Can someone "decypher this"?

Anything Sinclair ZX Basic related; history, development, tips - differences between BASIC on the ZX80 and ZX81
gozzo
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Joined: Fri Jul 08, 2011 8:52 pm

Re: Can someone "decypher this"?

Post by gozzo »

Rink - its not MSX BASIC as far as I can tell, my Tosh MSX1 machine (HX-10) doesn't have a CONNECT command, but I don't know about the MSX2 standard...maybe that did??

RWAP - PSET isn't being used as a function as such, that's how the LINE command is used on the Dragon/COCO (PSET - set pixel,PRESET - reset pixel !), which is what made me think of that first!

As RWAP said, it was probably just made up !
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bbock
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Re: Can someone "decypher this"?

Post by bbock »

If you look at the code you'll find that it's supposed to run on a machine with probably 640x200 resolution. It draws strange lightning bolts and 4-edged stars. The BASIC looks much like a Microsoft dialect, but I guess it's from a 16-bit computer.

Bernd
Rink
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Re: Can someone "decypher this"?

Post by Rink »

The key to this is possibly that CONNECT statement.

It seems to be drawing a polygon but I don't ever recall seeing a graphic function in a variant of BASIC looking like that. So couple of possibilities(?)

1. It's a polygon drawing command with a bit of a weird syntax (all the parameters separated by dashes or similar)
2. It's user subproc in a language of BASIC that allows proper procedure names and accepts weird parameter lists
3. It's all made-up. :D
Rink
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Re: Can someone "decypher this"?

Post by Rink »

Ok... well... OP said the code came from DragonBall Z? So Japanese.

We've established it's not MSX BASIC, I'm pretty sure it isn't HuBASIC from the X1 and it doesn't appear to be X-BASIC on the X68000.

Any other ideas?
Rink
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Re: Can someone "decypher this"?

Post by Rink »

Actually...

HuBASIC does have a line command which accepts parameters in a similar fashion e.g. LINE(x1,y1)-(x2,y2) so I'll double check.

Edit:
Can't find a suitable reference to a reserved word of CONNECT in HuBASIC. However, the coordinates in the OP do indicate a later machine than I'm trying on (better resolution) so none of this is conclusive. There were a few later variants of HuBASIC and I don't have all of them to check with.
stefan bauwens
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Re: Can someone "decypher this"?

Post by stefan bauwens »

Thanks for all the effort guys. :)

Here's a part of picture out of the video: http://s7.postimg.org/72pyyf3hn/Picture_7.png
Someone mentioned to me that they thought the "|" is a ":"...

(The video is from 1992 btw.)
Also, the code won't have been made up, because the organizers of the contest tried it themselves.
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1024MAK
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Re: Can someone "decypher this"?

Post by 1024MAK »

Yes, some of the vertical lines are : as this is the normal separator between statements, commands and functions on BASICs that allow multiple statements, commands and functions on a single "line".
A ' is being used to indicate a REMark (some BASICs only use REM or another symbol) and any text that follows is ignored when the program is run. So the vertical lines after the ' could well be | symbols.
And it is not easy to make out 1's, I's etc.

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Rink
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Re: Can someone "decypher this"?

Post by Rink »

Did we ever get to the bottom of this?
Bill H
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Re: Can someone "decypher this"?

Post by Bill H »

The CONNECT is a form of LINE or DRAWTO command, it looks like you keep giving coordinates and then at the end you give the color. It looks like the target machine has a 640 x 200 resolution (line 470 is setting a random coordinate) which is CGA resolution and it looks like 16 colors (C being set to random 1 - 16 on line 710). I would say it could be a PC Junior, maybe Cassette basic?
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