It's a very good idea. Basic games can be just as good as asm games. And on top of that, non-owners of graphlink cables can still play basic games by typing them in.
Me, I program basic because I have nothing better to do during chem. Sometimes I'll make a pretty cool prog, and so I upload it to ticalc.org.
I could probably very easily learn 83 asm, but I just don't feel like wasting time on it. If I could obtain a working rom image from my crap-ass calc, then maybe things would be different.
Just look at my Grand Theft Auto for instance. It's a basic game, and users loved it so much it won a p.o.t.m.! Now obviously, it was a good basic game. It wasn't in asm, but many people liked it anyway.
So, basic games CAN be as good as any asm game.
By the way, someone should make a Doom game in asm, like those Duke Nukem 3d and Hell games in the 83 games archive.

Who the hell transfers BASIC programs by typing them in?

that was back in the day....ah the memories hehehe

but seriously, if you dont have a graphlink or a 'supplier' and want games you make your own or type.

I used to before I got a graphlink to work. Can you imagine that I once tried to key in FFX3 for the 82 BY HAND? Yeah, it takes one insane person to do that. (I was 5% done with the copying when i finally got a graphlink.)

BASIC games can not be created with equal caliber and entertainment value when compared with assembly. The closest thing I've seen is Zelda 89, and guess what? It's slow - terribly slow - and utterly HUGE sizewise. It's ASM counterpart is relatively small, fast, and contains several more features than this one.

If I never see a BASIC game again, it will be too soon. Do not support this movement. It will only lead to hundreds more 'Guess the Number' games, or worse yet - an influx of massive, massive replicas of assembly games, that are slower and less interesting.

Levine

Basic + ASM a new form of programing. Could be, I belive. I am currently using basiclib for the ti-89 to improve my basic programs. I promote this new form of programming, wich will make basic = ASM.

Hey, you know what. I agree with you. I use ASM programs to enhance BASIC, and I also use some of the logic used in ASM to make BASIC programs run more smoothly and take up less space. BASIC = ASM.

Unfortunately, you can't really get the performance of assembly unless you write virtually everything in assembly. The idea of usin assembly subroutines to speed up BASIC programs is cute, but not effective. The problem is that, if any significant part of the program is written in BASIC, it will slow everything down. The real slowness of BASIC comes not from plotting graphics, but in the fact that the simplest things, such as control structures, arithmetic, and array access are way too slow. See the web page above for a practical analysis of how well BASIC can do these things compared to assembly (summary: assembly is 2100 times as fast)

that's not true.
is waiting for a keystroke much more time consuming in basic than in asm? either way most of the time is spent waiting for the user.
the speed increase from using asm to write sprites to the screen versus flipping pixels in basic is much greater than the speed increase to divide floating point numbers.
while you can't squeeze out every ounce of speed by using basic-asm hybrid programs, it can significantly increase the speed, perhaps to a point where you can do things that would not otherwise be possible.

In any real-time game, most time is obviously not spent waiting for the user! That's what I was thinking about. However, you should notice that, even in a program which does wait for the user, the significant issue is how long it takes the calculator to respond! No user will mind having to wait to decide what to do, but it's very likely that they'll care how long the calculator takes to process the data.

I never denied that it could significantly increase the speed. My point is simply that it wouldn't be enough of an increase to come close to assembly performance. As the performance testing I made shows, a game with significant complexity can't run smoothly in BASIC. Simply to perform its (extremely simple) processing of objects takes about a third of a second! So if a game had 20 objects moving around, you'd have a maximum of three frames per second, which is unacceptably slow (that's assuming that everything else, such as drawing graphics, is done instantaneously!) Even if you cut down to 5 objects (like Pac-Man has) you still would get only around 12 frames per second, which is barely tolerable. However, since other stuff would take time as well, and moving the Pac-Man objects is much more complex, since there needs to be at least some method of control, and they move along multiple dimensions, and need to test for walls, you'd probably get much less. I'd be surprised if you could make such a program get even 6 frames per second if the main control routines were in BASIC, nomatter how good of a BASIC programmer you are.

I don't really understand what you're saying about dividing floating point numbers at all. Neither floating point nor division are usually needed for games (and I don't see why you would refer to sprites if you were talking about math programs). However, I'm sure that would be a lot faster in assembly, even if the assembly program called the ROM floating point routines, since the overhead of the BASIC interpreter (which causes the real slowness of BASIC programs) would be gone. Anyway, my actual point is that the worst problem in BASIC has nothing to do with high-level stuff such as drawing sprites, but with the slowness of the simplest operations that would control a game.

