RGC-BASIC 2.0 Unleashes Amiga-Inspired Graphics and Sound
Chris Garrett, the architect behind Retro Game Coders, has released RGC-BASIC version 2.0, a substantial update to his retro-inspired BASIC language. This isn't merely a minor tweak; the jump from 1.11 is so significant it feels like a whole new programme. The catalyst, by Chris Garrett’s own account, was stumbling across a website playing a 100 KB Amiga tracker module, a format that always brings to mind the vibrant, often technically audacious, demoscene of the late 1980s and early 1990s, particularly those long nights spent watching the latest productions from groups like The Black Lotus or Sanity.
This rabbit hole ended with a completely rewritten graphics pipeline and a new streaming music system for RGC-BASIC, as reported by Retro Handhelds. Version 2.0 now supports MOD, XM, S3M, IT, OGG, and MP3 formats through a dedicated set of BASIC commands. Crucially, these can run concurrently with one-shot sound effects, ensuring music and audio happen simultaneously without interference.
A set of query functions also exposes enough metadata to build a scrolling "now playing" display, a VU meter, or a progress bar directly in BASIC, requiring no external state management. This level of control over audio presentation is a welcome addition, allowing for more dynamic and visually engaging programmes.
A Symphony of Sound and Pixels
The graphics overhaul is equally impressive, moving far beyond the text and 16-colour bitmap modes of version 1.x. RGC-BASIC 2.0 adds three new screen modes: a 320x200 full RGBA mode, a 320x200 256-entry palette-indexed mode, and a 640x400 RGBA canvas for higher-resolution work. The palette system itself has expanded from 16 entries to 256, offering live rotation via a single command. This means every drawn pixel can be re-tinted on the next frame without any redraw cost, a trick familiar to anyone who marvelled at the fire and water animations on a Commodore 64 or ZX Spectrum back in the day.
Bringing the Demo Scene Home
Off-screen RGBA surfaces with alpha compositing round out the graphics work, alongside per-zone and per-scanline scrolling. This opens the door to sophisticated parallax effects and the kind of sine-wave text scrollers that truly defined the Amiga demo scene, where coders like Jeroen Tel and the legendary Jeff Minter pushed the hardware to its absolute limits. What this hints at, for the scene, is a renewed accessibility to the kind of low-level graphics trickery that once required a deep understanding of hardware registers, now presented in a high-level language. It's a powerful tool for those who remember the magic of those effects and want to recreate them.
The Future of Browser BASIC
A reworked DRAWTEXT command now handles foreground and background colour in one call, simplifying what previously required a two-pass approach. The entire RGC-BASIC environment runs directly in the browser through its existing online Integrated Development Environment (IDE), meaning no installation is required to start coding. The source code remains open and available on GitHub, and Chris Garrett is actively asking the community what features should land next. This collaborative approach ensures the language continues to evolve with the needs and desires of its users, much like the early home computer communities that fostered so much creativity.
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Originally published by Retro Handhelds. Read original article.
