Omnimaga
General Discussion => Introduce Yourself! => Topic started by: z80man on December 29, 2010, 08:24:07 pm
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Hi I'm Z80man. I'm currently a sophmore in high school. Last year I got my first graphing calculator, a Ti-84+ SE. Within a few weeks I was making my first basic programs. As I got better I made more advanced programs. Eventually I became frustruated with the slow speed and lack of capability of basic. Thats when I was introduced to asm programming. I'm also fluent in the C/C++ langaunge too. This year for Christmas I got the Casio Prizm. As of now I'm trying to decode the header for apps. Other news about me is that I'm am an avid runner competing on both my school's cross country and track teams.
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Hi! Welcome to Omnimaga!
What kinds of programs have you made so far?
If you're frustrated with TI-Basic, might I recommend trying Axe Parser?
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Welcome to omnimaga. Have some peanuts:
(http://tinyurl.com/taopeanuts)
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I just recently started using Axe.
My two best basic programs were a slot machine game and a missile defence game. The missile defence game was very realistic with multiple enemies at varying speeds all at the same time, but ran way to slow for basic. I'm now porting it for axe.
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Eventually I became frustruated with the slow speed and lack of capability of basic.
I have to ask: what capabilities does BASIC lack, aside from disabling the obvious run indicator and crashing the calc?
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Eventually I became frustruated with the slow speed and lack of capability of basic.
I have to ask: what capabilities does BASIC lack, aside from disabling the obvious run indicator and crashing the calc?
i'm just going to say that's a pretty open-ended question. really, you could ask the question about any language. there is no catch-all language that has all the capabilities needed to program any project.
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Most languages are Turing complete, which means they can technically be used for any project. TI-BASIC is one of those languages.
By use, I'm assuming you have a few thousand years to do the computations, given how slow BASIC is :P
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Most languages are Turing complete, which means they can technically be used for any project. TI-BASIC is one of those languages.
By use, I'm assuming you have a few thousand years to do the computations, given how slow BASIC is :P
you don't consider quickness of execution as a capability? by the way, i don't mean to bash basic here. i'm painting with a broad stroke, including all languages calculator and computer.
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Not in the sense of Turing completeness, where you have to disregard speed of execution. Of course, one would never use BASIC to write an OS because it would be almost as slow as TI-OS v2.53
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Not in the sense of Turing completeness, where you have to disregard speed of execution. Of course, one would never use BASIC to write an OS because it would be almost as slow as TI-OS v2.53
we disagree on our standard of capability then. yours is just Turing completeness. i gauge the capability of a language on more than that. (e.g. speed).
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With TI-BASIC, you can't store stuff directly to memory addresses you want and a map engine will run at about 4 frames per second on a regular 83+ with collision detection, even on the home screen, even if optimized. A raycaster would take one minute per frame to render (calc84maniac tried). This is how slow TI-BASIC is. However, in TI-BASIC, you can still do quite nice games. See Ztrumpet and Builderboy stuff, for example. I made plenty of RPGs in BASIC too that people liked, but some used ASM libraries.
ANyway welcome z80man!
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What I felt what was missing from basic were
1. grayscale support
2. the last row and column of the screen
3. turn off the run indicator (It's way to annoying)
4. integers
5. sound
6. turning screen on and off (I used this to make an asm program that made my teachers think they had deleted my ram)
7. pixel lines, not graph screen lines
8. crash the calc ( when wrong password is entered)
9. efficient memory storage
10. capability to run programs that require speed
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Actually you could turn off the indicator (kinda) by doing Text(0,94," ", I think, but I'm not sure anymore. It effectively had many limitations, though. You can make great games with it, but making a pure BASIC Metroid game with ASM-like graphics that doesn't take a minute to load is nearly impossible.
One big advantage of BASIC over Axe and ASM, though, is that a lot of code is smaller than its ASM counterpart. For example, in Axe, 9-VAR takes 7 bytes for the -VAR part, while in BASIC it takes 2. This is because the BASIC code is interpreted. However, data in BASIC is huge compared to Axe. To get the smallest possible game, you almost have to write parts of them in ASM/Axe and the rest in BASIC.
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Welcome here!
Btw, I don't quite understand how basic lacks integers? Isn't that essential for a calc?
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Btw, I don't quite understand how basic lacks integers? Isn't that essential for a calc?
All math in basic is done with floating point variables which are much slower and take up more space
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Oh, I see what you meant, yeah, but as ti assumes we are only making math programs, that's expected
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Also 98% of the time when programming, the numbers I'm using are integers
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A bit late but welcome to Omnimaga! :D
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Btw, I don't quite understand how basic lacks integers? Isn't that essential for a calc?
All math in basic is done with floating point variables which are much slower and take up more space
^this. I like having floating points for complex formulas, but personally I would do fine without them. Also they're a nuisance sometimes, because I have to prefix my formulas with int most of the time. The only bad part about integers is that you get out of range easier. It can be an hassle to have a RPG where your gold can reach 9999999, when the max is 65535.
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Welcome here Z80Man. :) Do you still have these programs?
My two best basic programs were a slot machine game and a missile defence game. The missile defence game was very realistic with multiple enemies at varying speeds all at the same time, but ran way to slow for basic. I'm now porting it for axe.
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Welcome here Z80Man. :) Do you still have these programs? My two best basic programs were a slot machine game and a missile defence game. The missile defence game was very realistic with multiple enemies at varying speeds all at the same time, but ran way to slow for basic. I'm now porting it for axe.
The slot machine game got deleted in a crash, but it wouldn't be to hard to remake it. The missile defence game though is still a work in progress.