I spent some time reading over the bBasic docs. I
haven't written my first test program in it yet, but
based on what I read I wanted to give a little
feedback on the featureset.
There is a way to define a sprite shape. It's nice
that sprites can be any size rather than just 8
scanlines. However, I don't see any way to animate
sprites without simulating some kind of massive
switch-case construct. Could there be a way to define
arbitrary shapes and then just point the sprite to the
data? That would mean the kernel would have to do
indirect loading.
Also, the built-in playfield bitmap manipulation only
lets you turn on, off, or invert a single bit at a
time. There is no way to paint an entire screen at
once. It would be nice if there were a way to lay out
a bitmap in a visual way and have batari Basic do what
it takes to translate that into the kernel. By visual
I mean the sourcecode could just be 40 bits across
like this:
45 playfield:
%0100001011010000101101000010110100001011
%1111111101000010110100001011010000101100
%1111111101000010110100001011010000101100
%0000000001000010110100001011010000101100
ect...
end
Otherwise it makes it very inefficient to lay out a
playfield because your code has to draw it
programmatically one block at a time.
Now obviously these things can be accomplished with
straight assembly. But I think that the core
convenience functions should have enough richness to
it to maximize what the built-in kernel provides.
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