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Post by sega16 on Aug 26, 2012 14:06:13 GMT -5
Just wondering does anybody even visit this forum anymore I remember there used to be alot of activity but now it is very slow here.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 26, 2012 20:18:28 GMT -5
Maybe everybody is on a vacation  |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 28, 2012 9:08:47 GMT -5
You know how it works here. We all lurk but rarely post. Some very talented people lurk here too. Sometimes I get excited and ask for help (thank you Moon). Sometimes a newbie comes by for awhile then discovers BEX is not full featured enough. Or, they can't figure out how to implement a feature under BEX. Oh! And there's always the idea pushers and random starving artist. Those can be fun threads too Even our own Devster is here paying the bills and cleaning the spam. I'd say post your BEX related ideas Sega16! I'd bet that would get people to stop lurking and start talking again For instance, I still think being able to export your Sega Genesis Palette Editor palette to BEX DATAINT statements would be AWESOME!! My projects still are making my 4 way scrolling engine work and simulating a character based display using tiles. I'm still thinking of a better BEX command reference but not sure what form it'll take. Simply editing the existing one doesn't feel right. Maybe, since BEX is really a QuickBASIC clone, I should make a QuickBASIC help system written in BEX!!! |
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Post by sega16 on Aug 28, 2012 17:37:01 GMT -5
Moon if that is true then it must be a long vacation theloon that is true I do have BEX like ideas I thought about making my own high level script engine thing for a sega genesis side scroller engine I have made little progress and I am still working on the program/level editor part and speaking of that my palette editer well it has changed alot Here are some pictures (some are slightly old because not much has changed)  it can now do both NES and sega genesis  This program has truecolor tiles and it automatically finds the nearest color and applies dithering I used colors that causes alot of dithering on purpose. It still looks good at a 1:1 ratio zoom   Here is the plane mapping editor it is used for stuff like title screens and yes you can import images. I opened the original data from sonic 1. Also the windows is resizable and you can zoom into the tiles to make editing alot easier I still have stuff to do before I release it though and it will support saving as a bex data statement c header and binary. |
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oompa loompa
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Post by oompa loompa on Aug 28, 2012 23:10:42 GMT -5
Some are alive . I'm usually not one of the alive ones these days Haven't had the spare time I wanted to work on projects. I have a SNES version of a BASIC compiler going  . BEX, I need to someday do cleaning of the bugs And yes, been paying the bills hehe (internet is very cheap!) |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 29, 2012 0:11:01 GMT -5
sega16: BEX support for your utilities is a really good idea! More tools + easier development means more homebrew. @oompa loompa: My goal is still to make a platforming engine. I've worked as a software tester and have volunteered for beta testing for other console development projects before. I've got an SNES PowerPak to test on real hardware. If you decide to look for testers I'm available. I already owe you for a great Genesis BASIC compiler
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oompa loompa
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"Git 'Er Dun!"
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Post by oompa loompa on Sept 4, 2012 4:42:14 GMT -5
I doubt my SNES code could work on the real hardware . But I will let everyone know when the first version is released. Sooooo far... even though I'm not a big fan of 65816 (sorry, just personality, I'm a Z80 boy ) and instruction set and registers are smaller... actually the compiled code literally runs 10x faster than BEX hehe ^_^. The instruction cycles really does make a huge difference. And the hardware multiplier is nice too. And my expression parser is optimized (sorry, BEX isn't an optimized expression parser). "1 + (2 * (3 + 5)) + (4 - 2 * 7) + 6" turns into: LDA.w #$0002 PHA LDA.w #$0005 CLC ADC #$0003 PLX JSR mult_16_16 LDA $04 CLC ADC #$0001 PHA LDA.w #$0002 PHA LDA.w #$0007 PLX JSR mult_16_16 LDA $04 CLC SBC #$0004 EOR.w #$FFFF CLC ADC 1,s PLX CLC ADC #$0006 PHA Could be optimized some more (I see PHA, LDA.w #$0007, PLX). Constants I won't optimize, or else more work for me , I just optimize the instructions So okay, I guess everyone can say a BASIC compiler for SNES is real |
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Post by sega16 on Sept 4, 2012 15:26:32 GMT -5
Wow it looks like you are making good progress on SNES bex does that mean that BEX programs can be easily ported with some changes of course?
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oompa loompa
I AM THE GOVERNATOR
"Git 'Er Dun!"
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Post by oompa loompa on Sept 4, 2012 16:43:33 GMT -5
Porting from BEX programs to SNES? Not really  . The order of operations in the expression parser is already different. So now I'm afraid that there will be a lot of differences between the two versions. I can easily change the order of operations in the SNES version (the nice thing is that the code generation portion remains the same). Maybe I add a BEX compatibility mode? We will see |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 4, 2012 17:48:08 GMT -5
I can see it being somewhat *easy* to implement a BEX crossover to SNES BEX, in the future. The biggest thing would be to update BEX with similar routines and order of operations (if it helps BEX in the first place), but it could also be a lot more work than you want to do, and I doubt anyone will blame you for that.
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oompa loompa
I AM THE GOVERNATOR
"Git 'Er Dun!"
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Post by oompa loompa on Sept 4, 2012 23:29:12 GMT -5
Any update to BEX would be good . But it's very hard to update BEX because it's written using Visual Basic 5 (or 6? I don't remember) Right now, I don't think BEX and SNES BASIC would be able to crossover. It's just that BEX is too quirky (remember [OR], [AND] <-- literally putting the square brackets, haha). Goal of SNES BASIC is to introduce more programmers, maybe get a few "okay" games (will be happy with a maze game on BEX), and to fulfill my curiosity of SNES vs Genesis hehe ^_^ |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 5, 2012 7:40:56 GMT -5
You'd be surprised to see what comes out of your BEX and SNES BASIC There are many talented programmers out there that will find creative solutions to the limitations. |
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Post by Tom Maneiro on Sept 7, 2012 1:42:42 GMT -5
Mmmmm... SNES Hope that you're using bsnes as the reference emulator. Also, how it's going that BEX compiler C++/C#/Java/whatever-but-VB rewrite? |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 7, 2012 10:07:09 GMT -5
DevSter dun want to muck around with VB6 code I suspect. I DID find another 68k BASIC compiler though: www.seanet.com/~karllunt/sbasic.htmIt knows nothing about the Sega Genesis - just the CPU. Looks like it could be modified though. Another options is BASIC to NASM: sourceforge.net/projects/b2nasmnet/Obviously for a different CPU and compiler but looks simple enough to change. Especially since it's VisualBASIC.NET |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 7, 2012 11:33:06 GMT -5
Nice find, didn't know about this compiler. Just tried it, compiled fine ( although you need to capture the stdout steam to a file yourself .. WTF ), but the generated 68K didn't assemble properly. Probably my fault, but the manual is 10x worse then the BEX documentation. Another options is BASIC to NASM: sourceforge.net/projects/b2nasmnet/Obviously for a different CPU and compiler but looks simple enough to change. Especially since it's VisualBASIC.NET That's like finding a English-to-Russian dictionary and saying it's simple enough to change into a English-to-Korean dictionary. Sure you can simply tipp-ex the Russian words away and write the Korean equivalents ( if they exist ) on top .. but you better be fluent in English & Russian & Korean, and even then it's a silly amount of work, especially considering there are perfectly fine English-to-Korean dictionaries out there already |
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. BEX, I need to someday do cleaning of the bugs
. The order of operations in the expression parser is already different. So now I'm afraid that there will be a lot of differences between the two versions.