A Basic Compiler for the Atari 2600
Copyright 2005-2007 by Fred Quimby
bAtariBASIC continuing development, with improved support for Unix / macOS.
The last release of bAtari Basic was version 1.0 in 2007, and it's getting pretty long-in-the-tooth, so I've decided to make a fork for needed improvements, hosting on GitHub to make the project more visible and help with collaboration. See bB/README.txt for the original credits and instructions. I'll add updated summaries to this README as the project progresses.
bAtari Basic 1.0 remains a free and open source product, under copyright, with a permissive open source license. It is not "public domain" or "abandonware" but merely a project that lost its steam around 2007 due to lack of interest. Since that time there's been a steadily growing interest in the consoles-of-yore due to emulation, USB Atari joysticks, speedy laptops, 2600-in-a-joystick products, re-issues of classic titles, and so on. An exciting "homebrew" scene is producing games that never made it to the 2600, improved versions of games whose originals fell short (e.g., Pac Man), and many new and original titles.
While it is true that we can now use cc65 to write 2600 code directly in C, and it's been demonstrated that C++18 can be used to produce highly optimized 6502 code, bAtariBASIC still has some utility. 2600 programs are usually not very large or complex, and bAtariBASIC is great for rapid prototyping. Since I've already begun working to rectify that situation with my 6502-Tools project, it seems like an opportune time to revive bAtariBASIC (and provide other tools) to make it easier to develop 2600 games on macOS.
- Cleaned up, standardized code formatting, spacing
- Added defines for some common constants
- Reduced code size and repetition with inlines, macros, rewrites
- Added a macro to output tabbed assembler. e.g.,
ap("lda #1") - Move private functions and data out of headers
- Replaced tabs in strings with
\t - Some support for bAtariBASIC in Sublime Text 3 (macOS)
- Allow more complex compile-time expressions
- Add shorthand operators:
--,++,+=,*=,/=,^=,|=,&=,%= - Add a single-binary build option with flags for preprocess, postprocess, optimize
- Option to produce asm output for
ca65? - Option to produce C output suitable for
cc65? - Write some tools for making 2600 graphics in JavaScript+HTML5
- Keep the language small and simple
- Keep the Makefile-based build system