AMOS PD CD/amospdcd.iso/aminet/amoslist0993.lzh/AMOSLIST2/[e-mail]_Mon Aug 30 12:56:53 1993.msg

Internet Message Format | 1993-09-03 | 4KB

Received: from po.CWRU.Edu by access.digex.net with SMTP id AA23808
  (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for <[e-mail]>); Mon, 30 Aug 1993 12:56:44 -0400
Return-Path: <[e-mail]>
Received: from svcs1.digex.net by po.CWRU.Edu with SMTP (5.65b+ida+/CWRU-1.9.3)
    id AA16538; Mon, 30 Aug 93 12:54:18 -0400 (from [e-mail] for [e-mail])
Received: by svcs1.digex.net id AA29931
  (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for amos-list-out); Mon, 30 Aug 1993 12:26:35 -0400
Received: from access.digex.net by svcs1.digex.net with SMTP id AA29927
  (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for <[e-mail]>); Mon, 30 Aug 1993 12:26:34 -0400
Received: from ns-mx.uiowa.edu by access.digex.net with SMTP id AA20421
  (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for <[e-mail]>); Mon, 30 Aug 1993 12:26:32 -0400
Received: from umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu by ns-mx.uiowa.edu (5.64.jnf/920408)
      on Mon, 30 Aug 93 11:26:29 -0500 id AA26911 with SMTP
Received: by umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu (5.61.jnf/930730)
      on Mon, 30 Aug 93 11:26:00 -0500 id AA24073
Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1993 11:00:12 -0500 (CDT)
From: Chris Richards <[e-mail]>
Subject: Lots of programming things ...
To: AMOS posting <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Status: RO

I have a round robin football program I'd like to convert from GFA Basic
to AMOS since GFA Basic blows up my computer far to often.  There are some
nasty parts to the conversion that I wonder if anyone else has worked out.
Here they are in no particular order:

I used a disturbing number of CASE statements in GFA Basic.  Are there any
AMOS extension which emulate this statement?  Most of them can be reworked
philosophically, but one is a huge 79-part monster that would be very
annoying to implement with IF statements.  Also, speed is a huge factor
since this program plays up to 200 teams off against each other and that
equals 19900 games.  Right now in GFA Basic using an 030 each game takes
only 2 seconds and I don't want to slow that too much.

Can commands in an extension be compiled and still work properly?

GFA Basic has a bizarre feature whereby you can save and recall an array
of strings very quickly to disk.  What would be the best way to deal with
200 teams each having 26 names of 12 characters each?  I deal with the
other variables by saving and loading a block of memory which covers all
the array space, but I don't imagine strings work this way.  I don't want
to have to write 5200 strings into a text file and then read them back.

Does anyone know of any benchmarks done between AMOS and GFA Basic (or any
other version for that matter)?  I was just wondering how game time would
be affected.  I suppose I could do some of these myself, but GFA is so
incredibly unstable that I don't even like looking at it anymore.

On another topic ...

What is the best way to move BOBs around quickly in conjunction with AMAL?
I have a program in which 4 sprites and 12 BOBs are moving around a
screen controlled by AMAL.  Each is animated, changing shape every quarter
second or so.  The problem is, it's pathetically slow.  If I shut down
automatic updating and update/display them all in one burst the motion
becomes disturbingly jerky as they do not get updated every 50th of a
second as they would otherwise.  How do people manage having a large
number of BOBs move smoothly on the screen at once?  Or do they?
Asteroid-type games would suggest that this is possible.

Thanks for any help.

Chris R