Dunny is my hero!

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llewelyn
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Dunny is my hero!

Post by llewelyn »

His SpecBAS is brilliant but it's not as easy to use as I need because its so powerful that you can get in a jam fairly easily by, for example, not realizing you have to specify the window size if using graphics. It would be great if it had a default setting for beginners that took care of the initial setup and possibly had a reduced instruction set?

Anyway, I remembered using BASin a few years ago and how much quicker it could get results as well as being in Windows which makes life much easier than various engines that run on emulated Spectrums (or the real thing for those fortunate owners).

I found BasinC at this site:-
https://arda.kisafilm.org/blog/?page_id=848&lang=en

Hooray! Its brilliant, only took me five minutes to figure out the basics (no pun intended) and write a crappy little program called 'Talkback' which is a quickly cobbled together prototype version of the one I mentioned before where you type in your name (or something rude) and it replies.

Its a really horrible first effort but the amazing thing is how easy it is to do in Basin because of the way it guesses what command you'll want and keeps the output in a separate window so you can run tests without screwing up your program. I think its a really clever idea to have colour and font differences to highlight various features, makes it much easier to follow the various steps or catch the mistakes.

This cheered me up so much you have no idea! Far easier than doing it in a simulator. Thanks Paul - I may actually be motivated to DO something!
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ZXDunny
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Re: Dunny is my hero!

Post by ZXDunny »

Well thanks :)

Not sure what you're talking about with SpecBAS, as it's literally just click and go - you don't have to set up any window sizes, it defaults to 800x480 with 256 colours and text/graphics just work...

But thanks again!
llewelyn
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Re: Dunny is my hero!

Post by llewelyn »

Don't you remember when I tried to make a simple moon lander game? Called Mike's Lander.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mjwLD6 ... l=PaulDunn

I wanted to use a picture from your demos that looked like a moonscape and then add a steerable character that descended into the picture. You told me that I had to specify the window size and if I remember rightly there was also a problem with text being so small I couldn't read it?

I forget the details now but it was something like that. It was all done on my last laptop which died a year ago taking everything I'd done, all my own manual pages I wrote to help me get to grips with SpecBAS and every blasted tool I used including BASin plus a lot more. Its taken me all this time to get over it and decide to have another go while I wait for my Next to arrive next year.

You and Ash were very helpful to me and I appreciated that a lot. I still like the idea of SpecBAS but if I'm ever going to have anything to enter as a crap game or similar, it will have to run on a Speccy, hence my switching back to ZXBasic.
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ZXDunny
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Re: Dunny is my hero!

Post by ZXDunny »

Ah, so that's who you are! :)

Yeah, if you're gonna load up images they have to either be resized to fit your window, or your window has to change! But anyway, glad you found BASin. It's a nice little IDE and should suit you perfectly :)
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Joefish
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Re: Dunny is my hero!

Post by Joefish »

Just going to namedrop my CharAde engine again (download the v23 bundle) as it adds fast character-graphics functions and joystick features to BASIC and can be added to Basin / BasinC.

To use it in your own programs, first use the graphics editor package in a sped-up emulator with Kempston Mouse turned on. Then you save off your graphics and all the extra functions as a single 'code block' TAP file. Now in BasinC, open the that TAP file from the menu, then type the CLEAR, LOAD "" CODE and PRINT USR statements (from the manual) to run as direct commands. That initiates CharAde in the memory of the machine that BasinC is emulating. You can then use the functions in your BASIC program without having to re-load it every time you RUN your program.

It's also compatible with the HiSoft BASIC compiler, if your final program needs a speed boost.
llewelyn
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Re: Dunny is my hero!

Post by llewelyn »

Thanks Joe. I did download Charade but I don't remember what I did after that, whether I tried to run it or perhaps found it a bit confusing? I dunno but I'll give it a go in a little while, thanks for the info on how to get the graphics into Basin, hopefully it'll all work out.

