[Dr Lancer-X]

it's PINNED

[Val]

Well, I don't check individual forums--EVER--I always use "View new posts," and he may too.

Until of course my school decided to be DUMB and only block things from the New posts area when I directly clicked the thread, so I have to click on threads via the subforums

Anyway yeah I guess we should have pointed that out earlier

[hob nado]

Pinning threads like that is always a good idea, but no one ever reads them. *shrug*

[Dr Lancer-X]

there we go, merged in =p

[CJA]

Terryn, on May 28 2007, 06:15 PM, said:

uhh, no. DUPLICATE SELF can take an {x,y} pair too. Using COPY et al is not a good idea.

If you want a robot to simply move, just use GOTOXY # # where # # are the {x,y} coordinates.

Well, sure, I never said it couldn't

[Val]

CJA: "Green is a color."

Terryn: "uh, no. RED is a color."

[Terryn]

You posited a choice between COPY commands (using x,y coordinates) and DUPLICATE SELF [dir]. There is absolutely no reason to use copy commands for that, and there are no solid indications in the thread that you can do DUPLICATE SELF # #, which would count as a different choice.

CJA: "Prominent countries in the Allies faction of WW2 were the US, the UK and France. Also, Canada since they were part of the UK."

Terryn: "...uhh, you didn't mention the USSR, but you mentioned Canada?"

And that is the point!

[Dr Lancer-X]

Terryn, on May 31 2007, 01:09 AM, said:

You posited a choice between COPY commands (using x,y coordinates) and DUPLICATE SELF [dir]. There is absolutely no reason to use copy commands for that, and there are no solid indications in the thread that you can do DUPLICATE SELF # #, which would count as a different choice.

Actually, CJA posited 'copy' as an option to allow one to copy a robot from anywhere to that position, and in that it has a valid use. This form of copy is hardcoded into MZX and is relatively safe, and provides a useful feature not duplicated in 'duplicate self'. If he recommended the use of something like

copy "thisx" "thisy" # #

then your point would stand

See, my reasoning is based on the original question, which was asking how to place a robot. I guessed from there that Evulaye wanted to place an arbitrary robot at a position--this functionality would be more closely reproduced by the copy # # # # command than duplicate self, which defends CJA's choice of showing copy # # # # first.

Of course, it would be closer still to copy in a blank robot and then fill it with code with load_bc# or load_robot#, but I consider this to be a more advanced topic.

All that aside, I did think CJA's choice of showing DUPLICATE SELF [dir] was a bit odd!

[Terryn]

Good point. Now that using COPY commands for Robots isn't functionally different anymore (i.e. it no longer saves the current line of the Robot copied) it can be used to plunk down any given Robot as opposed to just the one running the code, and it will act in the same manner of a Robot plunked down with a DUPLICATE SELF. I hadn't considered that considering its past problems and the resulting (bad) issues arising from it.

[T-Bone]

Hey guys, Its been quite a while since i asked questions about MZX robotics. I was wondering how to write values and read values to an external file using the f_write and such counters.

I basically want to write counters like: hp, mp, exp, item1 , item2, etc... values to a file and be able to read and write to them. How would I go about doing this?

This post has been edited by T-bone6: 05 June 2007 - 06:18 AM

[CJA]

set "stat.dat" "fwrite_open"
set "fwrite_counter" "hp"
set "fwrite_counter" "mp"
set "fwrite_counter" "exp"
loop start
set "fwrite_counter" "item&loopcount&"
loop for 3
set "" "fwrite_open"

set "stat.dat" "fread_open"
set "hp" "fread_counter"
set "mp" "fread_counter"
set "exp" "fread_counter"
loop start
set "item&loopcount&" "fread_counter"
loop for 3
set "" "fread_open"

[T-Bone]

Awesome I shall check this out once i get home.

By the way, for the 3 loops is that for the number of counters added?

