STOS BASIC
The STOS BASIC loading screen
|
|
| Developer | Constantin Sotiropoulos |
|---|---|
| First appeared | 1988 |
| Influenced by | |
| BASIC | |
| Influenced | |
| AMOS | |
STOS BASIC is a dialect of the BASIC programming language implemented on the Atari ST computer. STOS BASIC was originally developed by Jawx, François Lionet, and Constantin Sotiropoulos and published by Mandarin Software (now known as Europress Software).
STOS Basic was a version of BASIC that was designed for creating games, but the set of powerful high-level graphics and sound commands it offered made it suitable for developing multimedia-intense software without any knowledge of the internals of the Atari ST.
Although the first version of STOS to be released in the UK (version 2.3) was released in late 1988 by Mandarin Software, a version had been released earlier in France.
Version 2.3 was bundled with three complete games (Orbit, Zoltar and Bullet Train), and many accessories and utilities (such as sprite and music editors). A compiler was soon released that enabled the user to compile the STOS Basic program into an executable file that ran a lot faster because it was compiled rather than interpreted. In order to be compatible with the compiler, STOS needed to be upgraded to version 2.4 (which came with the compiler). STOS 2.4 also fixed a few bugs and had faster floating point mathematics code, but the floating point numbers had a smaller range.
STOS 2.5 was released to make STOS run on Atari STEs with TOS 1.06 (1.6), and then STOS 2.6 was needed to make STOS run on Atari STEs with TOS 1.62. STOS 2.7 was a compiler-only upgrade that made programs with the STOS tracker extension (used to play MOD music) compile.
...
Wikipedia