Helios Software's innovative new programming language, HeliOS, is one of
the most advanced programming systems yet seen on the Amiga. 

The HeliOS system consists of an integrated suite of powerful programs, 
including a fast immediate interpreter, a compiler, a debugger, and a 
professional quality text editor. 

HeliOS aims at super performance and ease of use rather than adherence to
conventional techniques, and is a powerful tool for creative programmers
who want to squeeze the last ounce of performance from the Amiga.

HeliOS is capable of any Amiga programming requirement from professional
quality arcade games to serious application software. With its wide range
of unique pre-programmed commands and a sophisticated interactive user
interface HeliOS can transform what would be a major programming task in
C or BASIC into a surprisingly simple exercise.

HeliOS combines very superior technical performance in terms of speed and
efficiency with a very user friendly programming environment. The language
has over 1000 special commands to give easy access to the Amiga hardware
and operating system, and includes a built-in assembler for code which
requires the speed of assembly language.

Games often require special programming techniques, and HeliOS is fully
capable of producing arcade games to a professional standard using its own
custom operating system incorporating a sophisticated interrupt driven game
graphics system and powerful object oriented animation functions.

To make the programmer's task easier HeliOS has a unique fast real-time
interpreter for quick interactive code development, giving an instant
response when testing sections of code or performing calculations. HeliOS
also includes an integrated compiler and a very powerful and flexible user
configurable debugger.  All these are available at the touch of a key or
mouse from within the HeliOS text editor, providing the fastest software
creation/testing/debugging cycle of any Amiga programming language.

HeliOS has been designed to integrate perfectly with the Amiga OS, making
extensive use of Amiga data structures within its internal environment and
wherever possible building on traditional Amiga concepts. For example, the
HeliOS custom data structures used to control multi-slice screen displays
employ standard Amiga sub-structures such as BitMaps and RastPorts.

HeliOS has powerful structure manipulation operators as well as a unique 
pre-compiled include file system which gives super fast access to Amiga 
operating system and user defined symbolic values.  

The heart of the integrated HeliOS system is a professional quality text 
editor with many sophisticated editing features including user configurable 
menus, full command key rebinding and a powerful macro recording facility. 
Programmers spend much of their time editing source code, and the HeliOS 
editor makes this task as enjoyable as possible, with many features not 
found in text editors costing more than the complete HeliOS system.

The HeliOS editor is extremely fast, with the best smooth scrolling text
display of any Amiga editor, and its extensive configurability enables
easy transition from any other text editor.  Another nice feature is the
user configurable context-sensitive help system which can display help on
any word within the source code, as well as help on all HeliOS control
buttons and menus.

HeliOS is very "Amiga friendly" and will run on any Amiga with an operating
system newer than OS 1.1. HeliOS needs at least 1 meg of memory and for
game creation 2 meg of chip memory is recommended.

The latest version of the HeliOS system is now only available direct from
Helios Software in an entirely disk-based format.  The price of the latest
version of HeliOS has been reduced from the old price of £130.00 to a new
price of £50.00 (price correct January 1995) and the functionality of the
software has been vastly extended.  This economy has been made possible by
selling the software direct, dispensing with any expensive packaging and
changing from a printed manual to disk based documentation which is easier
to keep fully updated.

HeliOS game programming demonstration disks are available now:

A "Defender" arcade game programmed in HeliOS

A simple reprogrammable version of the HeliOS "Defender" game

A fully reprogrammable version of the HeliOS "Defender" game with complete
commented source code and custom HeliOS compiler

The reprogrammable version of the Defender game provides an interesting
insight into the HeliOS programming system as well as allowing you to enjoy
re-designing your own arcade game.