How To Make An Atari Game

The basis of this tutorial is to provide an introductory look at programming in BASIC. Here, we’ll be using Batari Basic to create an Atari 2600 game that’s playable on most Atari emulators.
You can download Visual BBasic from here- http://www.tinkernut.com/demos/219_atari/visual_bbasic.exe
You can download my sample game and source code from here – http://www.tinkernut.com/demos/219_atari/tinkernut_world.zip
Informacje i Media
May 6, 2011 at 4:44 pm
Valuable info. Lucky me I found your site by accident, and I am shocked why this accident didn’t happened earlier! I bookmarked it.
cj8tacos123
July 19, 2013 at 12:14 am
Same and i actually ended up bookmarking it too!!!! : )
dan
June 10, 2011 at 7:45 pm
The download links appear to be broken 🙁
Thomas Ertle
January 14, 2012 at 5:07 pm
That’s Okay. 🙁
Aniket
July 2, 2011 at 12:35 am
Download link does not work.
Thomas Ertle
January 14, 2012 at 5:08 pm
DARN IT! YOU SUKER FOR THAT!
Thomas Ertle
January 14, 2012 at 5:09 pm
NOW IF YOU RESTART, I THINK THAT IT WILL HELP DOWNLOAD IT!
Mubo
July 10, 2011 at 2:03 am
the links work fine… right click and save file.
however the VisualBBasic program wont install on my windows 7 64bit 🙁
Kronos
November 9, 2011 at 1:13 am
Everything works but I cant run after I compile!
Talha Khalil
January 8, 2012 at 6:31 am
This is a very good video!
Thomas Ertle
January 14, 2012 at 5:00 pm
Going to create a Atari game is nothing. I have a Atari game I found and it is jr. Pac-Man
Thomas Ertle
January 14, 2012 at 5:04 pm
if you want to go to my Webpage without a CLICK on my name, go to http://www.yoyogames.com/
Thomas Ertle
January 14, 2012 at 5:06 pm
🙂 DARN
Thomas Ertle
January 14, 2012 at 5:06 pm
Oops
Thomas Ertle
January 14, 2012 at 5:09 pm
🙁 DARN
Thomas Ertle
January 14, 2012 at 5:10 pm
Darn that face for smile 🙁
Jonathan O'Dell
February 26, 2012 at 4:24 pm
I’m having trouble with Visual bB. I am new to this sort of thing so I don’t know how to debug this… I create a little game like you teach, debug the game, put in the loop,blah,blah,blah…
THEN I go to play the screen using “Stella” and I get a BIG, FAT, ANNOING error message.
it says this:
[MISSING BINARY]
(could not locate default.bas.bin and could not recompile. Please make sure it was compiled correctly.)
As I said, I set my emulator to “Stella.exe”.
I also set the bB compiler to “2600basic.exe” and the ALT Batch File to “2600bas.bat”
I hope you can help!
Jonathan O'Dell
February 26, 2012 at 8:45 pm
ok, so I fixed that. but now, all of a sudden, the editor is picking up my cursor as a syntax error…
Jonathan O'Dell
February 26, 2012 at 10:24 pm
WELL! it seems i can solve my own problems.
[IF ANY OF YOU GUYS ARE HAVING THE SAME PROBLEMS,SEE BELOW]
my first comment (missing binary) was solved using the “bB” folder inside of the “atari2600” folder located in the C:/ drive. “atari2600” has most everything you need for ‘/|\ ATARI’ programming.
my second comment was solved because not all of my Keywords were colored blue. I don’t know why, but it just goes and thinks your cursor is an error. SO MAKE SURE YOUR TEXT APPLIES TO THE COLOR CODING!!! or it will not be very fun to program in “Visual bB”… 🙁
RatcheT2497
August 31, 2013 at 9:05 am
Wait, using the bB folder inside of the atari2600 folder? Whaa?
Mspeter97
April 21, 2012 at 7:58 am
When I put the player0x=50:player0y=50 and player1x=20:player1y=20 I got a synthax error but I wrote what was in the video…whan can I do?
computermaster
May 25, 2013 at 7:08 pm
That happens to me too!
computermaster
June 26, 2013 at 8:10 pm
Type:
player0x = 50
player0y = 50
player1x = 20
player1y = 20
Remember spaces and indents
joshthenesnerd
April 29, 2012 at 5:49 pm
i have been trying to make games for a while this looks very helpful thanks bub
tailsisawesome1997
July 15, 2012 at 3:41 am
Quick question. What do you set as the compiler for visual bB? Or do you not set it as anything at all?
WTF
July 21, 2012 at 3:54 pm
Could not locate sed.exe. Please copy sed.exe to D:\NIDZA\PROGRAMI\Atari2600. This will improve DASM error reporting
Precompilation failed, aborted at 7/21/2012 5:57:17 PM
THIS COMES OUT WHEN I TRY TO COMPILE THE GAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!AND IT DOESN’T WANT TO START!!
Jeff
January 5, 2013 at 4:24 am
You’ll get a lot more help from the batari Basic Atari Age Forum
http://www.atariage.com/forums/forum/65-batari-basic/
Simon
January 14, 2013 at 9:32 am
If I want to run the visualbB.exe a message appears it says: “The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000135). Click OK to terminate the application.”
