I was gonna wait until next year (prob Jan-Mar) to do TinyBasicWeb L2.
But I was in the mood to do some toys that need arrays. "I'll just hack in arrays today!"
Well, yes. But now I need to actually represent expressions instead of *dubious runtime hack*, and it has bit me in the ass.
It's fine. I've got coffee.
#basic #retrocomputing #cyberhole
There are now arrays in TinyBasicWeb 0.7
ON THE CYBER HOLE
https://cyberhole.online/basic/
Adding INC & DEC commands, which make pseudo-FOR/NEXT loops a little less hideous,
INC I
instead of
LET I=(I+1)
I just don't feel like dealing with a control stack and all the stupid shit people do breaking out of loops in BASIC.
Gonna finish robots.bas, tho. And maybe do a "graphics" (lo-rez) command or two? MAYBE!
#basic #retrocomputing #cyberhole
Tiny BASIC Robots, a new game
IN THE CYBER HOLE
https://cyberhole.online/basic/?run=robots.bas
Phlog:
gopher://cyberhole.online:70/0/phlog/20251210_070627.txt
I now have a majority of BASIC functions in TinyBasicWeb
IN THE CYBER HOLE
https://cyberhole.online/basic/
LOAD "testfunc.bas"
LIST
RUN
to see them in use.
My version of "10 PRINT" is now shorter in the operational bit, and like 10x faster because of it, but I still need to count chars and INPUT since there's no "break" key.
LOAD "tenprint.bas"
LIST
RUN
Protip: Reporting bugs against JS/HTML rendering (or logic) in Firefox is fairly pointless.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers
It's down below 2.5%, lower than MS Edge. Chrome and Safari are the present.
I won't install AI slop machines on my computer, and they've been heading that way for years, and are all-in now. The bad guys won a long time ago.
Install degoogled Chromium, if you don't have Safari. There's probably some other sane options. (NO, not Brendan Eich's "Brave").
Case in point, I'm adding the character-demi-graphics ONLY (no plotting, etc.), like TRS-80 "low-rez graphics".
Fixed a color display bug in terminal, fine.
But the pixel graphics characters can't quite be coerced into filling cells, and are even more off in Chromium, and worse in unsupported Firefox. So I gotta special-case those in rendering.
The web's a hell of a pain in the ass of a medium.
#basic #retrocomputing #cyberhole
You can now PRINT AT, TAB, COLOR, LOC, and PIX$, and CLS in colors!
IN THE CYBER HOLE
https://cyberhole.online/basic/
LOAD "testcolor.bas"
LIST
RUN
I don't have energy to make a matrix program but it'd be doable with the tools there. Probably needs a PAUSE command to slow it down to readable, but you could do a busy-wait FOR loop. Currently every redraw of testcolor.bas takes <0.1s.
And now PAUSE and INKEY$ complete the graphics/interface parts
OF THE CYBER HOLE
https://cyberhole.online/basic/?run=matrix.bas
You can hit ESC to escape the Matrix.
If you replace line 300 with 305, you can get mostly Chinese but also a lot of crap that doesn't render well. I need to make it pick from a few more practical ranges.
(yes, I know my Matriculated Rain looks a little different from the movie thing, but you can't do the streaky effect in chars with 2 "greens").
#basic #retrocomputing #cyberhole
Also made "tenprint.bas" take a nice little rest at newline, and ESC to quit.
I could go modify robots the same, but I may rest on my laurels now.
#basic #retrocomputing #cyberhole
Winter Solistice Update
IN THE CYBER HOLE
gopher://cyberhole.online:70/0/phlog/20251221_070817.txt
https://cyberhole.online/basic/?run=xmas.bas
https://cyberhole.online/basic/?run=matrix.bas
Robots now in color & INKEY$!
https://cyberhole.online/basic/?run=robots.bas
Can you beat my Robots score of 479‽ I was doing so good but one little mistake…
The Long Awaited Saga of the For/Next Loop
IN THE CYBER HOLE
https://cyberhole.online
After much updating & rebooting of my server:
https://cyberhole.online/basic/?run=testfor.bas
which is not visually stimulating but it does work. Once I've had lunch I'll see about using it in anger.
See also new phlog in the Cyber Gopher Hole.
I've taken down the Mudhole until I can give it some love/attention/beatings with https, and LostWorld because it doesn't do anything yet.
#cyberhole #basic #retrocomputing
For your elocution and amusement,
the talking computer,
IN THE CYBER HOLE
https://cyberhole.online/basic/?run=eliza.bas
WARNING: ELIZA is not your girlfriend.
ELIZA is not becoming sapient.
ELIZA is not "artificial intelligence", or even artificial stupidity.
ELIZA must not be connected to nuclear weapons!
Kind of a fun port because the one in CC doesn't have string arrays, it does slow RESTORE: READ loops to find each word. I just stuff arrays full of strings.
It's 1982, and you're a latch-key kid. A storm is rolling in.
Making progress on the little BASIC text adventure. It's only like 400 lines for 11 rooms so far, I figure 100-ish rooms when I'm done.
Goblins might also get done this week.
And it wouldn't hurt to click that Patreon button, like & subscribe!
https://cyberhole.online
#cyberhole #basic #retrocomputing #textAdventure #interactiveFiction
It was getting messy in the TinyBasicWeb "disk", so there are now directories
IN THE CYBER HOLE
https://cyberhole.online/basic/
Apropos of nothing else, lowercase feels weird to me in a BASIC context, but not wrong. When I got BASIC XL, later TurboBasicXL & GFA BASIC, they would lowercase commands & filenames where possible. It made no difference to Atari DOS or their versions of BASIC.
So it's this very futuristic thing, having lowercase letters. Over 40 years ago.
Whooof. I feel old. And yeah, I know some of you feel older, you didn't even have lowercase to look forward to!
#retrocomputing
Did some maintenance on Mystic Dungeon, now has usable skills & high-level jobs. I haven't playtested this much, but it Rogue vs Warrior plays different. Magic types still don't have any spells, I suggest rerolling if you get Apprentice or Druid.
TinyBasicWeb got disk cleanup & another Creative Computing game, including fixing a 50-year-old bug! (you could bet negative to "lose" more money).
IN THE CYBER HOLE!
https://cyberhole.online/
Digital Mark λ ☕️ 🕹 👽
