A.D.A. Amiga Demoscene Archive

After being off the Amiga since the mid '90s, I decided to try coding on it again. I wanted to do my development on PC and test in WinUAE, and I didn't find any complete setups for this, so I put together what is (in my own opinion) a slick, foolproof tool chain that makes it easy to get started.

The steps are super simple:
1. download the package from rapidshare. https://rapidshare.com/files/1304660480/AmigaDemoT oolChain_1.zip
2. copy kick13.rom, kick204.rom and kick30.rom into the WinUAE subfolder
3. run build.bat
4. run runa500.bat, runa500plus.bat or runa1200.bat

and voila, you have assembled a piece of code and have it running.

Features:
1. No weird configurations needed - it just works! The bat-files set their environments as needed, everything is using relative paths, and UAE is pre-configured for A500, A500Plus, and A1200.
2. Sample code uses a nice, system-friendly startup code (from Comrade J of SAE, with a few bugfixes to make it run a500, and properly check for pal/ntsc)
3. Sample code includes The Player 6.108 - the best music player out there.
4. Uses VBCC/VAsm/VLink, using Kusma's toolchain.
5. Shell demonstrates how C and asm-files can talk back and forth
6. Contains HowToCode7 which I restructured as a PDF-file, because I couldn't find a PDF online. (Direct Link to HowToCode7.pdf: https://rapidshare.com/files/672015758/HowToCode7. pdf)
7. Contains a solution for Visual Studio 2010, if you (like me) like the interface - but it's not required

Please report ANY problems/issues/feedback in this thread, and I will try to accommodate before future builds

Updated Link: https://rapidshare.com/files/1304660480/AmigaDemoT oolChain_1.zip

Direct Link to HowToCode7.pdf: https://rapidshare.com/files/672015758/HowToCode7. pdf

Thanks for the share, I'll drop that on my PC. Could come in handy. :)

I get an error message when trying to build the demo. I just open a command prompt and type build.bat. Error message is "vc not recognised as an internal or external command" (rougly translated). I suppose this isn't the correct way to do it (sorry for the lame question)?

Also, xxxxx, do you plan to code some demos in the future?

Hi z5_, no, that is weird, something has certainly gone wrong. I am going to ask a lot of questions. What I ask in return: if any point below fixes it, please reply with the fix. If none of them fix it, please answer all questions so I may have a chance of narrowing down the problem

1. Which version of Windows are you running? (I only tested with win7, but don't think it matters)
2. Do you have spaces in your path? (that wouldn't work, but I only think it would fail during emulation.)
3. did you extract everything in the zip-file fully into a path, or did you try to run from inside the extracted archive? (you must extract it to a folder)
4. What is the full path? I am going to go through this assuming you used for example c:\somefolder
5. In the path you extracted the archive, do you see c:\somefolder\toolchain\bin\vc.exe? if you don't see it, something went wrong in the unzipping process
6.After you try to run build.bat, what is the current path? it should be set to c:\somefolder? If not, then maybe I did something wrong with my @cd %~dp0 statement in build.bat
7. After it tries to run build.bat, try to type path in the command line window. It should end with c:\somefolder\;c:\somefolder\toolchain\\bin. If not, something has gone wrong in setpaths.bat, and maybe you had %VBCC% manually set before starting - if that is the case then I may have already fixed it, as I made a more foolproof version of setpaths.bat (for my v2 release). To try it, replace the contents of setpaths.bat with this:

@if NOT X%VBCCDummy%==X goto AlreadySet
@set VBCCDummy=Dummy
@set VBCC=%~dp0
@set VBCC=%VBCC%toolchain
@set PATH=%PATH%;%~dp0;%VBCC%\bin
:AlreadySet


8. If it DOES have c:\somefolder\toolchain\\bin, and you have c:\somefolder\toolchain\\bin\vc.exe, then it may be the double backslashes and your version of windows. The new version of setpaths.bat (see #7 above) should also have a fix for this, so try with that

9. does it have any other output printed in the view? It should at least have an "assembling, Compiling and Linking dh0\mydemo.exe" message, but is there anything else?

