Andrew Kesterson
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`SOLID id, x1, y1, x2, y2` registers static collision geometry; `SOLID id` retires one and a bare `SOLID` retires them all, the way `TRAP`, `COLLISION` and `DCLOSE` all read absence. `COLLISION 2` and `BUMP(2)` stop being refused and mean *sprite met static geometry*. **This is the thing eight sprite slots made impossible.** A wall of bricks wants sixty, so until now a program could only collide with one by doing the arithmetic itself against its own array -- which is exactly what both breakout listings do, at about two hundred lines between them. A rectangle costs no sprite slot. The id is the **program's own number**, 1 to 64, not a minted handle. That is the whole trick for "which brick did I hit": the id comes back out again, so a wall built as `SOLID I#, ...` maps onto `B#(I#)` with no lookup, and retiring a broken brick is `SOLID I#`. `COLLISION 2` was refused with "sprite-to-background collision needs the screen read back every frame", which was true of the question a C128 asks -- a sprite against the bitmap's set pixels. `SOLID` gives this interpreter a background made of rectangles instead, which is the same question in a form it can answer. Same move `SPRSAV` made when it learned to take an image path. `AKBASIC_INTERRUPT_BACKGROUND` has been sitting in the interrupt table commented "COLLISION 2 -- sprite met background; refused" the whole time. Its accumulator is separate, so a sprite hitting a wall never sets a bit in `BUMP(1)`. **There is no `akgl_CollisionWorld` here, and that is deliberate.** libakgl's uniform grid keeps its cell heads, cell size and origin in file-scope statics, so it is one index per process -- and `akgl_collision_world_init()` ends in a `reset()` that memsets those heads *and* calls `akgl_heap_init_collision_cells()`. An interpreter embedded in a game with its own collision world would have destroyed every registration that game had made, on the first `SOLID` a script ran. So the geometry is indexed by an ordinary array here and pairs go straight to `akgl_collision_test()`, which needs no world. At sixty-four rectangles that is the right answer anyway; libakgl's own numbers put a naive sweep at 0.7% of a frame at sixty-four objects. **The scan now short-circuits when nothing has moved**, and that is what makes any of it affordable. Its inputs are the sprites' boxes, which slots are collidable, and the static geometry; if none changed the answer cannot have. A frame runs one full scan and 255 cached ones. Eight sprites against sixty-four rectangles is five hundred and twelve tests -- fine once a frame, ruinous 256 times. The benchmark was rewritten to say which path it is timing, because with the cache in place a loop that only calls the scan measures the short circuit and nothing else. Breakout now costs 590.6 ns for its one full scan plus 255 cached at 40.0, which is 10.8 us against a 1.19 ms frame -- **0.91%, less than the 2.0% it cost before any of this work**, with static geometry and contacts added on top. `NEW` retires the rectangles, where it cannot undefine a sprite pattern: there *is* an entry point for this one, so leaving them would be a choice, and the wrong one -- a rectangle is invisible, so one left behind by a deleted program is an unexplainable collision in the next. `CLR` leaves them alone. `tests/sprite_verbs.c` gains the whole second path against the mock and its `COLLISION 2` case is rewritten: it pinned the refusal, and now pins that type 2 arms its own handler without disturbing type 1's. `tests/akgl_backends.c` gains the end-to-end version, including a full sixty-four-rectangle wall so the proxy budget is exercised at its ceiling and the pool has to come back intact, and the sixty-fifth refused by name. A bare `SOLID` needed `akbasic_parse_optional_arglist` rather than `akbasic_parse_arglist`, which `DCLOSE` already uses for the same shape. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01EwxGB6TdoVvZ11KQQME9cL
The akbasic guide
akbasic is a BASIC interpreter in the style of Commodore BASIC 7.0 — the dialect the C128 shipped with — and Dartmouth BASIC. It runs programs from a file or from an interactive prompt, and it is also a C library you can link into a game so that players can script it.
These chapters follow the shape of the C128 Programmer's Reference Guide: the language first, then each hardware area, then the reference sections. If you know BASIC 7.0 you can skip to Chapter 13, which is the list of everything that behaves differently here and why. Chapter 14 is the odd one out: it is about the interpreter rather than the language, for anyone embedding it, debugging it or changing it.
Chapters 17 and 18 are tutorials rather than reference: they build one complete game twice, two different ways, in numbered steps you can type in one at a time. Start with 17 — it needs nothing but the earlier chapters, and 18 assumes it.
Chapters
| 1. Introduction | What akbasic is, what it is not, and how to build it |
| 2. Getting started | The prompt, your first program, saving and loading |
| 3. The language | Variables, types, arrays, operators, expressions |
| 4. Control flow | IF, FOR, DO, GOSUB, labels, ON, error trapping |
| 5. Strings and formatting | String functions, PRINT USING, PUDEF |
| 6. Graphics | GRAPHIC, DRAW, BOX, CIRCLE, PAINT, shapes |
| 7. Sound | SOUND, PLAY, ENVELOPE, VOL, TEMPO |
| 8. Sprites | SPRITE, SPRSAV, MOVSPR, collision |
| 9. Files and disk | Channels, DOPEN, program storage |
| 10. Embedding | Driving the interpreter from C |
| 11. Verb reference | Every statement, alphabetically |
| 12. Function reference | Every function, alphabetically |
| 13. Differences from BASIC 7.0 | What a C128 programmer needs to know |
| 14. Architecture | How the interpreter is put together, how to debug it, how to change it |
| 15. Error codes | Appendix: every value ER# can hold and every error line the interpreter prints |
| 16. Structures | TYPE, records, strict pointers, and sharing a C struct with an embedding host |
| 17. Tutorial: Breakout | Build a whole game out of the text grid and two DATA sprites, in sixteen steps |
| 18. Tutorial: Breakout with artwork | Build it again out of loaded artwork, powerups and a drawn colour HUD, in thirteen |
The shortest possible start
$ cmake -S . -B build && cmake --build build
$ ./build/basic
10 FOR I# = 1 TO 5
20 PRINT "HELLO " + I#
30 NEXT I#
RUN
HELLO 1
HELLO 2
HELLO 3
HELLO 4
HELLO 5
READY
Two things in that program are not Commodore BASIC and will catch you out
immediately: variables carry a type suffix (I# is an integer) and +
concatenates a string with a number. Chapter 3 explains both.
Every example in these chapters is executed by the test suite and its output
compared byte for byte — see MAINTENANCE.md if you are editing them.