Undocumented Tricks in Basic

[anduril66]

Call this program from your basic program:

:AsmPrgm
:EF7045C9

It should turn the run indicator off on an 83+.

[Justin W.]

yeah you can use the rom call bcall(_runIndicOff) or you can change the run indicator flag. The rom call take one less byte though.

[Adm.Wiggin]

well, the rom call may take one less byte, but it is slower... so, what do u want, speed, or size?

[Justin W.]

Honestly for an instruction so small you couldn't even tell the difference in the speed of execution. So in this case you would go with Size. Other instructions of course you would go for speed, specificly in gameplay. Generally shutting off the run indicator is only done once in an entire program and therefore it is unnecessary to use the larger instruction.

[Adm.Wiggin]

lol, ya, but, if in asm u want to change if the run indicator looks like this :
|


|


instead of :
|
|
|



then u have to use the flags... i found this out with my recent endevor, WALLSxp...

[NETWizz]

I do not even like the run indicator in programs, so when I write an asm program, I do not turn it on.

[Adm.Wiggin]

me too, unless i want a special run indicator for something extra special, like a title screen with 'press any key...' at the bottom...

[Justin W.]

Yes I also prefer not to have the run indicator active in asm programs. It takes away my ability to use the 64th row and 96th column of pixels

[Adm.Wiggin]

ya, those are pretty fun to use, it makes basic proggers jelous they cant do last row and column!

[Arcane Wizard]

And why would you want to use the 64th row and the 96th collumn ?

[Justin W.]

Simply because you have more complete graphics without that extra row and column sitting there completely white. It looks a little ugly to have a almost completely black pic and have a row and column that can never be turned black in Basic.

[NETWizz]

Yeah, the question should not be why use them, but why not use the row and colum.

[Arcane Wizard]

Because you can't in basic :P

I was just wondering because I have never needed to use them.

[yugniht]

If you're making a pic to use in your basic prog, you can use a windows program, I forgot the name but you make the pic on the computer and you can use every pixel, column, and row.

Here's another trick I don't think was posted or documented, but it might be: Text(Y,X,"TEXT","TEXT","TEXT

You can just put a comma between them instead of using three Text( and you can do more or less than three, to mayble clear some things up for all those literal people out there

EDIT: The file name for that windows prog is 83iview95.zip and you can download it here. It works for 73,82, and 83 pics. Obviously, since it'll make a pic for the 83, it'll work for the 83+, in case you were wondering.

[yugniht]

Another trick: when on the graph screen you can press 2nd then press the left or right arrow key and the cursor will jump 5 pixels to the left or right, depending on what you pressed.

[NETWizz]

Also, if you press alpha followed by up or down, you will scroll a whole page of program code.

[62 52 53 53]

2nd right will take you to the end of your current line, 2nd left will take you to the beginning of that line.

[gorchy]

What´s the sense of Text(x,y,"text","text") ?
It only displays "texttext" at x,y and needs more space

[62 52 53 53]

it is useful when using variables, such as strings and numbers.

[yugniht]