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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : How to write games in basic
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| mkopack73 Senior Member  Joined: 03/07/2020 Location: United StatesPosts: 261 |
Saw this over on the Commander x16 forums and thought it might be useful to newbies here. Obviously some of it will need changes to account for the different graphics and text mechanisms, but a lot of the concepts should be helpful to new people. Or maybe somebody would be willing to port the info over to a set of CMM2 tutorials.... Link to article Edited 2021-01-17 23:58 by lew247 |
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epsilon Senior Member Joined: 30/07/2020 Location: BelgiumPosts: 255 |
Very interesting. Thanks for posting that! In the same vein, I'm currently attempting to port the Dragonfly game engine to CMM2: https://dragonfly.wpi.edu/ The website includes an online book (free) that walks you through the design of a 2D game engine. I'm currently implementing the engine on PC in C++, by the book, and in parallel I transpose the whole thing to MMBasic. Very interesting exercise so far (I'm about halfway through). Ruben/Epsilon. Epsilon CMM2 projects |
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| Nautilus Newbie  Joined: 01/01/2021 Location: GermanyPosts: 16 |
That's funny. I am currently coding a snake game for the CMM2. Thanks for the link  |
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| mkopack73 Senior Member Joined: 03/07/2020 Location: United StatesPosts: 261 |
Ah, interesting. First i've heard of it. In grad school I took a class on game engine design, where we discussed the typical game loop, including network code, and the sorts of facilities that typically are provided (physics, graphics, AI, sound, etc.) Just thinking if we had some good tutorials like the author of the CX16 is doing, that might go a long way towards helping newcomers learn how to make interesting and useful stuff for the CMM2. The CMM2 is SOOOO much more powerful (and easier to program) than the CX16 that it should be really easy to do much more interesting things... Really the only thing we don't have that the CX16 does is a true text mode. Our feature set is incredibly more vast than the CX16's beyond that... (Well, they might have some advantages in sound as well... MAYBE.) |
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CircuitGizmos Guru  Joined: 08/09/2011 Location: United StatesPosts: 1427 |
What are they doing for sound? I remember at one point they were talking about '80s sound chips, or newer versions with similar features. Micromites and Maximites! - Beginning Maximite |
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RetroJoe Senior Member Joined: 06/08/2020 Location: CanadaPosts: 290 |
According to the website FAQ: The VERA is their proprietary video generation solution. It has built-in support for tiles, which is kinda cool... Edited 2021-01-20 11:47 by RetroJoe Enjoy Every Sandwich / Joe P. |
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| toml_12953 Guru Joined: 13/02/2015 Location: United StatesPosts: 442 |
You may be interested in this: https://bisqwit.iki.fi/jutut/kuvat/programming_examples/qbasicsnakegame.pdf or Nibbles, a game that came with Qbasic: https://www.dropbox.com/s/gpql61b29mjl6by/nibbles.bas?dl=0[https://www.dropbox.com/s/gpql61b29mjl6by/nibbles.bas?dl=0 Edited 2021-01-20 22:31 by toml_12953 |
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| mkopack73 Senior Member Joined: 03/07/2020 Location: United StatesPosts: 261 |
Yeah but it also has sound functionality... They were originally planning to use 2 other chips - the yamaha and another one. But that other one apparently is giving them a lot of headaches when they try to run the board at the full planned 8Mhz so they're going to drop it and use the Vera to provide that capability in addition to the video. In terms of raw video capabilities - the Vera probably matches up quite well against our CMM2 - capabilities, speed, colors, etc. It has an actual tile/text mode which is an advantage for certain types of games. But the way you program it through poking an address( from basic) is pathetic and far from straightforward for the beginner. If they would have gone ahead and used the c128's BASIC 7.0 then I feel like they would have been in much better shape for doing reasonable stuff in BASIC and less users would be forced towards 6502 assembly to do meaningful stuff. The CMM2 has the advantage of a really powerful BASIC implementation, especially so now with all the 3D commands! |
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| RetroJoe Senior Member Joined: 06/08/2020 Location: CanadaPosts: 290 |
Yep, couldn't agree more - I'm befuddled by many of the design choices being made on the X16 project. I'm going to keep my eye on it because I'm a big fan of The 8-Bit Guy, but I don't have a compelling interest in getting one; if for some strange reason I get the urge to code in assembler on a physical 6502, I have both an Apple II and an Atari 800 to do it on :) Also, was it you that posted something here recently about the TTGO VGA32? I picked one up recently, and it's quite a compelling little gadget. It feels like a close cousin to the CMM2, hardware-wise. Regarding this thread, it would be awesome if it stayed alive and folks kept adding relevant articles and code snippets to it. My interest in the CMM2 was (and is...) predicated on the premise that "mere mortals" can write high quality games in BASIC, but I realized very early on that even though I know how to code, I don't actually know how to write arcade-style action games :) It's a lot harder than it looks - even basic (no pun intended) action games have a lot going on, so as time allows I've been doing small experiments, but it's slow going. Ideally, over time, there will be enough CMM2-specific game development content and concepts that it can be aggregated into a dedicated documentation volume or appendix, in the same vein as Peter's graphics manual. Enjoy Every Sandwich / Joe P. |
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| RetroJoe Senior Member Joined: 06/08/2020 Location: CanadaPosts: 290 |
P.S. I have had a very hard time posting to TBS lately, and I believe the problem is with curly single and double quotes. On my iPad, I have resorted to "forcing" straight quotes by holding down the keyboard key and picking the straight variant from the pop up menu. Maybe there's a setting somewhere to use straight quotes by default... Edited 2021-01-21 18:29 by RetroJoe Enjoy Every Sandwich / Joe P. |
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thwill Guru Joined: 16/09/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4311 |
I've seen the same issue. I think Gizmo may have made an over conservative change to what is acceptable in an effort to eliminate some of the issues that some Unicode postings have been causing. Perhaps he could sanitise our ramblings on the server side and convert curly-quotes to their straight variants ? Cheers, Tom MMBasic for Linux, Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures |
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| RetroJoe Senior Member Joined: 06/08/2020 Location: CanadaPosts: 290 |
Happy to report that on IOS devices, curly quotes can be turned off by disabling the "Smart Punctuation" setting under General | Keyboard. A little bit uglier text, and quite an anachronistic workaround in 2021, but a lot less frustrating! Enjoy Every Sandwich / Joe P. |
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