nebpehtira

Hey all, Finally, had a chance to look back at this and figured out the problem. These statements were placed on screen so as to fit into field on an on screen form like so: I turned P02 into a string to capture any kind of input then immediately getting the program to spit it back out, and found that the issue is that rather than gathering user input from the keyboard it grabbed the entire row of the screen. I.e. instead of say "1.4" (which would be the sort of expected input range) it grabbed "1.4 | Ideal O2: |", hence generating a code 8 error, as the program was expecting numeric input. Not sure of the best way to fix this? All ideas welcome

Thanks, Phaeron. That's really useful The PRINT issue might be the culprit there. I'll check back through the code later and have a look.

Hi all, Getting this very odd but consistent error with a simple TurboBasic XL program I'm playing with in Altirra - all thoughts welcome on this one. So, we're in Mode 0, and I've got an on screen form that's gathering some numeric data, and I want to position input "?" prompt to the right part of screen to gather input from each field. Should be dead simple - position the prompt and a simple numeric variable input? 1225 ------------------------------ 1226 REM Getting input parameters 1227 ------------------------------ 1230 POSITION 15,7:INPUT PO2 1240 POSITION 15,9:INPUT DM 1250 POSITION 15,11:INPUT ENDN2 With Altirra in regular screen emulation mode this consistently generates Error 8 at line 1230. However, when in CIO enhanced screen mode, it gives no error and runs fine. There must be some rookie mistake here, but I honestly just can't see it - Unfortunately I don't have access to my "real" machine to test it on bare metal. Any ideas?

I like that idea too

CASE would be good one to have. Working with BBC Basic on RISC OS I've found it nice and easy to work with.

Working nicely now, thanks!

I have zero idea what this means, but it sounds clever and I endorse it! ??

Thanks all - will have a play after work

Feel silly on this one as it's so simple, but can't see the error! Just a basic selection IF/ELIF/ELSE structure for a user menu... getting a BAD LOOP error when parse/run? Initially left out THEN as assumed wasn't needed but got the bad loop error so thought maybe they are but still no joy. PRINT "Select option..." INPUT option IF option = 1 THEN EXEC trimix ELIF option = 2 THEN EXEC mod ELIF option = 3 THEN EXEC end ELIF option = 4 THEN EXEC min_od ELIF option = 5 THEN EXEC part_fill ELIF option = 6 THEN EXEC ccr_blend ELIF option = 7 THEN EXEC density ELIF option = 8 THEN EXEC shutdown ELSE EXEC init ENDIF ENDPROC

ah, Megalomania - memories!

Looking at some of the less appealing ports, getting the icon panel under control would be one of the most important things. A simple/compact drop down menu bar controlled by a choice of house/stick or function keys (Option to bring it up, select to toggle through, start to choose, and help actually being used to bring up a pop up with quick help for controls) could be good. Mathy's dual-screen idea for XEP equipped machines is a good idea for a whole host of more complex games, but I do feel the game should be "dual screen aware" but still have a "legacy mode" for single screen setups, as XEPs aren't that common, and it's nice to have games that you can pretty much toss into a more or less stock 8-bit setup and just play. (one caveat I'd have to that is that we should feel free to go beyond 64k RAM, as there's so many expanded RAM options out there, and it is one of the main restrictions on making more complex games).

Some of these genres wouldn't really do well on the Atari. Thinking about the limitations of the system, and making the most of what it does well, I think what would do well would be conversions of some fast paced, colourful 2D platformers like Sonic. Taking advantage of modern large, fast storage and programming tools would really let a good programmer showcase just how good the GTIA and ANTIC setup could be. Another game that I wish had made it to the 8-bit (since it did make it to the C64, and also the ST) was Rainbow Islands. I love city builder games like SimCity and strategy games like Civ, and while I suspect they'd easily be within the system capacity, I don't think they'd really show the platform at its best - the Atari 8 is much more impressive for it's colours and sprite hurling than it is for expansive high res playfields.

This is an incredible project, DS! Real labour of love. Looking forward to playing with FastBasic as I've been getting really frustrated with line numbers in Atari Basic. Wondering if you have a PDF version of the manual available? Call me old fashioned but I like having paper documentation on hand sometimes

Sweet! I was looking at my desk and thinking "yay, 80 columns!" and at the same time "Oh f***, two screens"

fantastic work, and good advice! Thank you