This is somewhat a wish list to which I may contribute (coding my second suggestion).

1.- Types. I'm a nightmare, I keep repeating this, but types are most needed. They would make every coding chore way easier, specially when you have to pass parameters or create arrays of structured data. Game coding can be pretty messing without the ability to create proper data structures.

2.- A nice, fast, simple, hassle-less Putchar (x, y, attr, ascii) function which draws character ascii with attributes attr at coordinates (x, y).

3.- Less important, but may come handy, the ability use Attr as a modifier for Print which combines Ink, Bright, Paper, and Flash in a single command:

I have here a Assembly code for Proportional printing (Created by Odin), but zxb throws it out because of a "Unexpected token '-' [MINUS]" at the line "DJNZ Chr_R2Lp2". The compiler tells me the line, but a minus sign is not present here (this is the bug report). Anyway, this could be turned by our friends here into a nice SUB for the library, once it works, I think. It supports pixel precise printing.
I imported it from Tornado source code using my own importer, I wrote for BorIDE.

A few of you have wondered why I've been obsessing over speeding up math functions, cos the compiler is for games! :-)

Well, here's a concrete example of Fast square roots in action. Part of the football algorithm is "Who do I move, and where?" on the field. I'm hoping for better graphics, but this was a mock up to look at the math of that problem. If a player is moving with the ball, who is nearest to their path to intercept them?

With players all over the place, you have to work out distances to vectors. I finally got this working correctly (it sometimes broke, the last time I looked at this - and it turned out I was crossing the 16 bit number barrier. With a newer, longer sqrt function I can go back and make the algorithm work) and here it is in two versions - one using the ROM sqr() function, and the other using isqrt.bas from http://www.boriel.com/wiki/en/index.php/...:ISqrt.bas - this is a concrete example of why the slow ROM routines can become a problem for certain aspects of certain games. The speed difference is startling. The ONLY difference in the source code is changing the square root used from ROM to library. A matter of a couple of characters and an include.

It picks a point for a ball, and draws the pass line to another player. Then every other player has a line drawn to the nearest point on that line, or the nearest end if that IS the nearest point on the line. But look at the speed difference!

Note: press ENTER for a new screen.

ROM - http://sites.google.com/site/britlion/Passing-sqr.tzx

isqrt - http://sites.google.com/site/britlion/Pa...sqrtLF.tzx

Hallo my friends...

Currently the BorIDE is progressing very good. But Multitab coding is not working yet. I just want to ask if I added ALL available keywords, or are there some missing? Or are some not working?
Commands:
"And As Asm At Bold Beep Border Bright ByRef ByVal Cast Circle Cls Code Const Continue Dim Do Draw Else Elseif End Exit Fastcall Flash For Function Go Gosub Goto If Ink Inverse Italic Let Loop Malloc Multikeys Next Not Or Out Over Paper Pause Pi Plot Poke Print Randomize Realloc Return Stdcall Sub Then To Until Wend While"
Okay, I know! Pi is a constant and not a command.
Functions:
"Abs Acs Asn Atn Chr Chr$ Cos Exp Getkeyscancodes Hex Hex16 In Inkey Inkey$ Input Int Len Ln Mod Peek Point Rnd Sgn Shl Shr Sin Sqr Str Str$ Tan Val"
Assembler (I think, this is complete):
"adc add and bit call ccf cp cpd cpdr cpi cpir cpl daa dec di ei ex exx im in inc ind indr ini inir jp jr ld ldd lddr ldi ldir neg nop or outd outi pop push res ret reti retn rl rlc rlca rld rr rrc rrca rrcb rrcc rrcd rrce rrch rrcl rrd rst sbc scf set sla sra srl xor org defb defw defs defm equ"
Compiler:
"#Include Once"
Types:
"Byte Float Integer Long String Ubyte Uinteger Ulong"
Comments:
"Rem ' "
The latest version recognises now two-word commands like "Continue Do" and allow code folding. There are also different syntax coloring styles for commands, functions, comments and so. Unfortunally SUB clashes because it is available in ASM and in BASIC. Maybe changing the name from SUB to PROC will help, but then it goes away from FreeBasic names...

In library/scroll.bas, the name of the last

Now we have sub-forums for Help&Support and Documentation. That makes things tidier, especially with a growing forum.

I think this original top-level forum I'm posting into creates a kind of ambiguity, it's not clear what its purpose is any more.

I suggest to use it only for announcing new releases, or general announcements of the developer. Maybe it could be a read-only sub-forum for the users? The rest of the current messages would be moved into the proprer sub-forums.

More: This top-level forum itself could be moved into a new "Release announcements" or "Developer announcements" sub-forum, so the sub-forums list would be plain clear: no doubt where to post.

Just for your consideration.

I suggest to use the FreeBASIC docs as a guide, especially the FreeBASIC Table of Contents. What do you think?

By the way, I see a problem about FreeBASIC wiki: it lacks page hierarchy, it doesn't show a breadcrumb on the top, what is very important to see where we are in the page tree. Many wikis lack that feature. Some of them use the raw page name (e.g. "main.reference.functions" would be a deeper level than "main.reference"); others use page metadata to configure the hierarchy (what is more flexible because page names can change without changing the structure).

Another possible model is the PHP documentation (see an example of PHP doc page): description, parameters, return values, examples, see also, user contributions...

Boriel,

I am willing to help with the wiki version of documentation. Actually, I think I've probably put edits into half of it *chuckle*; including starting a "library" section and listing things like Fsin, Fsqrt and iSqrt. I think that it's possible to work out the Sinclair Basic compatible statements, but anything not compatible needs to be documented more fully. So let's start with that.

1> Are there any words that are NOT already in the reserved word list - <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.boriel.com/wiki/en/index.php/ZX_BASIC:Identifier#Reserved_Identifiers">http://www.boriel.com/wiki/en/index.php ... dentifiers</a><!-- m --> that we should know about?

2> Are there any extensions to the language, such as with PEEK and OVER that we don't have documented there?

Here you are my first two cents for the wishing well:

Now the DO-LOOP syntax is:

Quote:Do
[ statement block ]
Loop [ { Until | While } condition ]

Quote:Do [ { Until | While } condition ]
[ statement block ]
Loop

I ported some old code I developed with the aid of a couple of snippets published in Microhobby and some documentation for the AY chip to ZX Basic. The original was plain interpreted Sinclair BASIC. It may be useful to create simple sound effects, but nothing very fancy. Porting WYZ's replayer would be a better idea, but I have no time at the moment.

Try this: