Raptor BASIC+ for Atari Jaguar – One year retrospective

Post published on Atariage by the user ggn and reproduced here with permission (with few modifications)

Raptor Basic+ is 1 year old! And to celebrate its birthday, we thought we’d make a small retrospective with past, present and future products made using it. But first…

Premise

It was a no brainer. After releasing Raptor, our bare metal library that handles jaguar objects, we realised that it would be much better if we provided people with more ways to interface with it than just plain assembly (actually we knew about this way before the release but for various reasons it never materialised).

After a couple of iterations with playing with Pascal and ehbasic (which we got up and running and named it Raptor Basic) we ended up trying BCX Basic. This looked much more promising! After 12 days of intense hackery (read more about it here) we got it up and running and just in time for Christmas!

Anyway, enough blabla, let’s quickly move on to…

Projects

This is not an exhaustive list, but tries more or less to be in chronological order. If you want to see a complete list and WIP projects, head over Raptor+ BASIC forum on Atariage.

Doger

Binary: doger.abs

Oh look, it’s a game! And it stars Doge! Awwww!

doger1Started as a tutorial game that’s essentially frogger with doge as the main sprite, this is actually very fun to play!

doger2

I’ve showcased it at a few parties and people would not leave the joypad until they finished the game. I think that’s a very good indication that something good is happening there!

Cloudy with a chance of metaballs

Pouet link: http://www.pouet.net…php?which=65610

This is a demoscene production which ranked #1 at Outline 2015, where we entered it in the wild compo. 6 differnt productions were entered and about 110 people cast their votes, so it wasn’t just ourselves voting – thanks to the people at the party! This is probably the first release that showed the potential of rb+, giving Raptor and the hardware a run for its money! Check the full demo below:

[youtube 0Ka1ElGNEGc]

 If you haven’t seen the video, here are few screenshots:

Foxy lady!
Foxy lady!
The Atari ST used up all available CPU time to to do plasma effects. The amiga needed a separate coprocessor. The jaguar? 10 lines of code again ;).
The Atari ST used up all available CPU time to to do plasma effects. The amiga needed a separate coprocessor. The jaguar? 10 lines of code again ;).
Xor patterns? Impossibru!
Xor patterns? Impossibru!
The real genius behind the demo: a doge wearing a tie!
The real genius behind the demo: a doge wearing a tie!

Particle playtime

Binary:  particles.abs

Grab the jagpad, press all the buttons, create psychedelic animations with particles!

Grab the jagpad, press all the buttons, create psychedelic animations with particles!
Grab the jagpad, press all the buttons, create psychedelic animations with particles!

Astro Storm

A challenger appears! Out of seemingly nowhere Sporadic comes into the spotlight and lands this neat and polished game! You can check out its development here from its modest beginnings till the final version. Reboot salutes you, Rik!

Download final here: http://atariage.com/…w-game-release/

A good production has to have a nice boot screen, right? Sporadic scores 10/10 on this!
A good production has to have a nice boot screen, right? Sporadic scores 10/10 on this!
In-game shot. Just point at the rocks and blast them to outer space. Watch out for big alien ships attacking with different patterns!
In-game shot. Just point at the rocks and blast them to outer space. Watch out for big alien ships attacking with different patterns!
After 2 screens of rocks are cleared, you are transported to a first person flight sequence where you have to fly into the green zooming boxes and avoid the meterorites (like the one on the screenshot! Bank, you idiot!)
After 2 screens of rocks are cleared, you are transported to a first person flight sequence where you have to fly into the green zooming boxes and avoid the meterorites (like the one on the screenshot! Bank, you idiot!)

Raycaster

Download Binary:  raycaster.abs

It’s Doom on Basic!!11111onoeneenoneoneone

rayWell, it’s a raycaster engine. And it’s dog slow. But that’s really just a proof of concept with very unoptimised code and mathematics. Written by Sporadic again just for fun. I thought I’d leave this here!

μfly

SH3 strikes back with another old favorite… Superfly DX!

