JamesD Posted July 30, 2018 Share Posted July 30, 2018 A work in progress BASIC game for the CoCo by Steve Strowbridge, host of CoCoTalk. 2 Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/281371-a-little-coco-basic-gaming-action/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gamemoose Posted July 30, 2018 Share Posted July 30, 2018 Y'know, I was wondering just this weekend if people still dabble in BASIC. Then poof! Here this post is. I'll have to watch the video later. Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/281371-a-little-coco-basic-gaming-action/#findComment-4082390 Share on other sites More sharing options...
jhd Posted July 30, 2018 Share Posted July 30, 2018 That is impressive -- it is definitely comparable to some of the commercial games released BITD. I am surprised that he managed to get that much speed out of BASIC. Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/281371-a-little-coco-basic-gaming-action/#findComment-4082471 Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted July 31, 2018 Author Share Posted July 31, 2018 I just sent him another page worth of optimizations to use, so it's going to get faster. The program uses PCOPY for double buffering, which copies from one 3K graphics page to another, and it does that A LOT! There's going to be a faster USR function at some point for the copy and it should make a big difference.If I get off my butt and release a few more patches for the CoCo 3, that should make it faster as well.People don't realize it, but the CoCo was no slouch speed wise even though Microsoft didn't fully take advantage of the 6809.In high speed mode (POKE65495,0) the CPU runs at double speed when accessing ROM... and BASIC is in ROM. Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/281371-a-little-coco-basic-gaming-action/#findComment-4082602 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gamemoose Posted July 31, 2018 Share Posted July 31, 2018 I gotta know, and it's probably a silly question, but how did y'all figure out how to make BASIC run like this? I remember seeing game submissions in Rainbow or Hot CoCo and wondering how the heck the programmer made it work. I've been thinking of reviving some of my Dad's old game projects he started years ago and finishing them. While I have to reaquaint myself with BASIC, it's something I've wanted to do since he passed away almost four years ago. Makes me glad I backed up his old CoCo disks to file images! Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/281371-a-little-coco-basic-gaming-action/#findComment-4082667 Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Phillips Posted July 31, 2018 Share Posted July 31, 2018 You may be better off avoiding the PCOPY entirely. Just flip between two display buffers. Using PMODE without SCREEN will let you draw to an off-screen buffer.However, BASIC is so slow it may not make a heck of a lot of difference. Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/281371-a-little-coco-basic-gaming-action/#findComment-4082707 Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted August 1, 2018 Author Share Posted August 1, 2018 All my stuff avoided the PCOPY. But Stevie's not quite fully grasped how to erase old sprites when flipping pages.Once he gets more of the stuff I've suggested incorporated, I may just change the code for him. Sometimes you need to see it in action to get a handle on it. Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/281371-a-little-coco-basic-gaming-action/#findComment-4083653 Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted August 1, 2018 Author Share Posted August 1, 2018 You may be better off avoiding the PCOPY entirely. Just flip between two display buffers. Using PMODE without SCREEN will let you draw to an off-screen buffer. However, BASIC is so slow it may not make a heck of a lot of difference. I'm pretty sure it will make a noticable difference, but with a faster USR function, it will be much faster without making the code more complicated. Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/281371-a-little-coco-basic-gaming-action/#findComment-4083656 Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted September 7, 2018 Author Share Posted September 7, 2018 https://www.facebook.com/steviestrowbridge/videos/225326201669320 Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/281371-a-little-coco-basic-gaming-action/#findComment-4107468 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gamemoose Posted September 8, 2018 Share Posted September 8, 2018 That is looking great! And in BASIC too! Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/281371-a-little-coco-basic-gaming-action/#findComment-4108313 Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted September 11, 2018 Author Share Posted September 11, 2018 This is for the MC-10, but should be easy to port to the coco 1 Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/281371-a-little-coco-basic-gaming-action/#findComment-4110548 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr SQL Posted September 11, 2018 Share Posted September 11, 2018 Awesome games on this thread! The 64x32 standard semigraphics mode is great on the MC-10 and the CoCo - the higher semigraphics modes lost with the GIME were really cool too. Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/281371-a-little-coco-basic-gaming-action/#findComment-4110871 Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Mr. Video Posted September 11, 2018 Share Posted September 11, 2018 This looks great for a game coded in basic. It makes me wonder what programming in coco basic is like. Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/281371-a-little-coco-basic-gaming-action/#findComment-4110922 Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted September 12, 2018 Author Share Posted September 12, 2018 Adventure is the work of Jim Gerrie, who has ported a lot of games from other platforms to the MC-10.I'll post some of his other videos. Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/281371-a-little-coco-basic-gaming-action/#findComment-4111652 Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted September 12, 2018 Author Share Posted September 12, 2018 Some of these are just on the MC-10, but several are on the CoCo as well.The music is dubbed in btw. Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/281371-a-little-coco-basic-gaming-action/#findComment-4111656 Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted September 12, 2018 Author Share Posted September 12, 2018 (edited) This is a port from the CoCo Edited September 12, 2018 by JamesD Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/281371-a-little-coco-basic-gaming-action/#findComment-4111661 Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted September 12, 2018 Author Share Posted September 12, 2018 Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/281371-a-little-coco-basic-gaming-action/#findComment-4111664 Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted September 12, 2018 Author Share Posted September 12, 2018 That is just a small sample of Jim's work.http://faculty.cbu.ca/jgerrie/Home/jgames.html Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/281371-a-little-coco-basic-gaming-action/#findComment-4111671 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gamemoose Posted September 15, 2018 Share Posted September 15, 2018 That is just a small sample of Jim's work. http://faculty.cbu.ca/jgerrie/Home/jgames.html Dang....that's a lotta stuff. I recognized some CoCo games from magazines that got converted (Richard Ramella's Lurkley Manor comes to mind). Thanks for sharing! Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/281371-a-little-coco-basic-gaming-action/#findComment-4113699 Share on other sites More sharing options...
+nanochess Posted September 15, 2018 Share Posted September 15, 2018 Dang....that's a lotta stuff. I recognized some CoCo games from magazines that got converted (Richard Ramella's Lurkley Manor comes to mind). Thanks for sharing! Ramella! Years without reading his name! I used to read his 80-Micro columns http://www.trs-80.org/fun-house/ Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/281371-a-little-coco-basic-gaming-action/#findComment-4113724 Share on other sites More sharing options...
ColorComputerStore Posted September 18, 2018 Share Posted September 18, 2018 James, can you post some of your optimization tips here? I think I heard Steve say recently you can disable the BASIC interpreter checking for the BREAK interrupt which leads to a 30% boost. Something like that. Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/281371-a-little-coco-basic-gaming-action/#findComment-4115840 Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted September 20, 2018 Author Share Posted September 20, 2018 James, can you post some of your optimization tips here? I think I heard Steve say recently you can disable the BASIC interpreter checking for the BREAK interrupt which leads to a 30% boost. Something like that. I'll work up a blog post or series of posts on optimizing Microsoft BASIC, and then post a link when available. Stevie hadn't found a working solution for the BREAK disable last I checked. Quote Link to comment https://forums.atariage.com/topic/281371-a-little-coco-basic-gaming-action/#findComment-4117225 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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