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Challenge: Write a game in Atari Basic under 4K


NuY

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Hold that deadline my friend Bluecat started work on her entry (and 1st a8 program ever) yesterday ;)

 

Fair enough, but that should be the last one or we'll never get this competition done with! Unless SIO99 turns up again... =-)

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maybe he's busy trying to find the optimised version of

 

10 on error goto 20

20 print "dixons is shit"

30 goto 20

 

I don't think I ever said I was definitely going to try writing a game for this challenge.

 

While this topic has been running, my laptop screen blew out, I found I had no external monitor that was working, then I bought a new desktop computer and LCD monitor. It didn't all happen at once, but I don't remember what date the screen blew out or when I had my new system set up.

 

Meanwhile I was reduced to using an old Apple Blueberry iMac G3, which can only display most websites using a custom browser called Classilla. I was also spending a lot of time running a collection of games from an emulator which I had transferred onto an SD card and loaded them from my Micro SIO2SD device onto my Atari 65XE. Unfortunately, my laptop display has been reset under Ubuntu Linux to a low resolution to try and cut down the flickering before the screen blew out, but this setting only displays part of a much bigger screen and I can't view the rest of it. The remaining Windows installation is hardly working at all.

 

I now plan to achieve more than I have done so far with my Micro SIO2SD after I finally get a multo card reader installed onto my new system. I then hope to type in and save Atari BASIC programs onto blank ATR disk images on my SD card.

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Meanwhile I was reduced to using an old Apple Blueberry iMac G3, which can only display most websites using a custom browser called Classilla.

 

Off topic, but I had no idea Classilla existed! I have a Powerbook 1400c that I use off and on (because I love the keyboard) and I had been trying to use iCab to browse the internet most of the time (it's a G3 upgraded 1400c, but being NuBus, there is no OS X support). I'm pretty stoked to find out about this. Still no substitute for my Dell, but if I feel like booting the Powerbook, at least I'll have an option more decent than iCab, now.

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I don't think I ever said I was definitely going to try writing a game for this challenge.

 

Nobody said you were either, but a few of us assumed that, with your expansive knowledge of BASIC dialects, you'd be first in the queue for this one...

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hold that deadline my friend Bluecat started work on her entry (and 1st a8 program ever) yesterday ;)

 

The Slo-Quiz is fun :thumbsup: managed 9 out of 10 after a few goes; though it does show the same words more than once! Just when you're on for 10/10 it adds a new word to get you :D You could expand this with more words (and K)!

I am glad you enjoyed learning new language :) Yeah, I will update the game considering no limit restriction. For now I provide you with new updated version of the same 4k game with some minor amendments: no title screen, the same word can't repeat twice in the row (but can in later guessing) and player rank after drill (can you become THE MASTER?)

 

SQ2.BAS

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maybe he's busy trying to find the optimised version of

 

10 on error goto 20

20 print "dixons is shit"

30 goto 20

 

 

 

 

 

You can replace dixons with curry's (or possibly rumbelows/lasky's, if you remember them)

 

Would a 4k atari basic program take the same amount of mem in say TB or basic xl/xe

 

Am i right in thinking that there was an a800 version of TB as well as the XL/E version

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  • 3 weeks later...

This is my 4k game at last. It's called Amazin and it's a simple 2 level maze game for Bluecat to find the way home. It's version 1 on the disk. My friend TRBB amended it to make version 2 and add another level but his code is not as pretty as mine! Hope you like it - my 6 year old nephew does.

4KContest-AmazinAndKeepOnKoastin.ATR

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That was quite fun, although i'm a little older than a six year old (well, possibly not mentally... =-)

 

This competition was lots of fun, can we have another one for machine code with a slightly bigger size limit next time please? =-)

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Looks like I've missed a lot since I was on here last (about 2 months ago)! Sorry for not being around as the person who kind of started this whole thing...

 

I've had to pretty much give up on my effort. First off I couldn't get it running how i wanted it to, and then I had a HDD crash with pretty much all of my Atari stuff on, which pretty much bummed me out for a while.

