Denial

those benchmarking tests counting jiffies are interesting They prove you *false*, to be exact. When your game main loops became faster, this was likely because of general optimisations like using less program lines overall, eliminating superfluous instructions, storing often used constants in 'earl...

Rush was also released for the VIC http://atariage.com/forums/topic/208887 ... he-vic-20/

Mike wrote:No worries!

At least CBM BASIC is still good for some surprises, isn't it?

wonderful that our beloved vic still generates discussion after all these years

Great Analysis Kweepa....seems like its look-up tables for the win...no (or minimal) calculations to be performed...would integer variables add any extra saving?

those benchmarking tests counting jiffies are interesting They prove you *false*, to be exact. When your game main loops became faster, this was likely because of general optimisations like using less program lines overall, eliminating superfluous instructions, storing often used constants in 'earl...

no urban myth to me...just 36 years experience in BASIC programming....first noticed it when i used the technique to improves a Breakout game from a book listing in about 1985....those benchmarking tests counting jiffies are interesting, but the real evidence is in a practical application.. eg, a ga...

with a bit of planning, almost all IF statements can be replaced with (multiple) boolean statements.

eg.
if x = 1 then p=p+1
if x = 2 then p=p-1

can be achieved with

p=p+(x=2)-(x=1)

much faster....

Yes, you must make sure not to print the last character of the last line to avoid the scroll. There is some nifty PRINT-technique where you use cursor-left and insert in quote mode to push the final character to the last position, but it may be easier to just POKE to that screen destination. or jus...

print a "home" character at the end of the line???

have you considered multicolor or petscii on an expanded screen ... here is a great example on the commodore pet https://www.mobygames.com/game/pet/rush ... Id,256166/

Looks very interesting - i have been looking at the quetzalcoatl compiler which can produce prg's for an actual VIC. Do you see Eightball getting to this point?

Is the runtime monolithic, or can you avoid certain library functions to keep it small? Monolithic i think - as it's only a beta when development ceased - there is a smaller, earlier runtime included in the download package - I will do some tests to see if there are any differences in final binary ...

For Sure - will be interesting as the runtime module is 1.5kb, levaing only 2kb for the actual game code - Meteor Storm is 529 bytes, so things will be a squash in the Unexpanded VIC - but that will just add to the challenge - the next phase will be to work out arrays for multi-object action.

Here is a little game I made (originally for the PET 3032) with the Quetzalcoatl C Compiler for the Unexpanded VIC 20 - Gameplay is simple, but It was just to see if I could get a functional game made with the compiler. Meteor Storm - Avoid the meteors with the A and D Keys https://drgeek.neocities....

I love the Petscii graphics in Dunjon I - are the levels procedurally generated, or just random???