Omnimaga
Omnimaga => News => Topic started by: DJ Omnimaga on December 13, 2008, 03:07:53 pm
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Back in 2006, we stopped reporting on MaxCoderz calculator RPGs and programming tools projects because they had bad hosting, preventing us from regulary checking for news and browsing the entire forums every attempt. However, MaxCoderz moved to a new hosting provider around the same time the new Omnimaga forums opened and as you could see in the previous news item with Desolate screenshot, we started reporting again as we did before.
Currently Benjamin Ryves from there is working on a z80 port of Richard Russell's BBC BASIC, meaning a new programming language avaliable for the TI-83+ and 84+ calculators. As for now, you can alerady do many things with it and this include some form of tilemapping:
(http://www.omnimaga.org/images/screenshots/bbcbasic.gif)
Will this be the first TI-83+ language besides TI-BASIC and ASM to let users be able to create RPGs without having to split the game into several parts?
For regular updates you can check the BBC BASIC sub-forum on MaxCoderz here. (http://www.junemann.nl/maxcoderz/viewforum.php?f=37) However, you must register on their forum because this section is disabled for guests.
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Glad to see you able to report on behalf of MaxCoderz, and this project has some great potential. I hope this will prove to be something widely used, as it is quite a bit faster than basic and a little easier to grasp than z80 asm..I hope to see the true potential of this project released, as the lesser/failed attempts of FastRPL and the hopeful updates of (the madskillz one, which is being ported to the z80s)...
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well i was gonna reply something else about MLC but I think I will not because I don't really want to sound rude to those working on the TI versions and I understand that real life might come in the way during project developpement, but looking at how it took 2 years to see a finished (or nearly finished?) product on the Casio calculators, then looking at how the z80 and 68k versions have progressed and switched authors since the entire project was founded more than 4 years ago, if the trend continues this way, when finished TI ports of MLC will come out Omnimaga/MaxCoderz will alerady have celebrated their 10th anniversary.
That said I hope progress picks up again though and that it gets finished even if I am done with calc programming by then and mostly focus on music/rpg-maker. As for MaxCoderz my gripe was that after I left the second time in 2006, the server started going down pretty often, then it moved to a new hosting (Tengun) in attempt to solve the issue, but it just got worse. It would take 1 minute to load every page and most of the time the pages would never appear, so I gave up checking the forums. Even the old Omnimaga forums downtimes in Late-2005 and Late-2006 didn't compare. I think the only TI site where I saw more downtimes before was Epic Programming Studio and it was so bad that it eventually scared the entire userbase away.
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so what are the specs for this language? is a special program needed to run progs made by BBCB?
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I'm unsure, I think it's on calc programming but I could be wrong. I hope we don't need to use the real PC compiler (by another company) though because it's not free
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It's quite obviously oncalc... at least from what I've seen of the Maxcoderz topic... :)
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Ben wrote an editor that allows coding on PC as well. BBC BASIC is slated to be a 3 page app. The app will be required in order for programs to run.
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Ah ok that's good, I was getting worried that those who wanted to code on PC would need to code using the shareware BBC BASIC compiler. I do hope the code won't get too huge tho (like, bigger than tokenized BASIC code), because in that case you wouldn't be able to have much games on the same calc at once due to the app size
I remember MLC games were bigger than their TI-BASIC counterpart because they were coded from the TI-BASIC editor using separate letters for instructions, resulting in much bigger file size. You could compress them though, but afterward you couldn't edit them anymore and they were still bigger than BASIC games afterward
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Yeah, I remember how FastRPL was a huge app..8 page or 5 maybe, seeing what this can do makes it a more viable system..
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On UTI Ben said it would be 2 pages... But that's a while ago...
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I do hope it won,t end up being 5 pages, because from what I noticed, since early 2005, people no longer appreciate huge files, which I never understood because at this time the 84+SE started getting more and more popular and it has 1.54 MB of archive. I would personally still use even it if it was 5 page tho, providing the output programs won't end up too big for what they can do.
As for FastRPL does anyone know where it's avaliable for download because the only place that appeared to host it shutted down (the official site I mean)
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Yes, it's a 3 page app (48KB), with BBC BASIC and the BBC Micro MOS API routines on page 1; file I/O, console I/O and general TI-OS interop on page 0 and graphics routines on page 2.
I'm not sure what you'd be looking for as far as a GUI goes. If it's for editing programs the file format is documented so it would be possible to write external tools if need be. You can convert text files into BASIC programs by *EXECing them from within BBC BASIC.
Sounds like it will not be more than three, as for a download link I can not find one that still has the file hosted..I will let you know if I have it on my external HDD ..
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I checked on my PC if it wasn't in the old Omnimaga forums download files but it isn't there either, maybe the app had a different name tho, but I think I didn't hosted it since it wasn't finished :(
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Yeah, I can not find it..Maybe give kuda a email?
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Ben hopes to turn it into a fully feldged BBC BASIC port, that way it will support actual BBC BASIC programs for the machine itself (it already supports some programs). That means there will already be an extensive library of software available!
The APP shouldnt get any bigger than 3pages and it comes with everything you need to code your own stuff, no PC required! :).
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that's cool, I still hope program/games will be small in size :)
I am curious how a BBC Basic version of Illusiat would be with this, or maybe Reuben if it features grayscale/store/recallpic commands :)
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I guess we were forgetting the BBC libary XD, kinda like the chip-8 engine (http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/385/38530.html) thing he released it will have many games/programs.
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oh yeah I remember that, it was interesting to play some of the games on this