fabrice montupet

Thank you very much Fred !

Since I use VWRITE and VREAD, I made no manipulation of the strings, but it is only because I haven't needed. Yes, VWRITE is very useful to replace CALL CHAR, mostly for its speed. But in my last game in development, I have a strange behavior of VWRITE, if I redefine several characters in one CALL LINK, sometimes, randomly, and not at each execution, some characters are suddenly damaged, and not only those that have been redefined.

My Notepad on MS-Windows 11 is set to display white fonts on dark background. That could be great to have this kind of configuration with TI99dir. Where I can make a note?

For my part, I replaced GCHAR with CALL LINK(“VREAD”, memory address, # bytes, string[ , . . .]) more flexible and faster.

I didn't specifically talk about CALL HCHAR but the fact to add the way to pass multiple statements in a single CALL. I just said that this kind of optimization was not new, CALL COLOR, SPRITE, CHAR, CHARPAT and some others permit that since the original TI Extended Basic. I also said that adding this to CALL HCHAR on RXB was nice and it was a good news to see it in XB256 was nice too. I said nothing else, no disrespect.

I think about an improvement of the display. In a maximized window, Ti99Dir is set to use 50% of the screen to display the directory/files and 50% for Quick View. In the case of using a very high resolution monitor the directory/files finally uses a small vertical part of the window directory and the right side of this window contains nothing. This empty space could be used to enlarge the Quick View window permitting to reduce (or remove) the horizontal scrolls when a program listing with long lines is displayed. Could you had the way for users to change the windows vertical sizes?

I'm sorry, a word is missing in my sentence, I wanted to write "Extended Basic" not only "Basic".

I already change colors here but this option is only for the color fonts and background of the directory view, not the text viewer window.

Very nice update! Thank you Fred. Could you add the way to choose the background and font color in the text preview? That would be great. At night, I have some eye problem that reduce the reading ability and white background dazzled me.

Please don't exaggerate, adding parameters for multiple CALL HCHAR in one CALL is very nice but just a common improvement, it is not new and not anyway a "RXB" innovation. TI developers used this feature in the original BASIC far before RXB existed. And I didn't read you in your manual thanking (crediting) them for that.

Yes, your RXB had this feature since a very long time, its pretty nice. But Harry's one is just a little enhancement of a masterpiece tool: XB256/Compiler whose the powerful meets (even outperforms) the expectations of any Extended Basic programmer. The French philosopher and author Albert Camus said "Most important is not to be the first but to be the best".

Very interesting new feature, thank you! Do you have planned to propose a new disk based version of XB256/Compiler in next days?

🙂

Yes.

99V, to get things going, maybe the best way could be to show your designer skills, it could trigger something? help to motivate a programmer?

Thank you very much. Again, you made a great and very useful work. This new version speedup significantly the compiling and cartridge making process. It is for my the ultimate development kit for any XB programmers. I don't see what it lacks, it so complete, powerful and very well documented. Maybe the great Tursi "Flicker" routine to bypass the 5th sprite limitation. I think that this would bring a so precious and needed feature.

This graphics upgrade is excellent! The game's now appeal me to game with. Thank you Ciro and Rasmus, you made a great work.

Thank you Harry, Could you distribute the disk based version of XB256/Compiler?

I just made some music test composing, your solution is really to best way! Thank you again Steve.

I succeed! My MuseCore wasn't up to date. Now it works fine 🙂

Please can you detail the steps to do that?

Thank you Steve, I will follow the advice.

Thank you very much for your answers 🙂 I tried LMMS, alas it doesn't meet my needs, doesn't display a musical stave. Yes the midi to CALL SOUND is not perfect and need some work for getting a result. But I haven't find a better way. MuseScore4 is like MuseScore3, pretty heavy and painful for me to use considering my poor skills. Although oversized Sibelius is interesting but paying 99 USD just to create no more that 3 or 4 little musics of 2 staves in during few hours seems to me a bit expensive.

I have finished the development of the core of a XB256 game, just remain some levels to create but above all, I would like to add some music. I well have some personal pieces of music in mind but the big problem is that I am a zero in music composing. I think that the best way is to create a music in midi format, then use MuseCore4a for getting all the notes via CALL SOUNDs, then use the XB256 sound routines to play them in the game background. I tried some apps like MuseCore3 or MidiEditor but I failed to use them... I told you so I was absolutely void in music composing 🙃 So, someone knows a extremely easy to use midi application? All that I need is to put notes on a musical stave and to live listen the result like "Music Maker" for our dear TI-99/4A. Thank you for your advises.

The CRT is the only way to produce first emotional sensations one's had with the computer in years 80, so it is the best for using/playing programs. That said, for developing, for eyes care, using a LCD is highly recommended.