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Website aims to publish new Beeb games

Published: 26th Mar 2008, 22:04:31 | Permalink | Printable

It's the year two-thousand-and-eight-bit

A screenshotA website was launched this week for punters who fancy a go at creating software for vintage Acorn 8-bit hardware. RetroSoftware.co.uk was set up to give a helping hand to anyone who wants to take a nostalgic trip back to the days of hacking together 6502 assembler code or wants to experience writing for 1980s microcomputer hardware for the first time. Beta testers, musicians, artists and illustrators and other contributors are also welcome to join in, we're told.

It's hoped the site will reach a point where it can begin publishing users' software with proper disc releases and printed materials, just like the good old days when the Acorn Beeb ruled the classroom and fought against the ZX81 for a place in every British living room.

A number of projects are already underway on the site: a software development environment geared towards 8-bit Acorn microcomputers by Steve O'Leary called SWIFT, and a 6502 CPU assembler by Rich Talbot-Watkins called BeebAsm.

A spokesman for the site said: "Some time less than a year ago, we started to notice that a number of talented 8-bit Acorn developer bods were gathering over in the stairwaytohell.com forums. Never one to miss a bandwagon, a few pints later and it was decided the best thing to do was to exploit them all.

"Retrosoftware.co.uk is a community website designed to help people develop for old machines, particularly the 8-bit Acorn machines. As well as a forum to discuss with like-minded individuals, the site can provide you with hosting for your project and an army of volunteers to help with gameplay and platform testing, as well as artwork and distribution if you make it to a final cassette and/or disc release."

See the URL below for more details.

Links

The Retro Software website

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Discussion

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Shame that these guys are going for beeb and not RISC OS releases - the platform could use more coders!

is a RISC OS Userarawnsley on 26/3/08 10:59PM
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It's not a great stretch to consider developing games for RISC OS under the "retro" umbrella (though we wish it were otherwise) ... perhaps such people could congregate there too?

Shaping up to be a really good site. As someone who is getting as much fun from his Beeb collection as his "modern" computers at the moment - I wish it all the best!

is a RISC OS Userkrisa on 27/3/08 7:51AM
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Hi,

As the quoted spokesman from the article above, I can assure you that we're certainly not adverse to Risc OS programming, although the current contributors are mainly focussed on 8-bit development at the moment.

It really is about people bringing what they can to the table - if anyone with an Archimedes background would like to contribute tools or start new projects, we'll help wherever we can. Drop by the forums and start a dialogue with us!

Everyone's welcome, whether they use 8 or 32-bits ... :)

Sam.

is a RISC OS UserSamwise on 28/3/08 1:10AM
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RISC OS games development is hampered by development time and the ports by Alan Buckley and the Unix Porting Project (not to forget the many independent desktop card/board games by others) have provided a steady stream of releases for this platform for years.

However, these 8-bit programs will all run on RISC OS machines. Given that there's now three development streams for BBC Micro emulation development on RISC OS it would be a brilliant time for a mutitasking version of Beebit or 6502em to emerge onto the scene. This would bring all the new (and 1000+ old) games titles to the convenience of the RISC OS desktop and bring a great retro environment into the hands of modern RISC OS programmers - many of whom grew up or "cut their teeth" on the Beeb.

is a RISC OS UserAW on 28/3/08 10:56PM
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I think you'll find that both 6502Em and BeebIt already multitask, and what is the third development stream?

is a RISC OS UserIvanDobski on 29/3/08 2:36PM
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Their emulation certainly does not multitask to my knowledge. Beebit has 2 development streams.

is a RISC OS UserAW on 29/3/08 11:36PM
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