🚀 go-pugleaf

K1N2 <K1N2@UNB.CA> writes:

>However, I tried doing this and it seems disappointingly slow. Of
>course this is probably because I was using the QBASIC interpreter
>that comes with DOS; but then again, this interpreter was on a
>386/33 PC.  Is it feasible to use text mode animation in the way I
>described, with some other language, perhaps?  Would it be in
>general faster than typical pixel-based animation?

    If you want speed, use C or Assembly.

    If you want to stick with Basic, try POKE'ing the video values 
    directly to video memory.  This is a lot faster than using PRINT.
    One other way to speed up QBASIC is to put a semi-colon on the end
    of every PRINT statement, so it doesn't have to do a line feed.

    To poke a value:
       DEF SEG = &HB800     'Point to the text screen buffer
       RowV = 12
       ColV = 36 
       CharV = ASC( "A" )   ' Display an A at 12, 36
       BackColorV = 7       'White
       ForeColorV = 15      '     on Blue
       POKE RowV*160+ColV*2, CharV
       POKE RowV*160+ColV*2+1, BackColorV*16+ForeColorV

    The video memory starts at segment B800.  It is in the form of
    character, attribute, ...etc.

    This speeds things up some in Basic.

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
  John A. Slagel, email: jas37876@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu