BASIC 10Liners 2017

[AMSDOS]

I've followup with another game for this contest, which will hopefully be more enjoyable. It takes the idea of the square blocks I came up with (posted in Silly Programming Ideas). A single colour (Red) is selected and placed randomly in a grid of 16x8 with other randomly selected colours, the grid is then cleared (around 1 second if not slightly before) and you have to use your cursor to select where you saw Red. The game gets tricky if Red is amongst similar colours (Pink) and Dark Red may also be randomly selected.

[AMSDOS]

This is fantastic, I just had another look at the Homeputerium Game List 2017 and there are now 5 Amstrad games, at the moment we're just slightly ahead of Turbo BASIC XL 1.5 that's got 4. C64 is the only System ahead of us, but thats to be expected. 

[AMSDOS]

@darkdog

I'm working on my 3rd Extreme 10 Liner for the compo  I've got all the principals right for the game, though the game takes up a small portion of the screen!  My two options are increase the size of the characters to make up the screen or use a Double-Height Character routine, print those characters to screen that way. The problem with the Double-Height Character routine is I haven't written one myself, I've checked one from a magazine which I could make some modifications to so it would work in my game, but don't know how to reach it's author to get permission. Your site doesn't seem to lay out any rules regarding other peoples work, I know earlier I gave people permission to use my routine, which usually competitions would accept in those circumstances.

[darkdog]

@darkdog

I'm working on my 3rd Extreme 10 Liner for the compo  I've got all the principals right for the game, though the game takes up a small portion of the screen!  My two options are increase the size of the characters to make up the screen or use a Double-Height Character routine, print those characters to screen that way. The problem with the Double-Height Character routine is I haven't written one myself, I've checked one from a magazine which I could make some modifications to so it would work in my game, but don't know how to reach it's author to get permission. Your site doesn't seem to lay out any rules regarding other peoples work, I know earlier I gave people permission to use my routine, which usually competitions would accept in those circumstances.

That's ok. Nothing to say about learning from others (that's one aim of the contest).
I tried to release as less rules as possible to increase the fun  .

[Zoe Robinson]

This looks great but I'm clearly outclassed already by what I've seen. My go-to piece of


10 Print"Bum!"
20 Goto 10


is clearly not going to win any prizes.

[AMSDOS]

This looks great but I'm clearly outclassed already by what I've seen. My go-to piece of


10 Print"Bum!"
20 Goto 10


is clearly not going to win any prizes.

Well you contribute to the community in other ways don't you, so those things perhaps take a priority and even personal life can take over as well.


My personal life is practically zilch at the moment, so I've been able to knock up a few 10 Liners in quick secession. This 3rd program has taken me more time to prepare though, though I've got til mid April to complete it. Don't know if I'll be struggling making it an 10 Liner again because it's really loaded with IF statements.    I don't see the Condensed Character set making it into this one though, but we'll see.

[EgoTrip]

Also keep notes of your variable use, as you have 26 single char variable names (52 on the CPC - ints and str$ - can any other symbols be used?) which is usually enough for 10 liners. And on the CPC it appears that single character variables use less BASIC tokens than multiple character variables, and there is a BASIC token limit per line, not just a character limit (I ran into Line Too Long errors way before hitting the character limit, and i fixed some by switching to single character variables).

There is another symbol - use ! to indicate a real number (which is the default). So you could have a! (although you don't need to actually use the !), a% and a$ making a total of 76 single character variables.

[AMSDOS]

The 3rd program I've just completed for the BASIC 10 Liners Compo could hardly be called original, merely avoid the hazards and get to the exit,and it was more of a chance to see how far I could take it. The main compromise is drawing the ball. My original structured code could initially print the ball, enter the main loop, delete that ball, then print it again in the next position, which had less flickering, so this will just have to do for the 10 Liner version. The most interesting thing about this program is the structured solutions, no GOTOs are used and to get things done on lines where I was running out of space, I've setup a certain value to a variable, GOSUB that line, so when it reaches that line an IF statement is found with that variable, so in that case I have some lines of code doing different things which aren't related to each other.

