Commodore 64 Development Tools for Mac OS X

Question

Which tools do you use for cross-development for C64 on OSX?

Which assembler, text editor or IDE, gfx, sprite, charset editors?

Or do you simply prefer Windows environment via parallels desktop or bootcamp?

Answer 1

For MacOS X

Text Editor: Eclipse (http://www.eclipse.org/)

Assembler: WUDSN (http://www.wudsn.com/)

Graphics Editor: GraFX2 (http://code.google.com/p/grafx2/)

Sprite/Charset Editors: You will probably need to develop your own tools or use Windows running on a virtual machine.

For Windows

Text Editor: Eclipse (http://www.eclipse.org/), EditPlus (http://www.editplus.com/) or UltraEdit (http://www.ultraedit.com/)

Assembler: KickAssembler (http://www.theweb.dk/KickAssembler/Main.php) or ACME Cross Assembler (http://www.esw-heim.tu-clausthal.de/~marco/smorbrod/acme/)

Graphics Editor: Timanthes (http://csdb.dk/release/?id=75871) or Project One (http://csdb.dk/release/?id=86776)

Sprite Editor: SpritePad (http://csdb.dk/release/?id=100657)

Charset Editor: CharPad (http://csdb.dk/release/?id=101863)

Answer 2

Edit: Relaunch64 is now available as stable build for Windows, OS X and Linux: http://www.popelganda.de/relaunch64.html

If you're interested in using ACME or 64tass on OS X as well, you find latest binaries there, too.

Relaunch64 is an C64-Assembler-IDE that specifically focuses on doing this job, without the need for comprehensive setting up before you can start.

In the course of the next days, version 3.1 will be released with much faster performance (see https://sourceforge.net/projects/relaunch64/files/3.1.0/).

Answer 3

I use Emacs 24.3 as my editor. Its stock asm-mode is ok for C64 code, even though it wasn't necessarily intended for that, but I think there are some dedicated C64 modes out there as well. My assembler of choice so far has been TMPx ("Turbo Macro Pro cross") by Style. Works like a charm, and very fast for me when testing with VICE.

Edit: I've since switched to 64tass, which is a fair bit more helpful when it comes to macros, code organisation, debugging, etc. I did have to compile it myself for my Intel mac, but it was a snap.

Answer 4

My main tools are Sublime text 3, Kick Assembler and the Vice C64 emulator. I maintain and use the Kick Assembler (C64) sublime package, which in short has the following features:

• Syntax coloring
• Build, build and run, build and debug etc.
• Some snippets
• Code navigation / symbol list

More info about features and installation of the Kick Assembler (C64) sublime package here.

I mostly use OSX, but sometimes also Windows, and since all three tools (including the Sublime package) work on both OSX and Windows i can be flexible.

I also use TMPView to convert my old TASM-source-files. On the Windows side i use DirMaster to handle old c64 disk images.