AMOS Studio

AMOS Studio: Bringing Amiga Development into the Modern World

The Amiga may be a classic computer, but the software development possibilities are far from exhausted. AMOS Studio is bringing one of the Amiga's most popular programming languages into the modern era, with an ambitious goal: to provide a complete development environment for creating genuine Amiga games and applications directly on a modern computer.

If you owned an Amiga in the late 1980s or 1990s, there's a good chance you encountered AMOS or AMOS Pro. These remarkable programming environments made it possible for almost anyone to create sophisticated games, graphical applications, animations, music and much more. AMOS brought powerful programming capabilities within reach of ordinary computer enthusiasts and helped introduce countless people to the world of software development.

AMOS Studio is being developed to bring that experience to a new generation of developers, while providing veteran AMOS programmers with the modern development tools they never had.

Rather than creating yet another programming language or attempting to recreate AMOS as something fundamentally different, AMOS Studio builds upon the original AMOS Professional language. The objective is to retain compatibility with genuine AMOS programs and the capabilities of the original Amiga, while providing a modern, sophisticated environment in which to create them.

AMOS Studio is currently available for macOS and is under active development through Steam Early Access.

What Is AMOS Studio?

AMOS Studio is a modern Integrated Development Environment (IDE) designed specifically for developing software for the classic Commodore Amiga using the AMOS Professional programming language.

The ultimate objective is simple but ambitious: to allow developers to create complete Amiga games and applications on a modern Mac, compile those programs into genuine Amiga executables, package them onto Amiga disk images, and run them on real or emulated Amiga hardware.

Imagine developing an entire Amiga game without having to do your programming inside an emulator. You could write your code using a modern editor, create and manipulate your sprites and graphical resources, work with sound samples and music, compile everything into a genuine Amiga executable, and package your completed game onto a bootable Amiga disk image.

You could then transfer that disk image to an original Amiga or load it into an emulator and play your creation on the computer it was designed for.

That is the vision behind AMOS Studio.

The program is being developed in carefully planned milestones, with each release bringing it closer to becoming a complete modern development solution for one of the most beloved computers of all time.

What Can You Do Right Now?

AMOS Studio is already a functioning development tool rather than simply a concept or prototype. The first three major development milestones have been completed, establishing a strong foundation for AMOS Pro compatibility, and the fourth milestone, which introduces comprehensive support for AMOS memory banks and associated assets, is well advanced.

The current Early Access release, version 0.4.1, provides a growing collection of useful capabilities.

A Modern AMOS Pro Code Editor

Write AMOS Pro programs directly on your Mac using a modern code editing environment.

AMOS Studio understands the original AMOS Pro programming language and supports its familiar syntax, commands, programming structures and expressions. Modern editing conveniences, including syntax highlighting, make working with AMOS code considerably more comfortable than relying entirely on the original Amiga development environment.

Whether you're writing a new game from scratch, experimenting with AMOS commands, or revisiting something you programmed decades ago, AMOS Studio provides a convenient environment in which to work.

Import and Export Genuine AMOS Pro Programs

One of the most important capabilities already implemented is the ability to work with genuine, tokenised AMOS Professional source files.

AMOS Studio can import existing .AMOS files created using the original development environment, interpret their contents, and present the code for editing on your Mac.

More importantly, it can export programs back into the original tokenised AMOS format, allowing them to be loaded into AMOS Professional on an actual or emulated Amiga.

This is not simply exporting plain text and hoping the original interpreter understands it. AMOS Pro uses a specialised tokenised source format, and reproducing that format accurately has required substantial development work.

Programs created and exported using AMOS Studio have already been successfully loaded and executed within the original AMOS Pro environment.

Compatibility with the original language remains a major development priority, with support for increasingly specialised commands, structures and extensions continuing to improve.

Create and Work with AMOS Memory Banks

AMOS Pro uses memory banks to store many of the resources required by games and applications, including sprites, graphical objects, tiles, sound samples, music, AMAL (AMOS Animation Language) programs and other forms of data.