[AMSDOS]

This looks great but I'm clearly outclassed already by what I've seen. My go-to piece of


10 Print"Bum!"
20 Goto 10


is clearly not going to win any prizes.

This might be worth exploring because I'd get a thrill out of Shooting the word "Bum!" Into Oblivion and what better than with an existing Invasion program:


[attachimg=1]


That program needs some work to make it an 10 Liner, get rid of the GOTOs which are a 10 Liners nightmare, it's better off using Loops, though I'm mad on IFs as well, which work well if your writing to the 255 characters.


What I had in mind was have the word "Bum!" Move Left & Right Across the Screen and you could use your space ship to blast it's powerful Lazer (not this crude one from the program above), to Blast it to bits! 

[Zoe Robinson]

Challenge accepted.

[AMSDOS]

See how you go, if you run into trouble PM me.

[AMSDOS]

I've had a go at making something like the Don't Go! 10-Liner entry for the Atari on the Amstrad, though again it falls into the EXTREM-256 category. The idea with Don't Go! and the game I've been working on is to bounce a ball around the screen with 4 Paddles. Initially I was using Text Coordinate Based graphics along with Transparent mode to create the game on the Amstrad, but when it came time to play it, it looked like it was going to be impossible, so the ball has been redefined to 4x4, paddles are 8x8 which are standard character set 208-211, the playing screen has been reduced though to make the game more challenging, though appears slower than the original due to the time it takes the ball to travel across the screen. There is no random pattern as to where the ball travels, so the more you play it the better you'll remember where to place the paddles. I've made my version so that the space bar select the paddle, initially it starts at 0 Left Hand Side Paddle, 1 is for the top of screen, 2 for the Right & 3 for the Bottom, the Number displays itself when Space is pressed which is the number alongside the Vertical title. The game becomes harder when the ball starts reversing on the Paddles 0 to 2 followed by 1 as the Space only selects the Paddles Clockwise, I thought about using an Increase/Decrease Key combination, but I think that will make the game too easy, thoughts are welcomed, at the moment I haven't submitted the program.


Update:Have done some final adjustments to this game, I've added key combinations to Increase/Decrease Paddles, the game is still as challenging and because I was able to add this with the other Key Sequences to move the paddles, I've been able to add a little Graphical mosaic to make the game more colourful.

[Sykobee (Briggsy)]

Results are in!


http://gkanold.wixsite.com/homeputerium/results-2017


My game came third in the 'extreme' 256 category :-)
Atari did well overall with the arcade style 10-liners games.


All the CPC downloads: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6osm1dr46eev4wj/AAAPeANhrclY1Tni5kd-v_7ca/CPC?dl=0

[AMSDOS]

Emailed :-)

It's a Roguelike-Viewpoint Gold Collect-em-up (Grinding) with Monsters you can kill if you want (they can kill you too but it'll take some time).

Incidentally I've been playing your game which is quite good, I read the storyline which follows it, so from what I understand the keys are QWEADZXC & N to move to the next level. Were there any other keys besides those, in the instructions it mentions moving the scenery if you get stuck, though haven't picked up what those keys were, though the main reason I'm writing is to find out if I need to collect all the Gold on each level (I've just been trying to avoid the monsters and Get the Cash!  )

[Sykobee (Briggsy)]

Yeah, because of the random generation, the N key let's you go to the next level when you personally feel you cannot proceed any further!


I meant to tweak the game to have faster monsters, but never got the time.

[AMSDOS]

@darkdog I was wondering if perhaps there was going to be a BASIC 10Liners 2018 competition, if the rules could be tweaked to allow for a simple sprite driver?

