Falcon Missing Link

Do you remember a while back, Top Notch Software released a STOS extension called 'The Missing Link' (usually referred to as 'TML')? This revolutionised STOS with fast, flexible commands, allowing STOS programmers to produce games of simular quality to modern assembly produced games (take a peek at 'Heartland' the latest game from STOSSER Software).

Well, in the documentation, they say 'We hope to add support for all the Falcons standard screen-modes including truecolour and 8-bitplane and also it's extra hardware like the blitter'. Sadly, this never happened, and Falcon owners have not been able to cash in on this product. Programming on the Falcon is made hard by the lack of help from routines such as TML provided (although my ' STOS Falcon Extension' has helped bridge the gap), which is the reason that I believe there are not very many good games available for it...

I intend to produce the much awaited Falcon Enhanced version of TML. However, as I dont have the source to TML, this will take me a while, so dont get your hopes up just yet - this may never get finished.

STOS programmers may be interested in how FML will work. Well, here is the plan: FML will provide exactly the same commands and functionality of TML, so simply replace the LINK1/2/3 files in your STOS and COMPILER folders, and all TML programs should still run. I will, however, add an extra command, with the format:


fml init XRES,YRES,COLOURS
which will change screenmode to that defined, and cause all routines to work with this screenmode. Obviously, all graphics will have to be replaced, but apart from changing the graphics, and this one extra line, there is no difference from the ST version of the programs. Thus, games such as 'Alien Thing', 'Hero', 'Island Strike', 'Heartland' and many other games should be easily ported to the Falcon using FML's enhanced graphics routines.

Current status:

Well, I have made headers for both interpreter and compiler versions of all three extensions, and STOS accepts these as fine (so listing a TML program with FML installed does work fine, and all commands appear to be ok).

I have written some of the smaller commands, some of which are already Falcon enhanced (eg. freq and set freq which didn't work on the Falcon before).

Commands coded:

and I have made a start on identifying the data-structures of the memory banks, which are required for the map/bob commands. I guess that the next commands to come on-line will be the joystick routines (which will be enhanced to support jaguar controllers as well).

I may well write my own documentation to FML, as the doc's to TML are a bit of a mess, to say the least! :-)

Back to the Atari page...

Anthony Jacques : jacquesa@zetnet.co.uk