This is a collection of tools, plugins, scripts and launchers for Visual Studio Code to allow you to write software for the ZX Spectrum Next and the normal Spectrum, if you use Fuse. It aims to simplify the process by having a one-click launcher into an editor where you can simply press F5 to build a Boriel BASIC .bas file and run your project, if it builds OK, with CSpect.
Boriel's ZX Basic (ZXB) - A PC based language which resembles ZX Basic but allows SUBs/FUNcs inline ASM and a bunch of other features and is SUPER fast. By Jose Rodriguez (https://github.com/boriel/zxbasic)
Please note that the version of ZX Basic Compiler has been modified to specially work with the Next - dropping the latest versions of the compiler is not supported - and will probably lead to random crashing on real HW. You have been warned!
CSpect - One of the premiere ZX Spectrun Next emulators By Mike Dailly full download is https://mdf200.itch.io/cspect located in \Emu\cspect\
Scripts, NextLib and launchers by em00k.
NextBuild is known to work with at least the Windows and Linux versions of VSCode. However, CSpect requires the mono libraries to run and mono is often not installed by default by most Linux distributions or MacOS.
To use NextBuild and run CSpect under Linux you must install the mono runtime and libraries using the recommened package manager for your distribution.
Users of Debian and Ubuntu based Linux distros can install mono by running:
sudo apt install mono-complete
Thanks to the many wonderful people that have helped, such Michael Flash Ware for the Tile print code, Jose for his support, Mike Dailly for code examples, Gary Lancaster for his inpsiration in NextZXOS,
As mentioned ZXB lets you use inline ASM so creating macros and includes to control the Next hardware is easily done as well as being very much like ZX Basic but much much faster! There is a whole wiki dedicated to ZXBasic here https://zxbasic.readthedocs.io/en/docs
Please report any bugs and I will try to fix them.
- 11/12/23 - updated Boriel to 1.17.1 and CSpect to 2.19.5
- Latest ZXBasic Compiler included v1.6.4
- Now generates NEX & bin files
- Scripts rewritten in python so will work on Win, Mac & Linux
VSCode will install the NextBuild VSCode extension
When you start Vscode, choose "Open Folder" and point to "Sources" in the Nextbuild folder.
Download the archive and extract to a folder, launch VScode and choose "Open Folder", select the "Sources" folder inside of \NextBuildv7
Load a source .bas file (try examples) and then compile by using the terminal menu and Run Build Task - you can configure a keyboard shortcut in your prefs.
This should compile and launch in CSpect if there is an error the Compile.txt is opened in the default text editor.
See the video below on how to setup for Windows & VSCode
TROUBLESHOOTING
- I dont see snippets or hover help!
Make sure you have NextBuild set as the language
Snippets & Code hints
Inline help for keywords and links to https://zxbasic.readthedocs.io/en/doc/
Compiling one of the examples and running with CSpect
Useful information in VSCodes terminal:
You can easily output to ASM to view the actucal source code that gets assembled
Copy finalised NEX file to another location:
Thanks to :
- Jose Rodgriguez aka Boriel for ZXBasic Compiler
- Shiru for the AYFX player
- Michael Flash Ware for the software tile routines
- Kounch for Text to NextBASIC File Converter for ZX Spectrum Next
- JSJ for his ZXBasic vscode extenstion
- Remy Sharp for his hover helper code & NextBasic extension
- Mike Dailly for CSpect
- And all others who have helped!