2024 BASIC Tenliners Contest is calling us!!!

[+CharlieChaplin]

On 3/22/2024 at 12:40 AM, vitoco said:

All 11 game entries (SCHAU category was excluded) can be downloaded in the NOMAM2024.atr compilation disk from my tenliners page.
NOTE: this ATR must be booted with BASIC enabled (without pressing OPTION key in real hardware) and a joystick is required.

 

++Vitoco

 

 

Hey Vitoco, your Basic menu for the Tenlinere 2024 has a small bug or better is missing a line...

 

1) Tenliners 2023 Basic menu (V1.1):

line 65 Open #1,4,0,"D:File$"

line 66 machinecode to load the XEX files

 

2) Tenliners 2024 Basic menu (V1.0):

line 65 machinecode to load the XEX files

line 66 not there

 

Thus, the line with Open #1,4,0,"D:File$" is missing and therefore all .XEX Files and TB XL (.EXE ) cannot be loaded on your Tenliner 2024 diskette. Or am I completely wrong ?

 

 

 

[vitoco]

5 hours ago, CharlieChaplin said:

1) Tenliners 2023 Basic menu (V1.1):

line 65 Open #1,4,0,"D:File$"

line 66 machinecode to load the XEX files

This OPEN+USR trick works with Atari DOS 2.5, as the OPEN sets some IOCB pointers and the USR disables the BASIC ROM, moves RAMTOP and other vectors, and then pass the control to the DOS's builtin binary loader.

 

5 hours ago, CharlieChaplin said:

2) Tenliners 2024 Basic menu (V1.0):

line 65 machinecode to load the XEX files

line 66 not there

This year, the multi-platform games had a very big runtime embeded, so a 1050-enhanced density disk (130K) was not enough and I had to change to MyDOS and use a double density disk. The problem was that there were no equivalent routine in the DOS code, but a XIO command was available to load binary files in MyDOS. I needed to disable BASIC and move the vectors before the XIO, so I had to include it in assembly at the end of the USR routine. Can you see why?

 

5 hours ago, CharlieChaplin said:

Thus, the line with Open #1,4,0,"D:File$" is missing and therefore all .XEX Files and TB XL (.EXE ) cannot be loaded on your Tenliner 2024 diskette. Or am I completely wrong ?

Then, it is not a bug, they are just different menu versions for different DOS-es. Anyway, did you try to play .XEX tenliners like "Chase Me!" from the menu in 2024's ATR?

 

++V

 

[+CharlieChaplin]

Aha,

so there is a difference between MyDOS and DOS 2.5 regarding binary load from Basic (therefore a different machinecode required). Since I am no programmer, I did not know this.

 

Evil me, I wanted to have all Tenliner games on a 130k disk. So I simply packed the two longest programs (Acme Inc and Fall Ball, both ug-Basic programs) and then they did all fit on a 130k disk. But with DOS 2.5 and your menu on this 130k diskette all XEX files did not run anymore. With MyDOS and your menu on this 130k disk I also had some problems (think the XEX files still did not load, but maybe it was something else that did not work).

 

So I loaded your menu from the Tenliners 2023 (130k DOS 2.5 disk image) and listed lines 65 and 66 to diskette and then entered it to the menu of the Tenliners 2024 on my 130k DOS 2.5 disk - and that worked. The packed programs show some garbage when depacking, but otherwise they work fine (and all XEX files load fine from DOS 2.5 now).