[Emehr]

For the resident Mac users programming for Stella, I now present my weekend project: Stella Playfield Editor!

It's a graphical tool for generating single or 8-color RGB blend playfield graphics. The image can then be saved to a user customizable text file formatted for use with DASM. A Read Me file is included to get you started.

Tested with OS 8.6 and OS X (in Classic mode). Let me know what you think!

Direct download link: http://home.earthlin...s/spfeditor.sit

Enjoy!
Jason Rein

[slapdash]

It's unlikely I'll be able to really use this any time soon, but I'm always happy to see more Mac tools. Thanks a lot man!

I'll post a note on Stellalist about it's availability.

[mactari]

Looks like it might be better right now to serve as a quick-sketch tool, but really pretty neat.

Perhaps you could add rectangle tools and circle tools like a drawing program? I think that'd help make some sharp playfields.

It also appears you can't undo a block you've drawn. Is that right?

Last question -- What's it written in? If it's REALbasic you ought to be able to get it onto OS X pretty easily (not that I've gone through the trouble to port DAsm to OS X yet... wish I was more C-savvy).

[Emehr]

slapdash said:

It's unlikely I'll be able to really use this any time soon, but I'm always happy to see more Mac tools. Thanks a lot man!

I'll post a note on Stellalist about it's availability.

I'm happy to oblige. It helps to have a lot of reusable code from past projects.

BTW, I recently subscribed to Stellalist but I'm still in "research the archives before I post" mode. Thanks for putting the word out!

mactari said:

Perhaps you could add rectangle tools and circle tools like a drawing program? I think that'd help make some sharp playfields.

I was thinking about adding standard paint tools (selection, rectangle, circle, line) but hadn't committed to it. Consider it now on my to-do list.

mactari said:

It also appears you can't undo a block you've drawn. Is that right?

That is correct. 'Undo' has yet to be implemented (adds to list).

mactari said:

Last question -- What's it written in? If it's REALbasic you ought to be able to get it onto OS X pretty easily (not that I've gone through the trouble to port DAsm to OS X yet... wish I was more C-savvy).

It's written in C and built with MPW. I'm still getting my feet wet with OS X's ProjectBuilder. When I'm at a nice, stable version I'll Carbonize it.

Thanks for the feedback! If anybody also has preferences for how they'd like to have their playfield data formatted please let me know.

Jason

[Andrew Davie]

mactari said:

Looks like it might be better right now to serve as a quick-sketch tool, but really pretty neat.

Perhaps you could add rectangle tools and circle tools like a drawing program?  I think that'd help make some sharp playfields.

It also appears you can't undo a block you've drawn.  Is that right?

Last question -- What's it written in?  If it's REALbasic you ought to be able to get it onto OS X pretty easily (not that I've gone through the trouble to port DAsm to OS X yet... wish I was more C-savvy).

A MAC version of DASM will be released tonight. Hold your breath!

[mactari]

Andrew Davie said:

A MAC version of DASM will be released tonight.  Hold your breath!

I would say, "Now we're getting somewhere," but then I've had the Classic Mactari tools for years and still haven't made a game... :^(

Regardless, thanks Andrew! I'll have to break out jEdit and update the site! Maybe even throw distella under the gcc train and see what happens.

Ruffin Bailey

[Andrew Davie]

Andrew Davie said:

A MAC version of DASM will be released tonight.  Hold your breath!

http://www.atari2600.org/dasm - Latest release of DASM (2.20.07) now released, including a Mac-binary.

[slapdash]

Awesome. Now if I could just find the time and ambition to start coding...

[Albert]

Now we just need an update of Stella for OS X! I'd like to do some 2600 programming soon and it would be great to do so under that environment instead of Windows. But my understanding is that Stella is pretty far behind, and that there are no other viable 2600 emulators on the Mac yet.

..Al

[mactari]

I don't know that the "Stella Excuse" holds too much water! ;^) There's plenty you can do with Stella, and it seems list members are usually able to coax Stella into playing even their fanciest games with the right Stella.pro file or what-have-you.

At any rate, even if it's missing some illegal opcodes, which seems to be all the rage recently, there's still an infinite number of games to be made that run on both an Atari 2600 & Stella! Macs work just fine, I think!

[mactari]

Andrew Davie said:

Andrew Davie said:

A MAC version of DASM will be released tonight.  Hold your breath!

http://www.atari2600.org/dasm - Latest release of DASM (2.20.07) now released, including a Mac-binary.

Whoa. Hang on. This is just an updated MPW tool -- it's still for Classic Mac. Updated version:

DASM V2.20.07, Macro Assembler ©1988-2003
vs. the most recent before now:
DASM V2.02, ©Copyright 1988 Matthew Dillon, All Rights Reserved

... but still an MPW tool. You'll still have to follow the usual Mactari tools tutorial, give or take, to get it running (though you really only need the MPW application, not the entire Golden Master, though the GM version gives you quite a few more tools).

I notice we've also lost our commando interface, which I think is useful to beginners.

But enough looking at horses' teeth!

Ruffin Bailey

[Jasoco]

Call me when someone makes a programming tool to create old games using a BASIC language. It's the only language I speak.

Well..

AvailableLanguages$ = "BASIC" & "English"