The game does not have to be as fast as possible. Only fast enough to be totally playable. And a BASIC / ASM hybrid is the best trade-off between ease-of-programming and speed.

So you're saying that you'd rather spend half the time making a barely playable game? What is the use programming a game if it's not the best it can be?

did he say barely playable.. no i believe he said totaly playable.. BIG difference.. learn the difference or go back to elementary english class

Since when is all but the simplest basic game fast enough to be totally playable? Totally playable is as fast as possible, without being difficult or impossible to control. Barely playable is getting 10-15 frames per second, which is all you will ever get in all but the simplest basic games, even with the help of asm (I'm talking z80 calcs here...never coded in basic on a 68k calc). Totally playable is where everything is smooth, which is at least 30-40 frames per second, something you can never think about getting in basic.

for an action game yes, but for an rpg, or and entertianing casino game or something else...1 frame a sec is perfectly accecpitble

>assembly is 2100 times as fast

Your point? Just because ASM is fast dosen't mean that the game quality is better. The Zelda 89 demo game is very fast for a basic game and very playable.

The only reason that this speed would ever be needed is in a Sonic Game where graphics have to be rendered at high speed or a Game where the AI takes 70-90% of the processing time the game uses. It depends on the Genre of the game if it needs this level of speed, An RPG most likely isn't going to need this level of processing, An Action Scrolling game will however.

The point should be clear: BASIC is so slow that it doesn't matter what you're doing; it will always be slow. A game doesn't have to use 90% of its time for processing in order for the slowness of simple calculations to matter. Even if the program (when written in assembly) took only 1% of its time doing such things, the BASIC program would be 21 times as slow if everything else took the same amount of time.

It doesn't have to be fancy scrolling where graphics are rendered. As I clearly explained somewhere else on the board, this also makes BASIC much too slow for something like Pac-Man, even if it lacks scrolling or any "fancy" features.

Also, your Zelda 89 claim is really a completely different issue since it refers to 68K calculators, which is not what I've been addressing. While Zelda 89 is certainly very good for a BASIC game (and clearly shows that TI-89 BASIC is better than BASIC on the Z80 calcs), I don't think it's close to the assembly counterparts. You should also remember that this isn't a real-time game, but just goes one step at a time according to what the user does. Even doing that, however, it's still rather slow, taking an easily noticeable amount of time to redraw the screen.

However, the overall point is that *anything* involving real-time calculations will be too slow to be written in BASIC if there is any significant level of complexity.

Thats completely wrong. I made a real time basic game: "Space Wars" that ran so fast that i had to use pointless, "for x,1,100,1" statements to get it slow enough so you could see the asteroids. And everyone who says basic is sucky, its probably because you cant program at all. you just get games for your calc and dont care what goes into them. im not saying asm sucks because i dont understand it. (im learning fargo2 now.

I'm not sure who you're referring to, but I (the one whose article you're replying to) never said that BASIC is "sucky". What I have said about BASIC, however, is certainly not the result of not knowing how to program, but rather the combined result of all the experience I have had programming in both BASIC and assembly.

If your BASIC program really is as good as you claim, I would be very interested in seeing it, as it would be a sharp contrast to the many other BASIC programs I've had the misfortune of playing. Unless, of course, you're exagerrating its quality quite a lot, which is something unfortunately very typical of BASIC programmers...

ok you want my program? i have to find it on my hd (haha i tested those erase ur mem tricks in an earlire post and erased it off my calc) uh, where do u want it?

hey i just went to ur website and realised that u made pheonix!?!?
I LOVE THAT GAME!
haha i really do and i found my space game (its for the ti-83) so how do u want me to send it to u?

ya i wasnt talking to u when i said the basic is sucky thing i just wanted to say it and i was replying to u

You're destroying your cause by making this claim! You're saying that BASIC is as good as ASM when it uses ASM - does anyone else see the fallacy here? That's like saying you put salt on your steak, therefore salt and steak are both equally filling/delicious/whatever. No. That is flawed logic.

Levine

Listen
I ment to say that it would make basic programs pretty f'ing close to the high quality of asm programs. I am not using asm to try and make my basic programs BETTER than asm programs. IM JUST TRYING TO MAKE THE BEST DAMN PROGRAMS I CAN!!!

Well, by that logic, the more ASM you use in your 'BASIC' program, the better it gets. Therefore by using 100% ASM and 0% BASIC, it will be the best it can? What conclusions do we draw from this?

Levine