Did anyone on here use Oceans 'Laser Basic' Package?

[Puresox]

I remember this being advertised back in the day, but never really heard much about it. I just had a look at the demo on it , Thought it was fairly impressive for it's day? I was wondering if it was any good to learn anything from? Bearing in mind I know less than nothing about programming.

[ralferoo]

Yeah, I remember using it back in the day before I started learning assembler. Didn't really do much other than tweak the demos though as I'd borrowed it from a friend and gave it back. But from what I remember, those demos were pretty good considering - I remember there being quite a fun little platformer.

The main thing I remember was the manual which was printed black on blue to "prevent photocopying". Also gave you a headache.

[Axelay]

I used Laser Basic along with the Laser Compiler before I got started on assembly too.  The main thing I learned from Laser Basic was about the different kinds of approaches that could be used with handling software sprites.  Other than that though, the very high memory overheads of the Laser Basic & Complier combined really only encouraged poor BASIC programming practice!


Although I was very impressed by it's features and apparent capabilities in the beginning, by the time I finished writing a game with it, I was disappointed with what could actually be achieved, and it was that disappointment that spurred me on to learning assembly in the end.

[trocoloco]

In that case I say thanks to Laser Basic for giving you the push to learn assembly, so nowadays we can enjoy your nice games =)

[Puresox]

Interesting stuff, Did you learn Basic using the Amstrad Manual? And If you did , how did you approach it?

[ralferoo]

The Amstrad manual was very good, seemed very thorough, but personally I learned BASIC using the Dragon 32 manual which was also very good. "Type this in. Run it. How did it draw that picture? Change these numbers. What did it do? Now change some other numbers. Draw your own thing." and so on for all the major areas. Great way to learn.

[arnoldemu]

The Amstrad manual was very good, seemed very thorough, but personally I learned BASIC using the Dragon 32 manual which was also very good. "Type this in. Run it. How did it draw that picture? Change these numbers. What did it do? Now change some other numbers. Draw your own thing." and so on for all the major areas. Great way to learn.

I learned BASIC, on a BBC Micro using the same kind of methods. Type it in and tweak it.
Started with defining and moving udg/characters.

I then got a CPC, started to learn assembler language from a book I got.

After that my assembler got better and better the more I used it.

[TFM]

Well, I learnt BASIC with my first real computer (CPC6128 + CTM644) using the excellent handbook. [nb]For learning Z80 I needed to buy additional literature.[/nb]

[Axelay]

The CPC464 was my first real encounter with a computer, so I learned BASIC by working through the introductory part of the CPC manual.  After that I just sought out BASIC programming articles in magazines and picked up a couple of books.  I recall the short lived Australian reprint of CWTA being my favourite mag for that kind of article.  Both the books I got seemed very good to me at the time, though I didnt have anything to compare them with!  They were the Amstrad Users Omnibus and Games and Graphics Programming on the Amstrad Computers, I think they both discussed & demonstrated breaking down larger programming projects into their various parts.

[AMSDOS]

I haven't used Laser BASIC even though I've had a look at the manual and had a look at the demo, I guess it would be a good experiment to see what one could come up with, I'm unsure how extensive a game one could come up with though cause it seems to occupy quite a bit of memory.