[CJA]

well, that adds item0 through item3 to the file, since loops start at 0 and end at the number shown.

[RoSS]

If you just want it to do item1-n, you can either
a)

loop start
if "loopcount" = 0 "skip"
set "item&loopcount&" "fread_counter"
: "skip"
loop for n

or b)

loop start
set "item(&loopcount&+1)" "fread_counter"
loop for n-1

The second one is cleaner but slightly less immediately obvious as to what it does (and yes, I do consider being able to tell what Robotic code is doing immediately a useful programming style... I'm looking at you lancer!).

[Dr Lancer-X]

I can tell what that does immediately ^__^

[T-Bone]

hmmm I must be doing something wrong. I'm trying to make it so that a robot will save the current stats (hp,mp,exp,etc...) to stats.dat and then load them later.

I'm using:

set "hp" to 100
set "mp" to 50
set "exp" to 1

etc...

And from there the player plays the game and his stats will either grow or decrease. When the player saves, those counters will be saved to stats.dat. The player can then load those old stats.

EDIT:
Never mind it worked! This is fantastic! Thanks a bunch!

This post has been edited by T-bone6: 07 June 2007 - 04:38 PM

[CJA]

you can have any range of numbers in a loop!

loop start
inc "loopcount" by "(('loopcount'=0)*'start')"
goto "#dostuffnow"
loop for "('end'-1)"

[nooodl]

I remember zombieguy's Loco having a counter at the end screen that showed how many seconds you have been playing. Is this counter built-in, and if so, why isn't it documented afaik?

[Terryn]

It's built-in and documented, but not exactly like that.

MZX Help File said:

TIME_HOURS (read-only)
TIME_MINUTES (read-only)
TIME_SECONDS (read-only)

Contain the current hour, minute and second respectively, based on the system clock, in 24-hour format.

You'll have to do some basic math to get time played.

[Dr Lancer-X]

If you see something occurring in an MZX game, why not just look at the code and find out?

[nooodl]

Terryn, on Jun 8 2007, 06:10 PM, said:

It's built-in and documented, but not exactly like that.

MZX Help File said:

TIME_HOURS (read-only)
TIME_MINUTES (read-only)
TIME_SECONDS (read-only)

Contain the current hour, minute and second respectively, based on the system clock, in 24-hour format.

You'll have to do some basic math to get time played.

So it's something in the global robot like

set "boot_timeh" "TIME_HOURS"
set "boot_timem" "TIME_MINUTES"
set "boot_times" "TIME_SECONDS"
:idle
wait 1
goto "idle"
:endscreen
. "this label is sent when the game ends"
set "secondsplaying"...

OK I'm stuck with the formula there. *downloads Loco*

Thanks for the help anyways.

[RoSS]

You'd probably want to do something like

set "boot_secondsintoday" "(('TIME_HOURS'*3600)+('TIME_MINUTES'*60)+'TIME_SECONDS')"

...

set "final_secondsintoday" "(('TIME_HOURS'*3600)+('TIME_MINUTES'*60)+'TIME_SECONDS')"

set "total_seconds" "( (('final_secondsintoday'<'boot_secondsintoday')*86400) + 'final_secondsintoday' - 'boot_secondsintoday')"

That code will calculate how many seconds it is into the day at boot and end (in a reasonably obvious way, I hope-- if you have questions feel free to ask them). The total seconds is usually just (final - boot), but I included a check to see if the day changed (like if you started playing at 11pm and ended at 1am it won't get confused, even though it would otherwise look like you've been playing for -22 hours!) which adds 86400 seconds (a full day) to the final time if need be.

Just know that this isn't really a very reliable way if seeing how long they actually spent playing the game. It's only the difference in time between when they happened to start the game and end it. A player who starts it on 2pm, plays for an hour, saves it, and then comes back the next day around 1pm and finishes it an hour later will look like he hasn't played at all! The most reliable way of getting the real number would simply be to have your global robot increasing a "total_seconds" counter once a second.

