Work banks and data banks stored on disc
Before AMOS Professional saves your banks onto disc, the header is discarded and replaced by
the following:
dc.b "AmBk" dc.w Number_Of_The_Bank dc.w Flag dc.l Length_Of_The_Bank + 8 dc.b "NameBank" * 8 bytes ds.b Length_Of_The_Bank * the bank itself!
These files will normally end with ".abk" and can be loaded into AMOS Professional Basic using the LOAD command.
Saving several Banks at once
AMOS Professional allows you to save a group of banks in a single ".abs" file. The format of
these files is as follows:
dc.b "AmBs" dc.w Number_Of_Banks
The memory banks are then listed onto the appropriate disc, one after another.
Format of Object banks and Icon banks
As before, the manner in which Objects and Icons are stored in memory will be examined,
followed by an explanation of their storage on disc.
Object banks and Icon banks stored in memory
Icons and Objects are stored in a special way. Rather than hold the data in a single continuous
package, AMOS Professional splits these banks into a separate list of images. These images are
stored in their own independent memory locations, and are scattered through the Amiga's Chip
Ram. This makes it very easy to add or delete images, and avoids the problem of "garbage
collection".
However, this does require you to take a little care when accessing images directly from your programs. Never try to FILL or COPY data directly to the Object or Icon bank. Do not try to load or save your images with BLOAD or BSAVE, these commands will not work. Use LOAD and SAVE instead.
The locations of the images are held in a list of pointers, which can be found immediately after the header.
In order to remain compatible with the original AMOS system, Object banks are indicated by the name "Sprites" rather than "Objects", but they can be used to hold either Sprite or Bob images as required.