In the autumn of 1988 the best-selling program for the Atari ST was not a game. It was STOS, a BASIC for writing games, and after one week in the shops it had knocked Firebird’s Virus off the top of the Gallup ST chart. ST Amiga Format compared it to Debussy going straight in at number one on Top of the Pops. For many ST owners it was the way into programming their machine: a language that put sprites, scrolling, music and screen effects a single command away, with the editors to make them in the box.
Fast facts
- Developer: Jawx International, Paris; the title screen credits François Lionet and C. Sotiropoulos
- Publisher: Mandarin Software (later Europress Software; see Europress)
- Released: September 1988, £29.95, sold as STOS – The Game Creator
- Platform: Atari ST
- Add-ons: STOS Compiler, STOS Sprites 600, STOS Maestro and Maestro Plus (1989)
- Successor: AMOS on the Amiga
From Paris to Macclesfield
STOS was written in France. ST Amiga Format called it “the result of two years work by French software house Jawx”; Your Commodore glossed the name as “ST Operating System”. In 1988 Jawx’s directors, Frederique Pinelet and Jacques Fleurance, flew over to sign a joint venture with Mandarin Software, the Macclesfield label run by Chris Payne, at a launch in a Chinese restaurant. Mandarin spent six months improving the program, according to The Games Machine, and released it in September 1988.
The press credited Jawx as a team. The program’s own title screen names its authors as “F Lionet & C Sotiropoulos”, and Lionet went on to write AMOS.
What came in the box
STOS arrived on three disks with a reference card and a manual of more than 280 pages. One disk held the language, one the accessories and demo files, and one three example games, among them the shoot-’em-up Zoltar. Mandarin’s Chris Payne told ACE that the Breakout game included with STOS “was written in just two days using it!”
The editor looked like the GFA BASIC editor, with the command window taking most of the screen and the function keys listed along the top. Programs had line numbers and ran straight away, but under the familiar surface STOS threw out GEM, the ST’s desktop system, and replaced it with its own: booting straight into STOS gave you an extra 32K of memory, and a single command flipped between screen resolutions. The Games Machine counted 340 commands.
Games were what the commands were for:
- Sprites. An accessory sprite editor built sprites up to 64×64 pixels, and could import Degas and Neochrome pictures. Up to 15 sprites could be animated at once under interrupt: “just supply the flight path, speed, number of frames and the sprite will work away independently of the rest of the program”, ST Amiga Format explained. “It’s fantastically easy.”
- Screens and scrolling. Whole screens could be stored in memory banks and swapped, faded, magnified or scrolled, with up to 16 scrolling zones at once.
- Sound. Ready-made effects came from a single word, BOOM, SHOOT or BELL, and music composed in the music accessory played in the background under interrupt.
- Banks and accessories. Graphics, sound and sprite data lived in up to 15 numbered memory banks saved alongside the program. The editors were themselves accessories, BASIC programs that sat in memory and could be called up while you worked; up to 12 could be loaded at once.
A finished game could be saved as a stand-alone program that ran from the desktop. It was not compiled: it carried a stripped-down copy of STOS with it.
What the magazines said
The Games Machine’s November 1988 review called STOS “one of the most comprehensive, flexible and enjoyable to use BASICs around” and “an absolute bargain” at £29.95. ST Amiga Format’s Richard Monteiro thought the sprite editor “good enough to be sold on its own” and concluded: “Even without these extra functions, STOS is amazing.”
ACE’s Andy Wilton was more cautious. STOS solved the old problems of writing games in BASIC, speed and the tangle of mixing BASIC with machine code, by building the time-critical routines in as commands. But its collision detection tested rectangles around sprites, so objects could collide without touching, and he doubted professional programmers or publishers would take it up: “you’ll never write Virus or Carrier Command in STOS.” Its real audience, he decided, was “the hobbyist who knows and likes Basic”. Games written in STOS could be given away freely, but they had to carry a notice saying how they were made.
The STOS scene
Mandarin built a range around it. By the spring of 1989 it sold the STOS Compiler (£19.95), which turned STOS programs into fast stand-alone machine code, the STOS Sprites 600 collection (£14.95), STOS Maestro for sampled sound (£24.95) and Maestro Plus, which added a sampler module (£69.95). It ran a STOS Club and offered £5,000 for its Atari/STOS Games Writer of the Year Award, with the winning game to be published by Mandarin on royalties.
STOS stayed in use well into the 1990s. ST Format gave away the full STOS interpreter on its August 1992 cover disk and followed it with tutorials, readers’ questions and third-party command extensions such as Misty and Stars. Atari ST User put STOS and the complete STOS Compiler on its September 1993 cover disk, updating STOS to version 2.6. Commercial extensions were still being reviewed in 1995.
From STOS to AMOS
Amiga Format’s 1991 history of AMOS says Jawx had no plans for an Amiga version, but STOS’s success convinced Mandarin it should have one. Lionet wrote it, and AMOS, published in June 1990, took the STOS idea much further on the Amiga’s custom chips. In 1993 ST Format reported rumours that Jawx itself was working on a version of AMOS Professional for the Atari Falcon.
Sources
- Atari ST User, June 1988, p. 7: Jawx International of Paris, Frederique Pinelet and Jacques Fleurance, the joint venture with Mandarin.
- Your Commodore, July 1988: Mandarin signs Jawx of Paris; STOS “literally ST Operating System”.
- ST Amiga Format, issue 3, September 1988: STOS written by Jawx International, European rights to Mandarin. Issue 4, October 1988: Richard Monteiro’s STOS review (two years’ work by Jawx, GEM replaced, extra 32K, 15 banks, BOOM, SHOOT and BELL, 15 interrupt-driven sprites, 16 scrolling zones, 12 accessories, run-only programs) and Mandarin advertisement (three disks, reference card, STOS Club, £29.95). Issue 5, November 1988: STOS tops the Gallup ST chart after its first week, displacing Virus.
- ACE, issue 13, October 1988, p. 8: “Customised games with STOS” (Jawx International, Chris Payne, the Breakout game written in two days, three example games).
- ACE, issue 14, November 1988, pp. 81–82: Andy Wilton, “And here’s one I made earlier” (collision detection, Virus and Carrier Command, the notice on STOS games, the hobbyist market).
- The Games Machine, issue 12, November 1988, pp. 78–79: STOS review (Jawx, Mandarin’s six months, 280-page manual, 340 commands, 64×64 sprites, GFA BASIC comparison, £29.95, “an absolute bargain”).
- The Games Machine, issue 15, February 1989: the £5,000 Atari/STOS Games Writer of the Year Award.
- Atari ST User, May 1989: STOS Games Writer competition rules; price lists for STOS Compiler (£19.95), STOS Maestro (£24.95), STOS Maestro Plus (£69.95) and STOS Sprites 600 (£14.95). August 1990: STOS Maestro used for sampled sound effects; Maestro Plus sold with a sampler module.
- Amiga Format, issue 26, September 1991, p. 114: the story of AMOS (STOS launched September 1988; Jawx had no Amiga plans).
- ST Format, issue 38, September 1992: the full STOS given away on the previous month’s cover disk; STOS tutorial with the title screen credit “F Lionet & C Sotiropoulos”; the Misty and Stars extensions. Issue 50, September 1993: Jawx rumoured to be producing AMOS Professional for the Falcon. Issue 69, April 1995: STOS Extra 3 review.
- Atari ST User, issue 91, September 1993: STOS and the STOS Compiler on the cover disk, STOS updated to v2.6.