Amazing job! I had also a go and played the game on the Acorn Electron; of course it plays even slower but seems to be playing fine. I usually code in machine code for the Elk, but recently I started to have a look at its basic and I think it is the best I have every used on an 8 bit machine! I especially like the way it is possible to use inline machien code. I am curious how you paint the chess pieces I know we can only have monochrome user defined characters, by any chance is there a way to plot them with transparency? thanks
The pieces are indeed redefined characters with background swapping to make the board in text mode. Acorn computers like Amstrad ones use a real frame buffer. The character font is independant of the background color. With VDU5, you can put them anywhere on screen (no 8 pixels boundaries) and characters overwrite whatever is on screen.
Try this on the ELK :
10 MODE 5:GCOL 0,130:FOR N=1TO100:GCOL0,RND(2):DRAW RND(1200),RND(1000):NEXT:VDU5:MOVE12,510:GCOL0,3:PRINT "CHARACTERS ON TOP"
Ah right, very interesting and useful, it is great to know that we can plot chars anywhere on the screen. thanks. I was asking because I have a friend who coded a game for the Amstrad CPC and as the BASIC also only allows to create monochrome user defined characters; he plots 3 chars on the same place to get as it were one char in four colours as there is a way to plot them with transparency. with VDU5 and GCOL we can do the same, awesome.
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Amazing job! I had also a go and played the game on the Acorn Electron; of course it plays even slower but seems to be playing fine. I usually code in machine code for the Elk, but recently I started to have a look at its basic and I think it is the best I have every used on an 8 bit machine! I especially like the way it is possible to use inline machien code. I am curious how you paint the chess pieces I know we can only have monochrome user defined characters, by any chance is there a way to plot them with transparency? thanks
The pieces are indeed redefined characters with background swapping to make the board in text mode. Acorn computers like Amstrad ones use a real frame buffer. The character font is independant of the background color. With VDU5, you can put them anywhere on screen (no 8 pixels boundaries) and characters overwrite whatever is on screen.
Try this on the ELK :
10 MODE 5:GCOL 0,130:FOR N=1TO100:GCOL0,RND(2):DRAW RND(1200),RND(1000):NEXT:VDU5:MOVE12,510:GCOL0,3:PRINT "CHARACTERS ON TOP"
Ah right, very interesting and useful, it is great to know that we can plot chars anywhere on the screen. thanks. I was asking because I have a friend who coded a game for the Amstrad CPC and as the BASIC also only allows to create monochrome user defined characters; he plots 3 chars on the same place to get as it were one char in four colours as there is a way to plot them with transparency. with VDU5 and GCOL we can do the same, awesome.
Wow, impressive, great! ♕
very good
This is amazing...!!! Will conversions be coming for other computers like C64...??? : )
It uses a lot of specific properties of BBC Basic, I don't think there will be conversions to Microsoft BASIC.