…only it’s not like that at all. The movement curve is totally different, the objects are aligned so they are a bit 3D, the scoring mechanism is different…. and everything’s micro! It’s still not complete but it’s quite close.

Binary and dedicated thread: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/241958-μfly-new-jaguar-game-release/

Check your screen's aspect ratio before playing the game - another free service by Reboot!
Check your screen’s aspect ratio before playing the game – another free service by Reboot!
RRRRRRRRRRRRRR
RRRRRRRRRRRRRR
That scroller definitely looks familiar!
That scroller definitely looks familiar!
Watch out mr fly, an obstacle is almost upon you!
Watch out mr fly, an obstacle is almost upon you!

Boingy uppy

Around the time SH3 was making ufly I pointed him to an animated gif from the Intellivision forum that showed a simple jumping game (forgive me, but I can’t find it to link it here). One thing led to another and SH3 ended up dusting off the old tool I wrote to create the backgrounds for Downfall Falcon and make this small experiment that got nowhere for the time being. Inspiration wanted for this!

[youtube USXr0_qn8gU]

Boioioioioing!
Boioioioioing!

Bexagon

Complete role reversal! SH3 wrote the code and I made the graphics! As an idea it started from a Game&Watch demake of Super Hexagon SH3 noticed on my very low-key review blog (http://dbug.kicks-as…/RebootReviews/), it took life of its own after 1-2 hours!

I’m sure this doesn’t need introductions – it already looks spectacular (and I don’t mind me saying this!) and plays great! I’m really excited about this and I can’t wait till it’s finished to be honest!

Did I mention that Terry Cavanagh (the original creator of Super Hexagon) liked the video of the game? :)

[youtube R59NB8riHyU]

[youtube B8qhmZUziu8]

Kaboom

Completely out of the blue Omf lands this learning exercise of his – a port of the classic 2600 game with the same name. Keep at it!Dedicated thread and downloads:

Dedicated thread and downloads: http://atariage.com/…746-wip-kaboom/

The title screen. Press the button, You know you want to !
The title screen. Press the button, You know you want to!
And the main playfield screen. You know what you have to do so get going!
And the main playfield screen. You know what you have to do so get going!

I can’t believe it’s not Outrun (working title – obviously!)

Sporadic has been busy again! What started as a very low FPS thing that looked like this:

outrun1

got gradually pimped, drove the development of the language, and became this:

outrun2

Quite an improvement I’d say! Sporadic still plugs away at this so it’s still an early WIP but it really looks promising. Go Rik!

Game progress, downloads and discussion thread: http://atariage.com/…wip-not-outrun/

Christmas present!

To celebrate rb+’s birthday, we thought it would be fitting if a new version was released. So here it is! v1.3 is ready for download on Github and Bitbucket. Grab the updated package and enjoy! 42 improvements and bug fixes have been committed since v1.2 – that’s a good sign, right? :).

Also, we have a brand new demo released today!

Sommarhack 2016 invite intro

Dedicated thread and download: http://atariage.com/…invitro-wiggle/

Using the same set of commands introduced to help Sporadic accelerate his racing game, and after 5 minutes of me explaining how twister/rubber cube effects work, SH3 went and did this little invite intro for the Sommarhack party in Sweden!

sommarhack1

Thanks!

It’s been a year full of pleasant surprises. People stepping up and trying the language, asking questions, making suggestions, influencing the language, pressing for more functionality, making tools. Quite honestly this was totally beyond our expectations – quite frankly we didn’t expect that anyone would pick this up. Not a lot of people did of course but I’d like to thank everyone for sticking with it and creating fun stuff. You make all the work put toward this language worthwhile! Here’s to many more years of creativity!

The future

We are far from being done with this. Both the language and the Raptor API are in constant development and will continue to be as long as we can find the time and people ask for new features. There will be a Raptor update soon, so keep a look out for that!

Post published on Atariage by the user ggn and reproduced here with permission (with few modifications)

Source: Atariage

Author: Paulo Garcia

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