[Dr Lancer-X]

There's a few ways of increasing a counter by one for every second that passes. I personally prefer to do something like this:

set "ticker" to 0
set "seconds_elapsed" to 0
: "l"
wait for 1
inc "ticker" by "('mzx_speed'-1*16)"
inc "seconds_elapsed" by "('ticker'/1000)"
set "ticker" to "('ticker'%1000)"
goto "l"

That will count the number of seconds accurately, unaffected by MZX pauses (i.e. if MZX stops for something like a [ window or because the user brought up the 'Quit playing?' dialogue by pressing escape, time spent there won't be lost). On the other hand, if the game being played is faster than the computer can handle (ESPECIALLY if mzx is set to speed 1--as you can see, the timer won't work at all there), the amount of time calculated will be wrong.

There's another way some people like to do it, and that's by incrementing a counter every time the 'time_seconds' counter changes, but that will result in the timer being screwed up whenever MZX pauses for some reason, plus it depends on the system clock.

[CJA]

so, basically, you want to just make an imaginary time unit called dashes or something and have 17 cycles be a dash

[Dr Lancer-X]

No, this counts the number of actual seconds that passed. See, a 'cycle' is always a fixed period of time, to Megazeux. Cycles are only longer if the CPU can't keep up. For example, the CPU is never able to keep up with speed 1. I just increase 'ticker' by the number of MS that passed in the cycle, based on those values. This is of course the 'fairest' way of measuring time, because if your CPU is too slow you won't be penalised for it.

MZX speed 1 - 0ms per cycle
MZX speed 2 - 16ms per cycle
MZX speed 3 - 32ms per cycle
MZX speed 4 - 48ms per cycle
MZX speed 5 - 64ms per cycle
MZX speed 6 - 80ms per cycle
MZX speed 7 - 96ms per cycle
MZX speed 8 - 112ms per cycle
MZX speed 9 - 128ms per cycle

Of course, if you just restrict the game to being played at speed 4, that's easy--every 125 cycles that pass, just add 6 seconds. (and interpolate for partway values at the end).

[nooodl]

OMG! Thanks tons Lancer! Really useful - I'll definetely use this code.

[Exophase]

Lancer-X, on Jun 9 2007, 04:28 AM, said:

There's a few ways of increasing a counter by one for every second that passes. I personally prefer to do something like this:

set "ticker" to 0
set "seconds_elapsed" to 0
: "l"
wait for 1
inc "ticker" by "('mzx_speed'-1*16)"
inc "seconds_elapsed" by "('ticker'/1000)"
set "ticker" to "('ticker'%1000)"
goto "l"

That will count the number of seconds accurately, unaffected by MZX pauses (i.e. if MZX stops for something like a [ window or because the user brought up the 'Quit playing?' dialogue by pressing escape, time spent there won't be lost). On the other hand, if the game being played is faster than the computer can handle (ESPECIALLY if mzx is set to speed 1--as you can see, the timer won't work at all there), the amount of time calculated will be wrong.

There's another way some people like to do it, and that's by incrementing a counter every time the 'time_seconds' counter changes, but that will result in the timer being screwed up whenever MZX pauses for some reason, plus it depends on the system clock.

Cycles aren't going to be EXACTLY that time, if you keep doing that you'll accumulate significant error (not that it necessarily matters that much)

[RoSS]

This is not going to be perfect, as it'll add a second every time you pause the game, but that's not such a big deal:

set "totalseconds" 0
set "lastsecond" -1
: "loop"
wait 1
if "lastsecond" = "TIME_SECONDS" "loop"
inc "totalseconds" 1
set "lastsecond" "TIME_SECONDS"
goto "loop"

[RyanThunder]

What's the command to change the player's maximum lives?

[Terryn]

As far as I know, you can't change that in-game. You can only set it in the global options.