First I need to relearn the Q&A routine, figure out what to do if some clever sod enters a word not recognized or adds a capital letter so that 'Arse' isn't recognized if 'arse' is how I saved it? Perhaps disable caps option? Maybe ignore any aberrations? Besides how could I possible have it check through every potential vulgarity or curse word, its simply not practical. So I have quite a bit to think about before I need start worrying about graphic displays.

You may as well take me for an absolute novice! I forgot what little I once knew through lack of practice. My physical limitations don't help either! I get tired and frustrated pretty easily being a prisoner in my own bod. If it wasn't for the helpfulness and patience of people like yourself I would probably have chucked in the towel long ago.
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Re: Dunny is my hero!

Post by p13z »

llewelyn wrote: Wed Oct 28, 2020 1:02 pm Thanks Joe. I did download Charade but I don't remember what I did after that, whether I tried to run it or perhaps found it a bit confusing? I dunno but I'll give it a go in a little while, thanks for the info on how to get the graphics into Basin, hopefully it'll all work out.
..........
You may as well take me for an absolute novice! I forgot what little I once knew through lack of practice.
I think anything can be bewildering / seem impenetrable if you don't find the right starting point or example that matches your expectation and experience.
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Joefish
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Re: Dunny is my hero!

Post by Joefish »

llewelyn wrote: Wed Oct 28, 2020 1:02 pm Thanks Joe. I did download Charade but I don't remember what I did after that, whether I tried to run it or perhaps found it a bit confusing? I dunno but I'll give it a go in a little while, thanks for the info on how to get the graphics into Basin, hopefully it'll all work out.
Try stepping through the exercises in the manual on a regular emulator (rather than BasinC) to start with. If you don't quite understand it just try the next few examples then come back to re-read the explanation later. It can be a bit technical in places; I guess it's kind of assuming you're pretty good with BASIC already.

Just noticed that the measurements on the diagrams in v23 of the manual have all shifted for some bizarre reason. The diagrams in v20 are OK. Need to look into that...
llewelyn
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Re: Dunny is my hero!

Post by llewelyn »

Is there a Basic command that will lock the input to caps only?
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ketmar
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Re: Dunny is my hero!

Post by ketmar »

poke 23658,8 will set caps lock on. it won't lock it, tho, so with INPUT the user will be able to turn it off.
llewelyn
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Re: Dunny is my hero!

Post by llewelyn »

Joefish as it turns out I did dload the Charade manual v.23 to see what I needed to know first. Today I got the v23 bundle.
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Joefish
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Re: Dunny is my hero!

Post by Joefish »

Ask if you need any help with something. The character-code commands can be tricky to remember but the basics are to print your scenery on the background screen using LPRINT "&"+CHR$(row)+CHR$(column), then for each frame of the game you copy that background to the foreground temporary screen with "(", draw your sprites on top of that with @+row+column, then dump everything to the display with ")".
Also really useful is the "," command for drawing multi-line sprites.
llewelyn
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Re: Dunny is my hero!

Post by llewelyn »

That's a nifty bit of coding Joe. I just unpacked Charade and ran the demo 'Striker' looks good. I'll have to wait for a good day when its not bloody raining (plays hell with my arthritic bod) and I'm not blocked in with analgesics. I'll read the manual again and try the examples first chance I get.

Although I hate to admit it and much though I admire what people have managed on the Speccy, its a hell of a lot easier, faster and less frustrating to be able to operate via the Windows environment so I'm very happy to learn that Charade can be run from BASin.
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Joefish
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Re: Dunny is my hero!

Post by Joefish »

Take a look at the 'PROGRAMS AUTHORED (OR EXECUTED) WITH THIS TITLE' section - +3code has written some really impressive stuff with it.
(And I couldn't have done my machine code stuff without the PC and emulators either!)
+3code

Re: Dunny is my hero!

Post by +3code »

Years ago I started a small CharAde tutorial. Sadly I "paused" it and...

So really are only a few notes, but perhaps help you:

Spanish:
https://sites.google.com/site/plus3code ... muy-torpes

Googlenglish:
https://translate.googleusercontent.com ... VYC6KQCr6l
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