Search found 645 matches

by at67
10 Jun 2023, 14:41
Forum: Hardware and software hacking
Topic: PipeMania [game]
Replies: 4
Views: 1788

Re: PipeMania [game]

Lots of fun and very slick graphics, the only thing I noticed was that if you spam the A button you can bring the game to a crawl.

P.S. With your permission I'll add all your contributions to the Dropbox folder that is stickied here: https://forum.gigatron.io/viewtopic.php?t=248
by at67
25 May 2023, 11:41
Forum: Hardware and software hacking
Topic: gtBASIC
Replies: 435
Views: 101575

Re: gtBASIC

by at67
21 May 2023, 18:03
Forum: Hardware and software hacking
Topic: gtBASIC
Replies: 435
Views: 101575

Re: gtBASIC

There's some low hanging fruit that you can try: 1) DIM statements will create 16bit word arrays by default, if your array only needs values between 0-255 then use the % modifier on the variable name to create 8bit byte arrays. 2) If you have an array of strings and the array is constant, i.e. read ...
by at67
18 May 2023, 02:21
Forum: Hardware and software hacking
Topic: gtBASIC
Replies: 435
Views: 101575

Re: gtBASIC

It was an absolute art-form back in the day, something that doesn't happen much anymore, (except in embedded or tiny-demo programming).

The next release will have compressed, scrollable and screen to screen blits which should help a lot in this area.
by at67
10 May 2023, 09:26
Forum: Hardware and software hacking
Topic: gtBASIC
Replies: 435
Views: 101575

Re: gtBASIC

There isn't, SPRITE's are designed to emulate real hardware sprites as much as possible, i.e. they are capable of restoring any background, static, dynamic, other sprites, blit's, bullets, etc. If you want a sprite that doesn't redraw/refresh based on spatial state, (i.e. movement), then just use a ...
by at67
09 May 2023, 05:04
Forum: Hardware and software hacking
Topic: gtBASIC
Replies: 435
Views: 101575

Re: gtBASIC

You need to LOAD the SPRITE's before the BLIT's. most likely what has happened is that the BLIT's have taken some of the SPRITE's memory. Also, with the 64k model the maximum number of rows for all SPRITE's, is 120 + 128; have you exceeded this number?
by at67
27 Apr 2023, 17:25
Forum: Hardware and software hacking
Topic: gtBASIC
Replies: 435
Views: 101575

Re: gtBASIC

There's no need to do that, the BLIT routine will automatically split up the image into contiguous chunks of whatever you specify, obviously it will become a little more inefficient as more individual native calls will need to be made internally to get the full image on screen; just set the number s...
by at67
27 Apr 2023, 13:11
Forum: Hardware and software hacking
Topic: gtBASIC
Replies: 435
Views: 101575

Re: gtBASIC

Sprites are hard coded to use the offscreen segments of both pages of memory, this means from 0x08A0 to 0x7FA0 for page 0 and 0x80A0 to 0xFFA0 for page 1, this means that the maximum number of combined rows of data in your sprites is 120+128, (not including PATTERN's, just LOAD SPRITE commands). It ...
by at67
26 Apr 2023, 23:17
Forum: Hardware and software hacking
Topic: ROM switching:
Replies: 12
Views: 4664

Re: ROM switching:

You'll probably get away with no de-bouncing, but it is poor design practice; you'll be resetting the 161's multiple times, at the mercy of whatever switch you decide to use.
by at67
26 Apr 2023, 16:08
Forum: Hardware and software hacking
Topic: ROM switching:
Replies: 12
Views: 4664

Re: ROM switching:

When switching ROM's, unless the current native code path is the same, (between the previous ROM and the new ROM), the Gigatron will most certainly have timing issues and/or most likely crash.

You will need some sort of reset to initialise the PC to 0x0000.