 

The idea I was having was sort of a cross between Warioware and something I can't quite put my finger on. The plan was to have up to 4 very small games (Snake clone, jumping game, that sort of thing) with a timer running across the top of the screen. Every few seconds you would be stopped playing the game you were on, and move on to one of the others, at the point at which you'd left it. Score would have been based on how long you could survive without dying/crashing in any of the sub-games.

 

I was planning on trying to do this by using the pointers that control which section of memory is the display for each of the games, and having a unique set of vars in each mini-game too. Timing would have been utilised by abusing the internal clock (locations 18,19,20) and there would have been a few global vars as well to handle which game was to be done next, which games you'd failed in to stop them being used again, and so on.

 

I ran into problems as I was having issues using multiple modes for this as well as the pointers for screen memory were giving me issues. Having an entry point into each game proved challenging as well.

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That was quite fun, although i'm a little older than a six year old (well, possibly not mentally... =-)

 

This competition was lots of fun, can we have another one for machine code with a slightly bigger size limit next time please? =-)

 

I've seen what you can do in MC in 4k, so that might be an unfair advantage ;)

 

What about 512 bytes? ;)

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That was quite fun, although i'm a little older than a six year old (well, possibly not mentally... =-)

 

This competition was lots of fun, can we have another one for machine code with a slightly bigger size limit next time please? =-)

 

I would suggest something like:

Go back to 1979/1980 and write a ML program that utilizes max. 8k memory (ranging from $0000-1FFF), but the program must run on non-expanded/non-upgraded Atari 400 with 8k RAM and DOS 2.0 present. What, too hard ?!? Not enough memory left with DOS 2 present ?!? I know, but thats the challenge... ;-) e.g. look here, Pong with two players and score in just 336 Bytes: http://www.atarionli...at=1&ct=nowinki

 

Alright then, go back to 1983/1984 and write a ML-program that utilizes max. 16k memory (ranging from $0000-3FFF), but the program must run on Atari 600XL (non-expanded/non-upgraded) with DOS 2.0 / 2.5 present ?!? That leaves more than 8k free RAM... more than enough I guess.

 

-Andreas Koch.

Edited by CharlieChaplin
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  • 2 weeks later...

I've downloaded and run the games which came as ATR files, but I don't know what to do with the games which came as BAS files. I mean I need a program to compile them onto an ATR. I read something about this in the past, but now I don't know where it is. Can someone post a link to a converter program?

Edited by SIO99
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You simply use Atari Basic, load it into and use RUN command from basic. Load it from basic is: run computer (or emulator) with Basic on, use command from basic: RUN"D:NAME.BAS and click return. Game will run after while

Hint: name is property name of game from ATR file...

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So... we actually ending this competition for voting so i can get some closure or what? It's quite hard to start a series of competitions if the first one never ends. =-)

 

(And i still like the idea of a machine code compo at some point... i'd have thrown something in for the NYD release but forgot about it until about 4pm on the last day of December!!)

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I've downloaded and run the games which came as ATR files, but I don't know what to do with the games which came as BAS files. I mean I need a program to compile them onto an ATR. I read something about this in the past, but now I don't know where it is. Can someone post a link to a converter program?

 

If you're in the highly recommended Altirra emulator, then my favourite way is to go to System, Host Device (H:) - and set that to point to some folder where you keep your BAS files. Then boot into basic and do LOAD "H:FILE.BAS".

 

Otherwise, if you really want to do it the ATR way, then I believe AtrUtil (http://atari.kenscla...ads/atrutil.zip) has a GUI that will do it - but I've not used it in some time...

 

W.

 

PS - .BAS files probably need to be treated as "binary", rather than "text" in AtrUtil...

Edited by wesmond
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I've taken the liberty and put together an ATR (1050 density, DOS2.5) with all the versions:

BASIC4KChallenge2012.ATR (Version 2 with fixed margin!)

The disk uses 'Fiie Menu II' and seems to run all the entries. Hopefully I've not missed off anything!

 

If you want to disable the reboot on reset then delete line 0 from menu.bas. Emulator users will need to enable BASIC and have the BASIC ROM file installed

 

:)

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POKE 82,2: REM this sets LMARGIN to 2 characters.

 

Crap... see previous comment about time since previously working in BASIC. =-) [Looks hopefully at TheRealBountyBob in case a fixed version can be done in that there ATR =-]

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