Andrew Kesterson
0679c3042b
You were right that this was still everywhere. The two `.bas` files carried their workarounds as present-tense statements about the interpreter -- "a name first created inside a GOSUB costs a value slot that is never handed back", "writing PAST the terminator of a short row draws nothing at all", "SSHAPE and GSHAPE ignore the subscript on a string array", "a FOR inside a BEGIN block does not survive the RETURN" -- and every one of those is now false. A comment that lies is worse than no comment, and these were the first thing anybody opening the files would read. **The characters game takes the geometry fix.** `CW# = 16` becomes `CW# = RGR(3)`, and the grid comes from `RWINDOW`, so the game fits whatever window and font the host gives it. That was the one thing in the listing that would break on a different font, and `RGR(3)` and `RWINDOW` were added to the interpreter because of it -- leaving the constant in place while Chapter 17 teaches the function was the inconsistency worth closing. `RGR(1)` still comes first so a build with no graphics device refuses by naming the device that is missing. Everything else in both listings keeps its shape and says why. Declaring every name up front, guarding loops with `GOTO`, six scalars for six brick stamps: none is forced any more and none costs anything, so they stay, with the comments marking which rules stand and which are history. The sprites header's five traps are marked FIXED where they are fixed. The chapters follow: Chapter 17 Step 2 no longer says "the listing still has `CW# = 16`", and Chapter 18's trap section is "five things that did not do what they looked like" with the two that still stand named up front rather than left to be counted. Verified: Chapter 17 Step 2's block is once again verbatim from the listing, so every quoted fragment in both chapters matches its source with no exceptions; both games run 40 seconds on the SDL frontend with no error line; both suites green in both configurations; `docs_examples` and `docs_screenshots --check` pass. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Breakout
Breakout, written entirely in BASIC for the AKGL BASIC interpreter. The ball and the
paddle are sprites defined from DATA in the listing; the bricks, the HUD and the
messages are characters in the text grid.
../../../build-akgl/basic breakout.bas
It needs the SDL build. The stdio build has no graphics device, so the first RGR refuses
and the game stops there — which is exactly what it should do.
| Key | Does |
|---|---|
| left / right | move the paddle |
| space | start a game from the title screen, then launch the ball |
| P | pause |
| Q or escape | quit |
The title screen plays itself. Attract mode is a real feature and it is also how the game was tested without a hand on the keyboard.
Three lives, six rows of bricks worth 60 down to 10 points a row, three level layouts that repeat with a faster ball each time, and a high score that lasts as long as the process does.
How it works, and how to write your own
Chapter 17 of the guide builds this program a step at a time: what to make a sprite and what to make a character, why every name is declared before the game starts, how a text row has to be written whole, and the rest of the rules this listing never breaks. It is the tutorial; this is the finished thing.
Chapter 18 does the same for
../sprites, which builds the same game out of loaded artwork and comes out
a completely different program.
Known warts, this game's own
- The cell size used to be a constant.
CW#andCH#were 16, measured by hand against the bundled C64_Pro_Mono at 16 points, because BASIC had no way to ask — and it was the one thing here that would break on a different font.RGR(3),RGR(4)andRWINDOWwere added to the interpreter because of this listing, and it uses them now, so the game fits whatever window and font the host gives it. - Every character the game draws also goes to stdout, because the frontend tees the text sink to the terminal. It made the whole game auditable from a log file during development and it is pure noise the rest of the time. Redirect it.
- Collision is against the cell the ball's leading edge is in, so a brick clipped at the very corner can be missed by up to seven pixels' worth of ball. Testing the centre instead was worse: the ball sank four pixels into a brick before it turned.
- There is a stall watchdog. Ten seconds without touching a brick and the ball gets a new angle — at the next paddle bounce, never in mid-air.
- The demo cannot lose, it re-serves. It also cannot be paused;
Pis ignored until a real game starts. - Sound is asked for once and then believed. On a machine with no audio device the game is silent rather than dead.
- No high score on disk. There is no disk in this interpreter.
The interpreter defects this game turned up are filed in TODO.md §6 and §9, each with a
reduction that fits on a screen. Most are now fixed — the value pool that killed the first
version after twenty-five seconds, the unreachable WINDOW, the character written past a
short row — and the entries are struck rather than deleted, because the reduction is worth
keeping.
The listing takes the geometry fix and leaves the rest of its shape alone. Measuring
the cell instead of assuming it makes the game strictly better, so it does. Declaring
every name up front and looping with GOTO are no longer forced by anything, and are
still what the file does — its comments now say which rules stand and which are history.
How this was checked
- Parses clean under the stdio
basic(it then stops at the first graphics verb, as it should). - Attract mode run for 145 seconds and again for 110: no runtime error, score climbing throughout, 39 bricks in the second run.
- Level clear verified against a copy whose first layout is a single row:
LEVEL CLEARED, layout 2 loaded, ball speed up, play continues. - Input driven with
xdotoolagainst the real window: paddle moves and clamps at both edges, ball launches,Ppauses and unpauses, three lives drain toGAME OVER, space starts a new game,Qexits printing the final and high scores. - Every direction change logged for a whole run and read back: each one is a wall, a brick or the paddle. Nothing turns without a reason.