AMOS Studio is being developed to provide comprehensive support for these banks, allowing developers to manage the resources used by their programs directly on their Mac.

The current release includes substantial progress in reading, creating, editing, saving and embedding AMOS-compatible memory banks. This is an important step because an AMOS program is often much more than its source code. A complete game may rely on numerous embedded resources that must remain compatible with the original environment.

Development testing has already demonstrated AMOS Studio exporting tokenised programs containing embedded graphical and AMAL resources, which can then be loaded and used in AMOS Pro. Embedded sample banks have also been successfully exported and tested, with samples playing correctly in the original environment.

These achievements move AMOS Studio well beyond the capabilities of an ordinary source code editor and establish the foundations for a much more sophisticated development environment.

Work with Existing Amiga Projects

AMOS Studio is not intended exclusively for creating new software. It is also being developed as a way for existing AMOS programmers to bring their older projects into a more convenient development environment.

If you have original AMOS Professional source files from previous projects, you can import them, inspect their code, make changes, and export them back to the original format.

As compatibility and memory bank support continue to develop, this will become an increasingly practical way to maintain, improve and expand existing Amiga software.

The Development Roadmap

AMOS Studio is an ambitious project, and the development roadmap reflects that ambition. Rather than releasing a basic editor and calling the project finished, the intention is to progressively implement the capabilities necessary for a complete Amiga development workflow.

The roadmap is divided into major development milestones, allowing users to follow progress and benefit from new functionality as it becomes available.

Milestones 1 to 3: The Foundations (Completed)

The initial development milestones established the modern editing environment, the fundamental AMOS Professional language support, and the ability to import and export genuine tokenised .AMOS source files.

This work required extensive investigation into the original AMOS file formats and language structures. Compatibility has been tested using actual AMOS programs, including programs exported from AMOS Studio and executed successfully in the original Amiga environment.

These completed milestones provide the technical foundation upon which the remaining development work is being built.

Milestone 4: Memory Banks and Asset Creation (Currently Under Development)

The current development milestone focuses on AMOS memory banks, resource compatibility and asset creation.

AMOS Professional relies heavily on memory banks, and comprehensive support for these formats is essential if AMOS Studio is to become a practical environment for developing complete Amiga games.

Significant progress has already been made with graphical banks, sound samples, AMAL banks and other resource types. Development is continuing to expand the supported formats and provide increasingly sophisticated tools for manipulating their contents.

The broader objective includes graphical sprite and image editing, waveform editing for audio samples, and a collection of integrated asset creation tools.

Eventually, developers should be able to create and modify much of the graphical and audio content required by their games without needing to move between numerous separate applications.

Milestone 4 is well advanced, although full support for all planned bank formats and asset editing capabilities has not yet been completed.

Milestone 5: Amiga Disk Image Support (Planned)

A major future capability will be the ability to work directly with Amiga floppy disk images in ADF format.

AMOS Studio is planned to support creating new disk images, opening existing images, browsing their contents, and adding, extracting, replacing, renaming and deleting individual files.

This will provide an important bridge between developing software on a modern Mac and using that software on Amiga hardware.

Rather than relying on separate disk image utilities, users will eventually be able to manage their Amiga project files and prepare disk images from within AMOS Studio itself.

Milestone 6: Native Amiga Program Compilation (Planned)

This is one of the most important milestones in the entire project.

The plan is to enable AMOS Studio to compile genuine AMOS Pro programs into native Amiga executables (both Workbench and CLI) suitable for running on an Amiga.

The intention is not to create programs that merely simulate AMOS on a Mac. Instead, AMOS Studio will produce genuine Amiga software using the original programming language.

Once this capability has been implemented, users will be able to write their AMOS programs on a Mac and build them into executable Amiga applications without having to return to the original AMOS development environment to compile their code.

Ultimately, developers should be able to create a program entirely within AMOS Studio, compile it, package it, and then launch the finished application on an Amiga without requiring the original AMOS Pro development environment.

Native compilation is a planned feature and is not yet available in the current Early Access release.

