Page 1 of 1

Steven L Reid's BASIC programs

Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2018 5:42 pm
by Shaun_B
I found some interesting BASIC listings and games by Steven L Reid here.

Regards,

Shaun.

Re: Steven L Reid's BASIC programs

Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2018 6:00 pm
by RWAP
Not come across those before - it is a nice site with some interesting stuff.

I have reached out to Steve Reid to see if he might be interested in joining the forums :D

Re: Steven L Reid's BASIC programs

Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2018 9:26 pm
by SafePit
Thanks @RWAP for reaching out. I'm in the forums already! Sorry, I don't post as often as I should.

@Shaun_B, glad you found my site! But, that link is my older site. You can check out all of my programs here: https://www.reids4fun.com/zx
And, you can read my monthly articles here: https://www.reids4fun.com/topic/zx81

I'm phasing out my old sub-domains and consolidating them into a single site to make things easier. I'm building new landing pages so you can following topics you want (if you don't care about all my other blogging stuff). Let me know if you want anything.

Thanks,

Steven aka SafePit

Re: Steven L Reid's BASIC programs

Posted: Thu Mar 15, 2018 10:05 pm
by Shaun_B
SafePit wrote: Sun Mar 11, 2018 9:26 pm Thanks @RWAP for reaching out. I'm in the forums already! Sorry, I don't post as often as I should.

@Shaun_B, glad you found my site! But, that link is my older site. You can check out all of my programs here: https://www.reids4fun.com/zx
And, you can read my monthly articles here: https://www.reids4fun.com/topic/zx81

I'm phasing out my old sub-domains and consolidating them into a single site to make things easier. I'm building new landing pages so you can following topics you want (if you don't care about all my other blogging stuff). Let me know if you want anything.

Thanks,

Steven aka SafePit
Hi,

Thanks for the great programs.

I've been working through Fly Wheel and have so far trimmed it to ~7500 bytes without losing any speed by condensing some of the PRINT routines to 1 line and some other techniques. I'm also going to change the keys to 5 and 8 as the . is too close to the 'break' key.

The game works great on 'fast' ZX81 clones like the ZXMore ;-)

Regards,

Shaun.

Re: Steven L Reid's BASIC programs

Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2018 1:10 am
by SafePit
Shaun_B wrote: Thu Mar 15, 2018 10:05 pm Hi,

Thanks for the great programs.

I've been working through Fly Wheel and have so far trimmed it to ~7500 bytes without losing any speed by condensing some of the PRINT routines to 1 line and some other techniques. I'm also going to change the keys to 5 and 8 as the . is too close to the 'break' key.

The game works great on 'fast' ZX81 clones like the ZXMore ;-)

Regards,

Shaun.
Very nice. Lots of opportunity with my old programs to improve them. I really should allow custom keys. I jumped around between different combinations as a kid, mostly sticking with keys at the bottom of the keyboard as they were somewhat easier to press. Never really had an issue with the break key as I used a keyboard overlay.

That's cool. Didn't even know there were fast clones. LOL.

Let me know when you finish the update. I'd like to blog about it.

Re: Steven L Reid's BASIC programs

Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2018 10:26 am
by Shaun_B
SafePit wrote: Sat Mar 17, 2018 1:10 am That's cool. Didn't even know there were fast clones. LOL.

Let me know when you finish the update. I'd like to blog about it.
Search YouTube for 'ZXMore' and you will find one in action.

I'm currently down to 7180 bytes and running on a ZX81 with 8K. I'll let you know when I'm done.

Thanks,

Shaun.

Re: Steven L Reid's BASIC programs

Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2018 1:27 pm
by Shaun_B
Hi Steve,

Here's a release candidate (the other version I thought that I'd added in a bug so I started again, but as I knew the listing better it didn't take as long).

There's still a block that I want to refactor a bit more. So consider this a release candidate. Please let me know if you spot any issues or if I have introduced any bugs.

Thanks,

Shaun.

Re: Steven L Reid's BASIC programs

Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2018 5:17 pm
by SafePit
Worked great Shaun. You must have to keep the character list up while reducing for memory. It takes me a bit to read through the listing without the numbers.

Curious, what does the poke at line 10 do? Also, I think that VAL "16418" is 8 byes, where the number only would be 7. Not sure you saved anything on that.

I noticed it prints two lines at the bottom of the display, then pauses. I think your initialization code seems to take a bit longer. Might be worth checking if something is slow there. You could get rid of line 12 (more memory) and shift the GOSUB routine down after line 60. Would be a more interesting display and less jarring.

Re: Steven L Reid's BASIC programs

Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2018 8:56 pm
by Shaun_B
Thanks for the feedback Steve, I'll have a look at those improvements that you mentioned.

The POKE is opening the bottom two lines of the screen so that they're writable during the program execution by the interpreter. I intend to put a high score and score there (and maybe use the very bottom line as a scrolly with some sort of title screen or something).

As you may be able to tell, I like programming in Sinclair ZX BASIC.

Regards,

Shaun.

Re: Steven L Reid's BASIC programs

Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2018 10:09 pm
by SafePit
Shaun_B wrote: Sun Mar 18, 2018 8:56 pm Thanks for the feedback Steve, I'll have a look at those improvements that you mentioned.

The POKE is opening the bottom two lines of the screen so that they're writable during the program execution by the interpreter. I intend to put a high score and score there (and maybe use the very bottom line as a scrolly with some sort of title screen or something).
Ah, thanks. It looked familiar, but my mind wasn't tracking. :)
As you may be able to tell, I like programming in Sinclair ZX BASIC.

Regards,

Shaun.
Yes, always glad to see someone who still enjoys ZX BASIC.