IDE or "Native" ???
Hi all,
I'd like to start learning to write a game for the Commodore PET or the VIC-20...
I've never tried this, but am pretty well versed in programming languages generally.
My question... I'm kind of a weird pure-ist, and am leaning towards creating on the actual emulated machine (through VICE), but am I making this pointlessly hard by today's standards? Do most people use an IDE of some kind these days?
Thanks,
Johnny
For me, on Windows, CBM Prg Studio is a great IDE to use. Don't know about other systems.
Thanks David! I'm also playing with the PET emulator at RetroGameCoders. I have CBM Prg Studio loaded and will fire it up.
I like to code using modern IDEs (obviously, the online one was born out of this) for many reasons.
Consider version control. On the original hardware you need to be saving "v2" "v3", and might not even have time stamps. Comparing versions is hard ("diffs").
A big one is the original hardware and my eyes aren't a great match. My bad eyes and long screen sessions for day job means I get a lot of benefit from syntax highlighted modern fonts with option to resize the editor window etc.
Consider also the vic 20 only has 22 columns (IIRC) of text which is not a lot for coding.
I make heavy use of search and replace too.
That is also before you start thinking about assembler and compilers ...
That said, I am obviously also a fan of the real hardware, otherwise I wouldn't spend so much time, money and energy on refurbs :)
Thanks Chris, really appreciate your reply and you make a great case for IDEs. I hadn't thought of a lot of those aspects!
I use the TRSE IDE as it already has modules for the VIC giving software sprites, hardware scrolling of the full screen and much more. You can also write inline assembly if you wish with it.
https://lemonspawn.com/turbo-rascal-syntax-error-expected-but-begin/downloads/