10-29-2009 20:27

Posted by:
JHVipond

Location:
South Dakota

I just received a copy of Invent Your Own Computer Games, a 1983 book by Fred D'Ignazio, which I purchased from an Amazon seller because the book has BASIC source code for a tic-tac-toe game.

I see that the "computer win" and "block" subroutines have a variable (BD(GM(J)), where BD is an array for the nine cells on the tic-tac-toe grid, GM is a 24-element array for the computer's priority list of moves from best to worst, and J is the counter in a FOR loop. Are such nested array variables legal in TNT Basic? The TNT Basic user guide doesn't mention them.

10-30-2009 00:28

Posted by:
allnodcoms

Location:
hertfordshire (England)

The index into an array simply needs to equate to an integer, and as TNT will accept a variable or calculation, I see no reason why it wouldn't accept another array reference (as long as that reference also equates to an integer). So to answer your question as best as I can I'd say yes, though I've never tried it myself.

Give it a go and let us know if it works,,, (but yes, it should)

Danny (nod the mod)

10-30-2009 16:39

Posted by:
JHVipond

Location:
South Dakota

I tried it, Danny, and it worked perfectly. It helped that D'Ignazio wrote his programs on an Atari 800, and TNT Basic is very similar to Atari BASIC.

10-30-2009 17:38

Posted by:
allnodcoms

Location:
hertfordshire (England)

Yes, TNT has a very Atari like feel to it, and was inspired by the old Atari / Amiga programs (STOS on Atari and AMOS on Amiga) written by a guy called François Lionet back in '88.

I wrote my first two games in STOS in 1988/89, the first one took me a couple of weeks and was absolute pants, the second took me a couple days and got me a contract with TopByte Software... I loved STOS!

Enough reminiscing, I'm glad it all worked for and good luck with the game...

Danny (nod the mod)

(P.S. If you're looking for books on game creation I can highly recommend "The Game Maker's Manual" by Stephen Hill - ISBN: 1-85058-158-4)