Koen
February 6, 2013 at 3:18 pm
Why can’t I change the font size? whenever i slecet it and try to edit it, nothing happens, it stays at 975. And i can’t open the playfield, it says ”Unable to open, wanna open in tekst file?”
computermaster
May 25, 2013 at 7:21 pm
P.S. It’s text not tekst
CJ
February 23, 2013 at 5:28 pm
whenever I try to compile my game, this message appears:
See the end of this message for details on invoking
just-in-time (JIT) debugging instead of this dialog box.
************** Exception Text **************
System.ArgumentNullException: Argument cannot be Nothing.
Parameter name: file
at Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO.FileSystem.CheckFilePathTrailingSeparator(String path, String paramName)
at Microsoft.VisualBasic.MyServices.FileSystemProxy.GetFileInfo(String file)
at VisualbB.mainIDE.preCompile(String BASfile)
at VisualbB.mainIDE.Compile(String filePath, String filename, String sourceDirectory)
at VisualbB.mainIDE.CompileToolStripMenuItem_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.RaiseEvent(Object key, EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.HandleClick(EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.HandleMouseUp(MouseEventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStrip.OnMouseUp(MouseEventArgs mea)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmMouseUp(Message& m, MouseButtons button, Int32 clicks)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStrip.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)
************** Loaded Assemblies **************
mscorlib
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.6400 (Win8RTMGDR.050727-6400)
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/Microsoft.NET/Framework64/v2.0.50727/mscorlib.dll
—————————————-
VisualbB
Assembly Version: 1.0.0.548
Win32 Version: 1.0.0.549
CodeBase: file:///C:/Atari2600/VisualbB.exe
—————————————-
Microsoft.VisualBasic
Assembly Version: 8.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 8.0.50727.6387 (Win8RTM.050727-6300)
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/Microsoft.VisualBasic/8.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll
—————————————-
System
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.6401 (Win8RTMGDR.050727-6400)
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.dll
—————————————-
System.Windows.Forms
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.6401 (Win8RTMGDR.050727-6400)
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Windows.Forms/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Windows.Forms.dll
—————————————-
System.Drawing
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.6401 (Win8RTMGDR.050727-6400)
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Drawing/2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Drawing.dll
—————————————-
System.Runtime.Remoting
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.6387 (Win8RTM.050727-6300)
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Runtime.Remoting/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Runtime.Remoting.dll
—————————————-
System.Configuration
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.6387 (Win8RTM.050727-6300)
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Configuration/2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Configuration.dll
—————————————-
System.Xml
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.6387 (Win8RTM.050727-6300)
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Xml/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Xml.dll
—————————————-
Accessibility
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.6387 (Win8RTM.050727-6300)
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/Accessibility/2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/Accessibility.dll
—————————————-
************** JIT Debugging **************
To enable just-in-time (JIT) debugging, the .config file for this
application or computer (machine.config) must have the
jitDebugging value set in the system.windows.forms section.
The application must also be compiled with debugging
enabled.
For example:
When JIT debugging is enabled, any unhandled exception
will be sent to the JIT debugger registered on the computer
rather than be handled by this dialog box.
How do I fix this?
BoyCruz
May 26, 2013 at 2:05 am
Could someone help me!
I had create a Playfield but
when i open, it said “Could not open C:\Atari2600\My Game\Background.pla Would you like to view the file in Notepad?”
when i open it in Notepad, It had no pattern to enjoy to create a playfield.
same in creating Sprites
and i have no idea in using Stella Emulator
and i wan to to know how to use it
this is my first time in using Visual bB and Stella Emulator
computermaster
June 26, 2013 at 8:16 pm
To use Stella:
Player1:
arrow keys for joystick
spacebar for button
Player2:
y for up
g for left
h for down
j for right
f for button
In Notepad, you have to use X’s for one color and dots (.) for the other color. When making a sprite, the X’s are the part that you see.
Robert Miles
August 12, 2013 at 7:48 pm
Please update the batari Basic installer! Apparently it is out of date.
derpat
September 1, 2013 at 12:49 pm
hello,
i have trouble compiling my code.
this is my code:
i got these errors when compiling in the status messages window:
Compiling C:\Users\pat\Desktop\2600\projects\test\default.bas
2600 Basic compilation failed!
LINE --> COLUBK = $20
Post compilation files deleted
and this one in the error window:
Syntax Error default.bas 16 23 C:\Users\pat\Desktop\2600\projects\test\default.bas
anyone got a idea?
you can mail me too: derpat@gmail.com
thanks in advance. 🙂
Tinkernut
October 30, 2013 at 8:56 am
You can’t make GTA using Batari Basic. That’s impossible.
Today, Atari games are old and simple. Using Batari Basic, you can make simple Atari games.
Tinkernut
October 30, 2013 at 8:56 am
You can’t make GTA using Batari Basic.
Random Terrain
January 28, 2014 at 9:21 am
Note to any batari Basic users: Don’t use the Tinkernut installer. Go to the batari Basic Commands page at randomterrain.com and read the Getting Started section. There have been a lot of changes to batari Basic and Visual batari Basic since the Tinkernut installer was made. That includes bug fixes and all kinds of improvements, so quit using the Tinkernut installer.
Thanks.