Good luck

oh and as for your second question - I have no idea what I want to do with it yet, but it was just bugging me that I couldn't easily play around with simple tests.

xxxxx,

Solution was point 7, the new setpaths.bat.

One other question, when i run runA500.bat or runA1200.bat, all i get is the workbench disk.

Glad to hear that fixed it
For my curiosity, which version of windows do you have? I am surprised that it worked for me and not for you

As for the new big, I can only think that winuae stores something in the registry, so have you used it in the past, maybe? My package doesn't even ship with workbench.
1. In regedit.exe, Try to delete or rename the registry key (\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software
\Arabuusimiehet) to clear it up, and since running winuae may somehow change the .ini file, I would unpack the winuae folder again
2. If that doesn't work, question: does it actually boot to the real workbench? As in with the different drives available? Do you see a drive named dh0 or test there?
3. Is it the same for runa500, runa500+, and runa1200?
4. If that doesn't help, do you have winuae and its' files stored in another location? Could you find it and rename the folder, to see if somehow it finds the wrong inifile? And search for the path in the registry, in case winuae stores stuff in other places?

@xxxxx, i use Windows 7. I have, in the past, installed and tried to play with VBCC and i have definately been playing with path settings at one point.

I'll try point 2 this weekend. I have been using Winuae a lot on my pc so that might explain it.

Version 2 is out - lots of improvements - here are the key points:

Toolchain:
Starting protracker (2.3d, 3.15, 3.62) is now another one-click feature, as is the p61 converter tool
added a wav to raw conversion bat-file, so tracking should be easy for everyone
A4000_40 configuration
batch files work both with amigaforever and traditional roms
fixed configuration problem in setpaths
moved as many files out of the root folder as possible, to keep it cleaner
added batch file to destroy old WinUAE settings in registry

Startup Code
VBlank Interrupt added
Added flag to block multitasking (old-school mode), which also blocks blitter
added flag to disable cache (for self-modifying code)
Added an input handler to properly block input fallthrough

Get it here: https://rapidshare.com/files/3850140088/AmigaDemoT oolChain_2.zip

Here is the final release (for now): https://rapidshare.com/files/2789918627/WinUAEDemo ToolChain_3.zip

Major Changes:
Now works with winuae's built-in Aros rom. You don't even need kickstart anymore! Just click build.bat and runaros.bat to build and run your code.
3 major code fixes to fix my stupid errors when merging different startup codes together

Feel free to upload this to other sites. I tried to upload to various places, but aminet has corrupted the zipfile, scene.org still has the file in its' incoming directory, and untergrund.net has not approved my account request yet. My goal is that once I have a proper location for this, I will register a pouet.net prod, and that is where I invite everybody to write their comments/bugs/feature requests.

V4 is out - it can be found here: http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=58703. Please post comments there

Already said it at over EAB, but I think this deserves a free bump, so I'll say it again: ;)

Personally, I am only using the included startup code in ASMPro on a real Amiga.

It includes some nice fixes and additions to the good old HowToCode7 StartUp code and works very well, in some respects better than others.

So although I don't use the cross-dev part of it, it's still much appreciated. Thanks a lot!

Thank you for the nice words.

Feel free to post any bugs you find here. I think I found a couple of minor bugs myself, but mostly I have focused on adding features and making it simpler to use. There won't be an update coming for quite a while, as I'm too busy at work. Plus I have started to work on some effects myself instead of just doing framework stuff :-)

Dunno if it makes any sense posting in this thread, but the pouet one doesnt seem to be for questions.
Anyway, i just tried this and build/run works fine with the a500+ and aros scripts, but not with the others.
Only get the kickstart insert floppy bootscreen.
I do have winuae installed in another location, but i checked that its definitely the one included in the toolchain that runs on all configurations.
Ive also run the "destroyolduaesettings" script but theres no difference.
Any ideas ?

Load up the WinUAE that the .bat files are starting, then go to configurations, and load each configuration that's failing and adjust the ROM path to where your actual Amiga Forever ROMs are.