Beyond the Initial Roadmap

Development is not expected to end with these milestones.

Future plans include expanding compatibility with the numerous extensions that made AMOS Professional such a versatile development system. Potential areas of development include support for AMOS 3D and popular third-party extensions such as TOME, AMCAF and others.

Another longer-term objective is to investigate integrated Amiga emulation, allowing developers to test their programs more conveniently from within AMOS Studio.

There is also the possibility of bringing AMOS Studio to Windows and Linux. The initial development focus remains macOS, but a future Kickstarter campaign is planned for early 2027 to help fund expansion to these additional platforms once native compilation and ADF support have been established.

These features represent future development goals rather than capabilities available in the current release.

Where Is Development Currently Up To?

AMOS Studio is currently at version 0.4.1 and is progressing through Milestone 4 of its development roadmap.

The major accomplishment so far has been establishing compatibility with genuine AMOS Professional source files and increasingly with the memory banks that accompany them.

AMOS Studio can already perform meaningful development work, particularly for programmers who want to write AMOS code on a modern Mac, work with original AMOS source files, and export their projects for use in the original Amiga environment.

Recent development has concentrated on memory bank compatibility, including testing programs with embedded graphical, AMAL and sound sample resources. These are important technical achievements because they demonstrate that AMOS Studio can produce more than just compatible source code. It can also reproduce some of the complex resource structures used by real AMOS applications.

There is still considerable work ahead. The integrated asset creation environment is continuing to develop, support for the full range of AMOS bank types is still being expanded, and the native compiler and ADF disk management systems remain future milestones.

For now, users who want to compile their exported programs will still need to use the original AMOS tools on an Amiga or through an emulator.

The current development target is to reach version 1.0 during the first half of 2027, although this is a goal rather than a guaranteed release date. Development milestones will be completed when they are ready, and progress will be documented through regular development updates.

Why Buy AMOS Studio During Early Access?

Purchasing AMOS Studio during Early Access gives you access to a growing development environment while helping to support the continued development of a tool created specifically for the Amiga programming community.

You can begin using the capabilities that have already been implemented, explore the progress being made with AMOS Pro compatibility, and follow the project as additional functionality becomes available.

Early Access users also have an opportunity to help shape development. Feedback, bug reports, compatibility testing and feature suggestions are particularly valuable for a project attempting to reproduce and extend the capabilities of such a substantial and historically important programming environment.

AMOS Studio is being developed by an independent developer with a genuine enthusiasm for the Amiga and the programming environment that made creating software for it so accessible.

This is not a finished commercial development suite being sold as a completed product. It is an actively evolving project with a clearly defined long-term objective, a growing collection of working features, and substantial technical progress already demonstrated.

If you purchase AMOS Studio today, you should do so on the basis of the features currently available, while recognising the considerable potential of the planned development roadmap.

Help Bring AMOS Professional into the Future

For many of us, the Amiga was much more than a games machine. It was the computer that introduced us to programming, digital art, music production and the extraordinary satisfaction of creating something ourselves.

AMOS Professional was a big part of that experience. It made programming approachable, encouraged experimentation and gave ordinary computer enthusiasts the tools to create software that previously seemed far beyond their reach.

AMOS Studio is an attempt to carry that legacy forward.

The goal is to make it possible to sit down at a modern computer, create an entirely new Amiga game or application using genuine AMOS Pro code, and produce software that runs on the hardware we still love.

Whether you're an experienced AMOS programmer looking to revisit the language, an Amiga enthusiast wanting to create something new, or a newcomer interested in discovering what made Amiga development so special, AMOS Studio offers an opportunity to be part of that journey.

The foundations are already in place. The development environment is functional, genuine AMOS Professional source compatibility has been demonstrated, and increasingly sophisticated memory bank support is bringing the project closer to its ultimate goal.

There's much more to come, and the best part is that you can get involved right now.

Buy AMOS Studio today, support its ongoing development, and help build the future of Amiga programming.

The Amiga's story isn't finished. Let's keep creating.