AMOS (programming language): Difference between revisions

Revision as of 19:27, 14 August 2012

Revision as of 20:15, 14 September 2012

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AMOS competed on the Amiga platform with Acid Software's [[Blitz BASIC]]. 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 version was [[interpreter (computing)|interpreted]] which, whilst working fine, suffered fromthe performancesame problemsdisadvantage of any language being run interpretively. By all accounts, AMOS was extremely fast among interpreted languages. The language was fast enough that an extension called AMOS 3D could produce playable 3D games even on plain 7MHz Amigas. Later, an AMOS [[compiler]] was developed that reducedfurther thisincreased problemspeed.

AMOS was also notable for the ability to include inline Assembly Language.

To speed up the animation of sprites, AMOS included the AMOS Animation Language (AMAL), a compiled sprite scripting language which runs independently of the main AMOS BASIC program.<ref>http://grove.ufl.edu/~cwarner/computers.html</ref> It was also possible to control screen and "rainbow" effects using AMAL scripts.

To speed up thesimplify animation of sprites, AMOS included the AMOS Animation Language (AMAL), a compiled sprite scripting language which runs independently of the main AMOS BASIC program.<ref>http://grove.ufl.edu/~cwarner/computers.html</ref> 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 Angus chip.

After the original version of AMOS, Europress released two other versions: '''Easy AMOS''', a simpler version for beginners, and '''AMOS Professional''', a more advanced version with added features, such as a better [[Integrated development environment|IDE]], [[ARexx]] support, a new [[user interface|UI]] sublanguage and new flow control constructs. Neither of these new versions was significantly more popular than the original AMOS.{{Citation needed|date=January 2012|reason=For example, from my experience it was way more popular. References to sales figures or alike would be nice.}}

AMOS was mostly used to make multimedia software, [[video game]]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 it Atari ST lineage, was its incompatibility with the Amiga's [[AmigaOS|operating system]] 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 the operating system.

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]] to AMOS has since been released under a [[BSD licenses|BSD style license]] by [[Clickteam]] - a company that includes the original programmer.