Welcome! Please add your programs.

Post by **Jeff-20** » Wed Jun 09, 2004 7:31 pm

Feel free to add your programs here. I'd love to have a selection of contemporary games to share with the community.

Boray · Post by **Boray** » Sat Jul 03, 2004 4:45 am

I think it would be better to have just one section with all user programs, expanded or not. You can just state in the topic for example 8k or 16k or unex. And, there is one much more critical difference between vic programs anyway... NTSC and PAL. 80% of us have ram expansions but probably 0% have both PAL and NTSC. Just one "user programs" section would be better I think.

/Anders

Post by **Jeff-20** » Sat Jul 03, 2004 4:15 pm

You're right. I was hasty in starting this board. I was thinking of seperating BASIC and ML programs because some of us take interest in one mode of code over the other.

Boray · Post by **Boray** » Sun Jul 04, 2004 3:51 am

Hmmm.... My programs are like 95% basic and 5% ML.... And now they are in the ML section...

Can't you just move your programs to the other section and then delete this one? You know you are the only one who have posted here....

/Anders

Post by **Jeff-20** » Sun Jul 04, 2004 4:42 pm

grrrrr

I think progamming in basic is an artform. The type-in programs of the 80s were almost all entirely basic. I also think there is an art in working with the unexpanded vic. I am interested in seeing these programs.

In these days of emulation and cross-development, has the basic program been forgotten? I'd like to see ten line sound programs here like those found in the back of the user guide or short routines to demonstrate the magic basic is still capable of. Anything simple like that?

Boray · Post by **Boray** » Mon Jul 05, 2004 5:40 am

As I said, my programs are 95% basic, so where do they belong now??? Maybe you should rename this forum to "Pure basic" then.

Btw, most type-in programs I've seen was something like:
10 fort=49152to49932:reada:poket,a:next:sys49152
20 data 65,34,211,54,54 etc etc...

And that is hardly basic

/Anders

Post by **Jeff-20** » Mon Jul 05, 2004 11:16 am

(grumble)

I guess it is the choice of the programmer. I seperate them so I can examine code for interesting techniques in basic and ml, respectively.

Boray · Post by **Boray** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 8:22 am

So I should continue to post my "Basic+ML" programs in the ML section then? I simply don't understand your thoughts about this. Why wouldn't it be possible to look at both the basic source and the ML if the two are used in the same program? Anyway, I'm not interested at all to look at peoples source codes, but I am interested to look at their programs.... running.... If you want to keep this section, then I think the names were better as they were...

/Anders

Post by **Jeff-20** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 4:42 pm

I hate being so "technical". I don't want to get into a big argument about coding/emulation/etc./etc.

I think there is a charm in pure basic programs (just as there is in working on the original hardware versus emulation). So, in short, I would like to see pure basic programs in this section.

I think ML programming removes certain limitations whether basic is involved or not. The pure basic program is how I was introduced to the VIC 20. The restrictions of ththe language create a whole new meduim for ingenuity.

Boray · Post by **Boray** » Wed Jul 07, 2004 5:40 am

The only restriction of interpretive basic (or any interpretive programming language) is..... lack of speed. A basic program will not become less pure once you compile it. Almost all my amiga programs are compiled basic:
http://user.tninet.se/~hlw771b/amigastuff.html

Here is the program listing for one of them:
http://user.tninet.se/~hlw771b/bl_source.html
(A real type-in program, don't you think

)

/Anders

Post by **Jeff-20** » Wed Jul 07, 2004 1:18 pm

Can VIc 20 basic be compiled? I'm all into old-school basic programming. If I was worried about speed, I'd program for the PC not the VIC

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 2:43 am

Most of the Basic program could be compiled, using various compilers (again mentioned in another thread). I think there was a limitation on which keywords the compiler handled - trigonometrics like SIN and ATN sometimes were outside of the scope, and in the worst case, floating point numbers as a whole may not be compatible.

Btw, how about writing a machine code program which does almost everything by LDA and JSR into Basic subroutines? The only thing one wouldn't have to is parsing the keywords (which is done once anyway).

Boray · Post by **Boray** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 4:54 am

Jeff-20 wrote:If I was worried about speed, I'd program for the PC not the VIC

Said by the man who actually uses x=. instead of x=0 to speed things up.

Anyway, there still is no section here for my programs. For example my last game "Mega Omega" - It's 4.7k of basic, 2k of graphics data and 367 bytes of ML (of which not even all is used as my whole x-screen ML program is in there.) and 864 bytes of unused space (sorry

).

I would categorize it as basic. But as I use the basic command "SYS" to start a little ML thing, it is not "pure" basic, and it can't be put in this basic forum. How about having it in the ML forum then (where it actually is now after you changed the names). Well, if you think a file that consists of just 4.5% ML belongs in a ML forum, then fine....

/Anders

Post by **Jeff-20** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 11:33 am

No, actually I am not sure. That's the frustration. I get your point... I guess I wanted a "pure basic" section and an "Everything else" section...

Scare City Motel and Blue Meanies form Outer Space are great parts of our programming history, but I think they should be seperate from Gridrunner, Bunny Hop and other games using ML routines.

ONly because most of us who started with the VIC started with BASIC.

Boray · Post by **Boray** » Sun Jul 11, 2004 3:35 am

The names are better now, thanks! My programs are now suddenly in the right place again. Thanks! (But "other programs" should probably be enough... )

/Anders