A small document describing how some commands works different under Amos Kittens. If you like to write programs for Amos Kittens, get the Amos Pro manual, most of the commands are the same and should work the same, only the commands that are different are listed here. not implmented commands not listed, dummy commands not listed, see other docs like issue for more info.
AMOS to Back
Insted of just hiding Amos Kittens, it will iconify Amos kittens on AmigaOS4.x,
in the future you can expect same behavior on AmigsOS3.x and AROS, MorphOS,
(In the future if Amos Kittens is ported to Windows,
this might result in minimized window to start bar.)
You should not use this command to hide opening screen use command "view off",
use command "View On" when your done.
AMOS to Front
Uniconify Amos Kittens, and open the window.
Colour
To set value
Colour <num>,<value>
To get value
value = Colour(num)
num is colour number.
value is RGB value.
can be used in standard AMOS ECS/OCS style.
to set color to white.
colour 0,$FFF
or can be used in ARGB format.
color 0,$FFFFFFFF
You can only get value in OCS/ECS format.
Colour back
Sets the border color, the color outside of the screen.
works in OCS/ECS format or ARGB format.
Colour back $FFF
or
Colour back $FFFFFFFF
Palette
Command used to set more then once colour
can be used two ways old OCS format, or ARGB format.
Palette $000,,$FFF
Palette $FF000000,,$FFFFFFFF
Note this two lines does the same thing.
sets colour 0 and colour 2, colour 1 is ignored as no value given.
Disc Info$
This command return string "Volume name:size free",
unlike Amos Pro this command does support large hard drives over 2Gbytes.
Dfree
This command returns free bytes on current drive/partition. Amos Kitten follow AMOS pro
standards when value is under 2Gbytes, if the value is above 2Gbytes then this command will
return size above 2Gbytes as double, (Extremely large numbers can get truncated).
Use command "Disk Info$" command to get correct number of bytes free (if drive is extremly large).
Screen Colour
Will always return 256 colors, even if you have opened screens with just 8 colors. this not bug,
it's becouse Amos Kittens can only use chunky mode, and it is 8bit.
Screen Open
Screen open [num],[width],[height],[colors],[mode]
<num> is screen number 0 to 7
<width> screen width
<height> screen height
<colors>
value 1-256 is 256 colors.
value 4096 or -6 for HAM6
value $40000 or -8 for HAM8
(Technically 16777216 max number of colors for HAM8, but you need more then one pixel to get correct color.
So the maximum colors are actually restricted by the screen resolution.)
Frédéric Cordier / Amos Profersonal AGA chose $40000, after I already decided to use -8.
value $1000000, 16777216 colors reserved for 24bit ARGB...
<mode> can be Lowres,hires,laced
(laced is always promoted to dbpal, dbntsc like modes.)
ham8 can be set by setting mode to 64, but this can change.
Sprites
Just like AmosPro sprites, but unlike AMOS Pro that uses hardware sprites and where there are
color restrictions, this sprites are 256 colors, and so you do not need to worry
about sprites not being displayed.
Load Iff [name$],[screen nr]
[name$] is the filename, the filename can be Iff image or JPG/PNG/… image, keep in mind original
AMOS Pro does not support JPG/PNG. Amos kittens uses the AmigaOS datatype system to load images. true colors are converted to 256 colors.
[screen nr] is optional, if not provided it load image into current screen, if provided it replace screen if exists.
the public variable _cat_load_iff_opt$, is used to define how true color images are loaded.
// to set "floyd steinberg" rendering method.
_cat_load_iff_opt$="floyd"
// To set "grayscale" rendering method.
_cat_load_iff_opt$="grayscale"
Amos kittens downgrades colors to be backwards compatible with palette based images/screens, old commands,
in future true colors might be supported, but need to enabled when used. True color mode will be less compatible.
IFF images with HAM6 format also supported.
HAM8 images also supported.
Save Iff
Will save to any image format supported by amigaos datatype system, it should default to IFF,
if no file extension is set. (on other operating system this might be limited to only few file formats.)
Spack
This command will compress a screen or part of screen into a bank,
unlike Amos Pro that is not limited 6bit graphics,
this command also support 8bit graphics on Amos Kittens.
this command will count the number of colors on the screen before compressing the image,
if its 64 colors or less, it will use AMOS packed format, if more then 64 colors
it will exstend the color platte table.
Unpack
This command support 1bit to 8bit compressed banks, including HAM6.
Joy
Almost the same as Amos Pro, but supports more buttons.
bit 0 - value 1 - joystick up
bit 1 - value 2 - joystick down
bit 2 - value 4 - joystick left
bit 4 - value 8 - joystick right
bit 5 - value 16 - joystick button 1
bit 6 - value 32 - joystick button 2
bit 7 - value 64 - joystick button 3
bit 8 - value 128 - joystick button 4
bit 9 - value 256 - joystick button 5
...
Wait
Wait 1/50 of a second (20ms), just like normal AMOS wait,
but Wait command will also handle "On Menu Proc" events,
two reasons for this,
first its bad idea to process events in interpreter as it slows down all AMOS programs,
second it forces developers to not busy loop there AMOS programs.
Wait VBL
Will wait for vertical blanking,
but same as Wait command will also process Menu selections, make sure you have Wait or Wait VBL in
your programs if your using "On Menu Gosub","On Menu Proc" or "On Menu Goto" commands
Include
include "path/file.amos"
include "volume:path/file.amos"
This command is called before .amos program is started, does not take variabels, only text string.
AMOSPRO can have problems finding files, if no direct path is used.
AMOS Kittens will however try hard to find the files, if for example
Amos kittens is started from command like this:
"AmosKittens.exe path/file.amos" then Amos Kittens will try to look for includes in "path/"
if however a direct path is set in the include, then Amos kittens should use a direct path.
Limit bob
Limit Bob
remove limit from all bobs
Limit bob n
remove limit from bob n, (this one is not supported by Amos Pro)
limit bob x,y to x,y
set Limit on all bobs, bob should exist before using this command.
(On "Amos Kittens" it already does, on "Amos Pro" it does not)
Limit bob n,x,y to x,y
set Limit on bob "N", bob should exist before using this command.
(On "Amos Kittens" it already does, on "Amos Pro" it does not)
Amalerr
Just like Amalerr in Amos Basic.
S$="F R0=0 T 20; P ; N R0; bad code"
trap Amal 0,S$
print mid$(s$,Amalerr)
More or less return error in the string, because Amos kittens strips all lower chars,
before trying to execute the scripts, this one can return the wrong position.