Had exactly the same problem and this resolved it. :)

I've not done any code with this package yet, but I really appreciate having it. Nice work :)

did you try copying the roms into the winuae subfolder? that has worked for me, both with Amiga Forever and non-amiga forever roms. I wonder, maybe the package was slightly off, it's quite a while ago, and I have made a bunch of changes locally as I am trying to use it for something

Copying the ROMs should also work. I was just testing it out. I've ended up changing the .bat files to point to my installed WinUAE, as that'll always be updated. Works great once the configs are copied over.

xxxxx: thanks for this, works well! do you know what version of VBCC was compiled?

No, I don't remember. I copied it from Kusma, i think, so find it there. I hate the "compile your own version" mentality, it is so user unfriendly, and i can't be bothered to compile it myself

Agreed. It's even worse when important files are missing...

V5 is out, and it is vastly expanded, and has lots of little goodies in it.
There is much more information about it here: http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=65625
Report any bugs here or on Pouet.

What the hell, Søren - now where did that come from?! (Btw....I'm also a Søren and I knew you way back in time (Nørre Alslev -> ungdomsskolen (or whatever it was called) that Jakob/Kollaps was in charge of). Cool to see you "back".

Hi Soren, long time no see - of course I remember you (and your brother). I am impressed how you keep on releasing new stuff (I love OCS more than AGA, though :-p ). How can I forget dragging the Amiga to Norre Alslev every week?
I still remember showing off my very first "intro" off there. In hindsight, that weekly meetup was very motivating and inspiring

Right, honestly there's more of the good oldfashioned soul in ocs demos, I agree. However, I never did become very good at a500 coding and have kind of given up on that machine. Too much stuff that I would need to "relearn", before I would be able to release something that I would be satisfied with.....yes, Barry set the bar very high with Redux :). And then I have a rather sound AGA setup / demosystem, which means that I can produce stuff fairly easy. Most of the coding is done using Amiga Forever (UAE with some extra goodies), where the tools I use are mainly AsmOne v1.44 and PicCon for converting into chunky (and sometimes into sprites). However, your toolchain looks massive and hopefully it'll motivate more people to produce something for the Amiga...there's really no excuse now :).

Yeah, whether you do OCS or AGA doesn't matter as long as you are productive:-) that is why my image converter supports 8 bit planes though I have never tested it. I don't expect those of you with proven demo systems to use this - this was more to inspire people to come out of retirement.

Hello Hannibal. First I want to thank you for creating this tool chain and releasing it to the public. The last time I coded on amiga and owned real amiga hardware was some time in the early-mid 1990's. I came back to the scene last year after a 20 year break but so far I have only made windows PC productions.

I have thought about making another amiga demo and I was even lucky to get some of my old amiga source code from another member of my old amiga group who somehow managed to keep my code safe for 20 years. Since I have no real amiga hardware I tried to play with UAE and managed to get my old code compiled and running but it just felt like a very awkward working environment after being used to the modern programming tools on windows PC.

Luckily now we have this tool chain and so far it seems like a comfortable way to work. I had no problems getting everything setup and compiling and running the examples from visual studio. Now I just have a question about the best and easiest way for me to use my own existing code or write new code from scratch. How complex is the setup that compiles and runs code from visual studio to UAE? Is it a simple thing to start a new VS solution and have it work just as easily as the examples or is it best to just use the provided solution and delete the example assembly code and replace it with my own?

The example folders are fully self contained so you should be able to duplicate them and fix them up. Know that all the files are text files so you can open them in a text editor (I use Notepad++).
So I would recommend
1. Copy the example intro folder
2. Rename the folder and rename all the individual files
3. Open every single file in a text editor and search for all the original names and put in new names.
I personally like working on a sample and gradually adding to it rather than start from scratch, but you can do either

The example folders are fully self contained so you should be able to duplicate them and fix them up. Know that all the files are text files so you can open them in a text editor (I use Notepad++).
So I would recommend
1. Copy the example intro folder
2. Rename the folder and rename all the individual files
3. Open every single file in a text editor and search for all the original names and put in new names.
I personally like working on a sample and gradually adding to it rather than start from scratch, but you can do either

Thanks for the reply. I should have worked it out on my own I guess but I thought it would be easier to ask.

Thanks again for releasing this, it is just what I need to have the motivation to try and make a new amiga demo.