LostCause

I know Basic. Basic is Basic regardless of dialect or system. If I brought home an Atari ST back in the 80’s, I don’t think I would be using GFA or STOS anytime soon. Is this Forum for Retro Systems and Programming or am I mistaken.

I am new to Atari ST programming. I'm also working with STOS Basic and plan on giving GFA a shot. Right now I'm just learning the system. Thank you.

I was just trying to understand why I was getting this error from some basic source demos I downloaded. As I don’t expect to be chaining basic file that often, I suppose it doesn’t really matter. Thanks for the help.

Still seems like St Basic has to be run from the same folder and/or drive the basic files or in.

Ok, looks like I have to run ST Basic From the A Drive.

I am booting from a Hard Drive and trying to chain basic files on the A Drive. This gives “file not found on specified drive”. Is there any way to specify a drive in ST Basic.

Actually that is the only document in a sub directory in the game folder not my own.

I believe, I have read everything of interest on Pete's QB Site before beginning programming this game. If I only knew then what I know now. Some of the tuts on Pete's site that the author didn't understand particular points, I now fully understand. There is just so much information readily available these days. Thank you, nonetheless.

Ditched the whole website idea. I found it was distracting me from developing the game. Sorry. I have one working level with graphics. I am working on ways to simplify the whole game development process. I have coded the interrupt routine in Turbo Assembly to simplify adding additional routines. I have put this code together that reads the COM file and converts it to be loaded with BLOAD. All this little additional work, I feel will be well worth the effort. The conversion program seems to work great. Let me know you foresee any issues. Thanks DEFINT A-Z OPEN "mcode.com" FOR BINARY AS #1 Bytes = LOF(1) ArraySize = CINT(Bytes / 2 - 1) DIM MCode(ArraySize) FOR i = 0 TO ArraySize GET #1, , MCode(i) NEXT i CLOSE DEF SEG = VARSEG(MCode(0)) BSAVE "mcode.mlc", VARPTR(MCode(0)), Bytes DEF SEG CLS PRINT "Machine Language Code saved as" PRINT "MCODE.MLC" END

I have begun developing a website to chronicle the game. The game itself is moving along quit nicely. I decided to at least implement a border graphics tile with score and lives. Currently the graphics and game play have not been combined. Still have to work on file structure before uploading the compressed file. Getting late, been working most of the day. So, the work in progress page will have to wait till tomorrow. In the mean time check it out at https://onewhackedoutguy.neocities.org/ and tell me what you think.

OK, found out that Static meta statement only affects the main body.

I am in the process of restructuring the code and have added credit in sections of the code, while I can recall who to credit. When I have this done, I would like to post the code at that point. I have one issue and a question or two. 1: Is there a way to post code in a box with a scrollbar. 2: I added the meta statement ' $DYNAMIC at the beginning of the code. This does not show in the QBasic editor, but when I open the basic file in notepad REM $STATIC appears before the functions and subroutines. Is ' $DYNAMIC really necessary. Thank you

I have considered the possible need for extended memory. I have been brushing up on my Turbo Assembler and Borland C++ programming as well. The processes of adding ML functions in QBasic is something I believe, I have a good grasp on. I downloaded the Crescent Software tools, have not really looked into what's available there yet. I have been using QB64 and FreeBasic for a very long time. I currently have the 64-bit Windows versions. I am beginning to wonder why but, also have 32-bit versions. My plan includes a Windows 64-bit FreeBasic release. I started the project in QBasic, guess I what to find out if I can complete it in QBasic. I will have to try that. Definitely would cause overflow errors if required. Much appreciation for all your help.

I am running Ms-Dos 6.22 in DosBox-X. The BIOS lists it as a PC/AT. The BIOS call appears to work perfectly. Calling the sub with DELAY 30000 agrees with the stop watch on my phone. Currently I am using a 200 millisecond delay. I suppose, I could have passed it a long integer, I prefer DELAY 200 over DELAY 200000. The (value and -65536) should be the same as (value and FFFF0000h). However, using hex notation caused an overflow error. Setting break points and using the Immediate mode window shows the code producing the correct results. tmpvar = INT(micro/65536) tmpvar = micro mod 65536 That is why I posted, Thank you. I have known Mod since antiquity. For some strange reason, I just never got accustomed to using it. Maybe a remnant from Vic-20 and Atari 800XL days.

It is extremely refreshing to my soul that you have taken the time to examine the sub. You, and hopefully others could be my inspiration to complete this game. I have DOS and drivers loaded in high memory, not much left there. I have close to the full 640k conventional memory free, if QBasic can utilize that, waits to be explored. I hope this becomes a development thread for the game. Interested, stay tuned. After my last post, I suspected the multiplication was evaluated as a signed word before being cast. The first tmpvar assignment is meant to strip the high word value and dividing by 65536 to convert to word value. The if – end if clause assigns the signed dword value to the signed word based on whether it should be passed as a positive integer or twos compliment. I can see already that instead if dividing by 65536 that the bit shift operator may have been a better choice. If that will work.