Sprite editor for the Atari ST written in GFA Basic 3.
In 1987, I bought an Atari ST 520, a big step up from the Atari 800XL I had before. I wanted to write a game, like I've done on the 800XL, but couldn't find a good sprite editor.
So I started developing a sprite editor. I kept adding features and spend many evenings programming. I learned a lot about programming, GUI's and computers in general.
At the end, in 1991, the program grew to 1.463 lines of code. It supported masking, auto masking, drawing lines and geometric figures, copy and pasting bitmaps and exporting to the ICN format. It also included a help file which explains all the options.
I planned to make it shareware. It would've been a great addition to the existing Atari ST icon/sprite editors. GFA Basic 3 provided a compiler, so I was exited to use that to generate a proper program. Unfortunately, the compiled code didn't work correctly and I lost interest.
I created a new release with a compiled executable and hopefully this one works fine.
One other thing: the software is in Dutch. I don't know why I've never translated it to English, pretty much a requirement to publish software as shareware. I think I could've translated all menu options, but translating the help file was a step too far at that time.
I release the software as open source. Go ahead and translate it to English, compile it, and maybe you will release it as shareware 32+ years later.
Screenshot with about dialog
Screenshot with icon test
Screenshot with open drawing menu
If you want to play with Atari ST software today, you can use the following resources
Hatari is a modern Atari ST emulator. Go to the command line options to set everything up.
Suggested command line options:
--monitor mono
--harddrive <dir> (Replace <dir> with the path of the directory you want to make available within the emulator).
If you search the internet, you might be able to find GFA Basic 3 for the Atari ST and TOS 2.06.
April 2023, Edwin Martin