AMOS BASIC is a dialect of the

BASIC BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College ...

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...

for the

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphi ...

computer. Following on from the successful

STOS BASIC STOS BASIC is a dialect of the BASIC programming language for the Atari ST personal computer. It was designed for creating games, but the set of high-level graphics and sound commands it offers is suitable for developing multimedia software with ...

for the

Atari ST The Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the Atari 8-bit family. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985 and was widely available in July. It was the first pers ...

, AMOS BASIC was written for the Amiga by

François Lionet François Lionet is a French programmer, best known for having written STOS BASIC on the Atari ST and AMOS BASIC on the Amiga (along with Constantin Sotiropoulos). He has also written several games on these platforms. In 1994, he founded C ...

with

Constantin Sotiropoulos Constantin Sotiropoulos is the co-creator (with François Lionet) of AMOS BASIC, a popular video game and multimedia programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming language ...

and published by

Europress Software Europress was a British magazine and software publisher based in Adlington, near Macclesfield, Cheshire. Their magazine publishing business was previously known as Database Publications. The software division was renamed in 1999 to Actualize. His ...

in 1990.

History

AMOS competed on the Amiga platform with Acid Software's

Blitz BASIC Blitz BASIC is the programming language dialect of the first Blitz compilers, devised by New Zealand-based developer Mark Sibly. Being derived from BASIC, Blitz syntax was designed to be easy to pick up for beginners first learning to program. Th ...

. Both BASICs differed from other dialects on different platforms, in that they allowed the easy creation of fairly demanding multimedia software, with full structured code and many high-level functions to load images, animations, sounds and display them in various ways. The original AMOS was a

BASIC interpreter A BASIC interpreter is an interpreter that enables users to enter and run programs in the BASIC language and was, for the first part of the microcomputer era, the default application that computers would launch. Users were expected to use the BAS ...

which, whilst working fine, suffered the same disadvantages of any language being run interpretively. By all accounts, AMOS was extremely fast among interpreted languages, being speedy enough that an extension called AMOS 3D could produce playable 3D games even on plain 7 MHz 68000 Amigas. Later, an AMOS

compiler In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs that ...

was developed that further increased speed. AMOS could also run

MC68000 The Motorola 68000 (sometimes shortened to Motorola 68k or m68k and usually pronounced "sixty-eight-thousand") is a 16/32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessor, introduced in 1979 by Motorola Semiconductor Products Sector ...

machine code, loaded into a program's memory banks. To simplify animation of sprites, AMOS included the AMOS Animation Language (AMAL), a compiled sprite scripting language which runs independently of the main AMOS BASIC program. It was also possible to control screen and "rainbow" effects using AMAL scripts. AMAL scripts in effect created CopperLists, small routines executed by the Amiga's Agnus chip. After the original version of AMOS, Europress released a compiler (AMOS Compiler), and two other versions of the language: Easy AMOS, a simpler version for beginners, and AMOS Professional, a more advanced version with added features, such as a better

integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source code editor, build automation tools a ...

ARexx ARexx is an implementation of the Rexx language for the Amiga, written in 1987 by William S. Hawes, with a number of Amiga-specific features beyond standard REXX facilities. Like most REXX implementations, ARexx is an interpreted language. Program ...

support, a new

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...

API and new flow control constructs. Neither of these new versions was significantly more popular than the original AMOS. AMOS was used mostly to make multimedia software,

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

s (platformers and graphical adventures) and educational software. The language was mildly successful within the Amiga community. Its ease of use made it especially attractive to beginners. Perhaps AMOS BASIC's biggest disadvantage, stemming from its

lineage, was its incompatibility with the Amiga's

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

functions and interfaces. Instead, AMOS BASIC controlled the computer directly, which caused programs written in it to have a non-standard user interface, and also caused compatibility problems with newer versions of hardware. Today, the language has declined in popularity along with the Amiga computer for which it was written. Despite this, a small community of enthusiasts are still using it. The

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...

to AMOS was released around 2001 under a BSD style license by

Clickteam Clickteam is a French software development company based in Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine. Founded by Francis Poulain, François Lionet and Yves Lamoureux, Clickteam is best known for the creation of Clickteam Fusion, a script-free progra ...

, a company that includes the original programmer. On the 4 April 2019,

announced the release of AMOS2 on his websit
amos2.org
AMOS2 replaces STOS and AMOS together, using

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...

as its code interpreter, making the new development system independent and generally deployed in internet browsers. Amos 2 is now called AOZ Studio. Its website is at https://www.aoz.studio/.

Software

Software written using AMOS BASIC includes: * ''

Miggybyte ''Miggybyte'' was a free disk-based magazine for the Amiga range of computers, published by Pickled Fish Software and edited by Ben Gaunt. From 1995 to 1997 twelve issues were published all being on a single floppy disk only. The magazine was ...

'' * '' Scorched Tanks'' * Games by

Vulcan Software Vulcan Software was an independent computer games company founded in 1994 in the UK. Vulcan started creating software for the Amiga computer systems. Its first commercial game was ''Valhalla and the Lord of Infinity'', which was notable for bei ...

, amongst which was the ''

Valhalla In Norse mythology Valhalla (;) is the anglicised name for non, Valhǫll ("hall of the slain").Orchard (1997:171–172) It is described as a majestic hall located in Asgard and presided over by the god Odin. Half of those who die in combat e ...

'' trilogy * Amiga version of ''

Ultimate Domain ''Ultimate Domain'', known as ''Genesia'' in Europe, is a computer game developed by Microïds and published by Mindscape initially on the Commodore Amiga in 1993 and then ported for the IBM PC in 1994. The original Amiga version is known to be ...

'' (called '' Genesia'') by

Microïds Microids (formerly Microïds) is a French video game developer and Video game publisher, publisher based in Paris. Founded in 1985 by Elliot Grassiano, it attained early success with games published through Loriciel in France and other partners ...

* ''

Flight of the Amazon Queen ''Flight of the Amazon Queen'' is a graphical point-and-click adventure game by Interactive Binary Illusions, originally released in 1995 for Amiga and MS-DOS. The game was re-released as freeware in 2004 for use with ScummVM. In January 2022, ...

'', by

Interactive Binary Illusions Across the many fields concerned with interactivity, including information science, computer science, human-computer interaction, communication, and industrial design, there is little agreement over the meaning of the term "interactivity", but mo ...

* ''

Extreme Violence Graphic violence refers to the depiction of especially vivid, brutal and realistic acts of violence in visual media such as film, television, and video games. It may be real, simulated live action, or animated. Intended limitedly for mature ...

'', included on an ''Amiga Power'' cover disk * '' Jetstrike'', a commercial game by Rasputin Software

History

Software

References

External links