Commander X16 IDE

Roughnight · Post by **Roughnight** » Sun Aug 22, 2021 7:10 pm

Good evening everyone.

Since I am currently learning to program assembler like crazy, and it still takes some time until I get something good ready,

I thought I would combine it with something I can do a little better.

Some time ago in another thread I mentioned an idea how to introduce younger people to retro computers.

An IDE with which you can assemble a game by point & click. So I've done some other things in the meantime ..

But since last week I've been working on this idea.

Status so far:

I have a rudimentary editor, can create my project and attach it to the emulator right away. The Sprite Editor is still very spartan,

but I can already insert sprites from common image formats (these are saved in asm code) -> ahh ok, i forgot to show it in the vid ... sry

I chose KickAssembler for the necessary compiler, simply because I am currently learning C64 / X16 coding with it.

In addition to the GUI programming, I scour every possible source that deals with the X16. I am currently creating a boilerplate with

which certain things can be incorporated into macros. E.g. initialization of sprites, Copy2VRAM etc.

The next steps will be the layer configurations and tilemaps. And then another iteration of GUI improvement ... and then on and on ?

I'm also sure that some are not interested in such a software, since most of them already have their workflows. I'll keep you posted here in this thread if you want.

EDIT: right video format.... i'm dump and have to go to bed.... ?

Roughnight · Post by **Roughnight** » Sun Aug 22, 2021 9:46 pm

Ok, I had the wrong video format, sry for inconvenience.

Here the video where I load the sprite from a png file!

voltage · Post by **voltage** » Mon Aug 23, 2021 11:39 am

Amazing work! Cool concept and points for KickAssembler!

I’ll be watching your progress

VincentF · Post by **VincentF** » Mon Aug 23, 2021 11:48 am

I didn't expect to see a Godot program here, awesome work ! ?

Can't wait to see more updates

Roughnight · Post by **Roughnight** » Mon Aug 23, 2021 2:12 pm

2 hours ago, VincentF said:

I didn't expect to see a Godot program here, awesome work ! ?

Can't wait to see more updates

Yes, Godot has a really strong UI platform with themes and everything.

Squall_FF8 · Post by **Squall_FF8** » Thu Sep 02, 2021 5:50 pm

Cool idea!

I would suggest before you start implementing goodies, try to finish essentials - what makes something an IDE:

Editor - yours seems pretty good. Things like syntax highlight, suggestion/auto-complete, hint on mouse pointing - are things that we got spoiled ?

Compiler - not only to compile the code, but to visualize in the editor errors (position it at the wrong line, underline with red,...)

Run the resulting file

Debugging - breakpoints, step in,...

(optional) Project file - to hold all folders references, used files, resources, compiler settings,...

(optional) Help - contextual help is the most desired (like hit F1 and get help on commands, on references, ...). You can include some general info - VERA registers, X16 Kernel, PSG spec, 65c02 Instruction set, ...

You have done many of these, good work! If you manage to pull all above you will be on par with contemporary IDEs that cost thousands ?

And last but not least: stay away from editors (except the one for code)! This will suck your time and energy just to find out that almost nobody uses it, simply because there are plenty free and commercial that do better job (and users know and prefer at least one of them).