Re: Tetris in Basic

["winston19842005@yahoo.com" <winston19842005@yahoo.com>]

On Mar 9, 2:46 am, Nama <forums6...@mac.com> wrote:
> On Mar 9, 4:34 pm, "winston19842...@yahoo.com"
>
> <winston19842...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > On Mar 9, 1:54 am, Nama <forums6...@mac.com> wrote:
>
> > > I'm looking for a listing of Tetris in Basic. It doesn't have to be
> > > Apple basic, but a classic 80's basic (not anything modern like visual
> > > basic) would be great.
>
> > I could supply one in TI Extended Basic! But realize, like many of
> > Apple's contemporaries (i.e. C64) it uses character-cell based
> > graphics.
>
> Thanks ,
> However I don't want to sound ignorant, but what is 'character-cell
> based graphics'
> I'm planning on porting this to a version of tinybasic for a very
> obscure computer. Do you think this version will be a good candidate?

You know what a character is, right? On old computers, CHR$(0) through
CHR$(255).

Character-cell based graphics (also called tile-based) is utilizing
these characters, redefining them (choosing which pixels are on and
off) and setting their color attributes. This is much different from
the Apple whose graphic modes are line-based (set a pixel, draw a
line, etc).

Yes, I think it would be a good candidate. TI Extended Basic "graphic"
commands are merely printing characters to the screen. The TI does
have sprites, but I'm pretty sure they were not utilized in this game,
as Tetris is a tile-based game.

And unlike many of the computers of the era whose programs were chock-
full of pokes and peeks (C64 is a good example), the TI uses built-in
commands to do most things, so you won't find many Basic programs that
use poke (CALL LOAD on the TI) or peek (these two commands were not
even available in the TI Basic that was installed in the console).

The version I have was modified to play music in the background, but
this can be easily stripped off. It added some subprograms to load
sound lists into memory to be played by the console interrupt routine
(the only peeks and pokes you will see in the program).