This is a program I had in mind:



Obviously it wouldn't have been allowed in this years compo because of the Self Written Machine Code, and the sprite data would obviously need to be within the program, instead of being loaded in.

It was just a thought anyway.

[Sykobee (Briggsy)]

Maybe for the wild category?


I guess one part is keeping the code open and readable for other people, so I can see why embedded machine code isn't allowed, but for a sprite driver (rather than game logic) that other machines have in their firmware/hardware, it seems it could be argued.

[AMSDOS]

Maybe for the wild category?

Indeed, it would be allowed in that category, though I'm unsure where the limits are in that category, just seems to be a category where you can do what you want I think. 

I guess one part is keeping the code open and readable for other people, so I can see why embedded machine code isn't allowed, but for a sprite driver (rather than game logic) that other machines have in their firmware/hardware, it seems it could be argued.

Understand the readability of the program is important, and there are other systems to consider, so it's probably opening a can of worms in that sense, though from the programs submitted using other means of drawing sprite like graphics like Tubby Runner, I feel I'm lacking that degree of BASIC coding. 


I guess we've just got to count ourselves lucky we've got a Graphics Card.

[darkdog]

@AMSDOS Thanks for tagging me. Otherwise I might miss discussions, because I don't visit too often this Forum.

I am very happy that the contest is lively. Every year some people have thoughts to develop the contest.

Maybe we could create another category, where it is allowed to include ML? It is worth to think about. We could limit it to 1 KB or 2 KB. Certainly the program would have to come in 10 Lines.

[AMSDOS]

@AMSDOS Thanks for tagging me. Otherwise I might miss discussions, because I don't visit too often this Forum.

@darkdog Yes, it comes in handy to notify people in case they aren't subscribed to a particular topic.

I am very happy that the contest is lively. Every year some people have thoughts to develop the contest.


Maybe we could create another category, where it is allowed to include ML? It is worth to think about. We could limit it to 1 KB or 2 KB. Certainly the program would have to come in 10 Lines.

I had a flood of ideas yesterday when I posted that suggestion of using a Sprite Driver. Sadly I might of been a bit biased because I was thinking along the lines of each system nominating a sprite driver, which may turn the contest into a sprite driver contest instead of getting programmers to use other means to develop their games. A ML category would help drive away the MC coders into that category while leaving the other categories intact. Was just a little bit surprised the WILD category didn't feature something like that this year.

[Sykobee (Briggsy)]

I'm a fan of allowing MC for routines - print a sprite, play a tune, etc. Maybe not for the entire game logic so the 10 lines are a single-line MC loader and 9 lines of DATA statements.

[AMSDOS]

I'm a fan of allowing MC for routines - print a sprite, play a tune, etc. Maybe not for the entire game logic so the 10 lines are a single-line MC loader and 9 lines of DATA statements.

With some help I've had from @Nich, I've been able to come up with a short routine for extracting a MC routine in Memory, and converting it into the sort out Data (UUEncode) George Fagg uses in his 10-Liners. At the moment I've only being looking at the BASIC Data Loader itself (which George used in Tentris), which is somewhat lengthy and slow, George made a MC based loader for his Tentext program. Obviously back in the day typing these sorts of programs in from Magazines were tricky, though could have their advantages here when submitting programs, obviously though they do not make the program readable. 

[Sykobee (Briggsy)]

Indeed, and I get how a core premise of the competition is to expose your game logic for all to see!


Those checksum programs were popular back in the day so you'd know you didn't screw up your 3 page BASIC MC loader type-in.

[AMSDOS]

Indeed, and I get how a core premise of the competition is to expose your game logic for all to see!


Those checksum programs were popular back in the day so you'd know you didn't screw up your 3 page BASIC MC loader type-in.

I think with what I've been able to do with this UUEncode, I can knock up something with Ariom Sprites, Encode the Sprite Driver & Sprites, just to see how it all pans out in 10 Lines of code and if it can't be in the contest, at least people will notice it as a WILD category game.