Extended Basic and bitmap

[HOME AUTOMATION]

3 hours ago, Vorticon said:

That said, I would be curious to know what would be needed to be able to *completely* restore the XB environment upon return from bitmap so that one could continue using XB without chaining another program.

I'd guess you'd have to save/reload, PAD, PC, ST, WP, VDP REGISTERS, all 16k of VDP(only takes about 1 sec. w/TIPI). Probably faster to/from SAMS memory.

[+retroclouds]

2 minutes ago, HOME AUTOMATION said:

I'd guess you'd have to save/reload, PAD, PC, ST, WP, VDP REGISTERS, all 16k of VDP(only takes about 1 sec. w/TIPI). Probably faster to/from SAMS memory.

Yes I can confirm its faster with SAMS. I guess roundabout 0.3 seconds

[+Vorticon]

I would have to use the SAMS to save the whole of VDP since there is obviously not enough room in low memory for that unless there is a way to access upper expansion memory for storage...

[+Vorticon]

20 hours ago, retroclouds said:

Yes I can confirm its faster with SAMS. I guess roundabout 0.3 seconds

What would you recommend as references for SAMS use? I've never explored that device even though I've had one for a very long time...

[+TheBF]

I got my information from this thread. 

 

 

 

[+Vorticon]

I found this great listing in 99 Magazine issue 11 (French) of a utility which allows you to draw bitmap graphics from XB and switch back and forth between the 2 modes at will. I know that TML does that and much more, but this utility has super fast line and circle functions which open up interesting possibilities for standard XB. I made some minor modifications to the program by translating the commands to English and adding a bitmap background color function as well. I actually typed the whole thing by hand from the magazine using Stevie, not for the faint of heart

Below is the disk image with a LOAD program that automatically loads the utility when you first start XB, as well as a quick test XB program called XBBMPTEST to demonstrate some of the functions. I am also attaching a brief reference sheet.

 

 

 

 

XBBITMAP.dsk XBBITMAP program.pdf

[+Vorticon]

I found a bug in the file ops of the utility. I updated the disk image and the docs.

Incidentally, it turns out that a previously drawn bitmap image will actually be preserved, minus the background color, when switching back to normal graphics mode and will reappear when activating bitmap mode again. This is useful in so many ways... 

ps: the disk image also contains the full source file for the curious

 

[+Vorticon]

So interesting observations:

This does not run properly in RXB, which I suspect is related to the overwriting of parts of the utility in low memory.

The RANDOMIZE function is not working in TI XB, so we keep getting the same pattern, whereas in XB GEM RANDOMIZE works as it should. Any thoughts as to why? Also it seems to run a little faster in that environment for some reason.

 

5 CALL LOAD(-31890,56,24) :: CALL LOAD(-31964,56,24)
10 CALL CLEAR :: RANDOMIZE
30 CALL LINK("SCR2") :: CALL LINK("CLEAR") :: CALL LINK("ORIGIN",90,125) :: CALL LINK("BCOLOR",11)
35 FOR I=1 TO 20
40 X=INT(RND*255) :: Y=INT(RND*191) :: R=INT(RND*26)+5
45 CALL LINK("CIRCLE",6,Y,X,R)
46 CALL LINK("LINE",10,Y,X)
60 NEXT I
70 CALL LINK("SCR1")
80 PRINT "AND BACK TO XB!"

 

[RXB]

On 9/28/2021 at 6:19 AM, TheBF said:

I got my information from this thread. 

 

Take a look at RXB the first product made that specifically had support for SAMS or at the time called the AMS.

I made a game using RXB support for SAMS with 910K for the game map.

 

 

[+Vorticon]

I actually looked at the RXB docs about this but I needed to better understand how the SAMS works at the low level in order to leverage RXB here.