Game BASIC for Sega Saturn: in-depth guide

Hi, folks... Been poking around these forums and really enjoying them. I thought people here might be interested in an article I recently posted on how to get started with Game BASIC for Sega Saturn:

https://flybacklabs.com/sega-saturn-homebrew-with-game-basic/

This goes through how to get started, including how to properly run the PC-based tools and connect to the Saturn from a modern PC. I also found that it runs great with Mednafen and its keyboard emulation, so you don't even need the special hardware if you want to experiment.

I'm actively working on fleshing out more in-depth tutorials, like 3D graphics and sound, as well as translating some of the Japanese documentation to English. I've also found a couple programs that I don't think anyone else has archived (or at least, they're not in the awesome Satakore game database) and will be documenting those soon.

I think this is a really fun but overlooked tool. I'd love to see a few more people using it!
 
What is that key combination in Game Basic that brings up the file loader? I keep forgetting it.
 
man, I imported this back in the day. But with the manual completely in Japanese, and my lack of programming skills at the time.. I never did anything with it. I probably sold it for way too little money too.

thanks for posting that!
 
[Mega long-time lurker, first time poster? Active on Sonic Retro and Hacker News.]

This is, seriously, one of the *coolest* things I've ever read! I absolutely cannot thank you enough for this awesome contribution to the Saturn Homebrew dev community!

I would, myself, be seriously; super interested in continuing to follow along with the 2D and 3D graphics examples if you would care to finish them! <3
 
[Mega long-time lurker, first time poster? Active on Sonic Retro and Hacker News.]

This is, seriously, one of the *coolest* things I've ever read! I absolutely cannot thank you enough for this awesome contribution to the Saturn Homebrew dev community!

I would, myself, be seriously; super interested in continuing to follow along with the 2D and 3D graphics examples if you would care to finish them! <3
Glad you enjoyed! I absolutely will keep the tutorial going. I have lots of projects I like to tinker with, so I tend to jump between them. But I'll be getting back to this one soon.
 
Did you check that article ? And do you know if the program is in Satakore database ?

Yes, actually! I came across that a month or so ago. I was able to determine that it's "Zone.zip" originally developed by Bits Laboratory, available here:


Satakore uploaded it here as "3D Shooting Game":

 
Has anyone here played around with the Game Basic Compiler from here? SegaXtreme - Saturn Game Basic Tools

It works well, in the sense that you can build a disc image and it will autoboot to a menu of all .B files you include. You can even replace the AUTORUN.B with your own file and boot straight into your own program.

The problem is, the version of Game BASIC it includes seems to be older than the retail version (copyright 1997 instead of copyright 1998). From what I can tell, it only supports a more limited command set, and I also can't get keyboards (physical or virtual) working with it when I exit out to the BASIC prompt.

Because it doesn't support the full command set of the retail version, most of the more advanced homebrew programs (i.e., old ones from the Japanese community) just throw syntax errors and have to be edited to run (or don't run at all because they depend on those functions).

Has anyone else ever run into this? Has anyone gotten autobooting to work with the retail version of Game BASIC? I tried dropping the 0.BIN from the retail version into the image compiler, but discs built with that version just hang at the Licensed by Sega screen and never boot.
 
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