' (Keypad Editor), TECO was also available.

* VAX's running VMS also run EDT and KED.

* I can't remember what editors ran on the Data General MV/8000 (maybe someone can remind me?)

* S-100 machines could use the 'ed' editor under CP/M, as well as many other text editors such as WordMaster (wm, which became WordStar)

 

The list goes on. 

 

But basically, as I've mentioned before, the workflow was:

 

* launch editor

* key in code

* save file

* run assembler

* take assembler output, send it to bespoke development system (e.g. over RS232 or parallel port) attached to game unit.

* use logic analyzer (e.g. HP 1611A) as debugger

* repeat

 

Edited May 23 by tschak909