PlayBasic V1.64 Learning Edition Update

[kevin]

PlayBASIC V1.64  Learning Edition Update ( March 26, 2010 )

    This thread  documents the changes made for the PlayBASIC 1.64 revision L  learning edition upgrade.  

  The V164L Learning Edition was released (April 25, 2010)

Upgrade Intro:


      If you're running the current PlayBASIC V1.63 Learning Edition and haven't bothered following through the upgrade history of PB in recent years,  then you might be horrified  to discover that V1.63 is actually two or more years older than the current retail versions of PlayBASIC.  That means you're missing out on loads of new features and improvements made to the PlayBASIC in this time.   Hence, it's time we updated the learning Edition.  

      The tasks of the upgrade are two fold,

         1)  First is building the LE compiler

         2)  Upgrade the documentation & example packs.
     
       So far i've been working upon building the LE compiler. The learning editions are built from retail version, using our propriety builder software.  While this makes the job of building a specific versions much easier, the builder isn't as fast as it could be.   In fact, yesterday it was taking 22 /23 minutes to build & compile.  Nothing worse than eating through 20 minutes only to find a typo  and have to rebuild it all.   Obviously, this was just not acceptable, as I need to build it each time for testing.   The drama turns out to be some lazy nested code in the pre-parsers routines.   So I spent much of yesterday afternoon/evening writing an implementation of the parser based upon the technique used in the Debugger Prototyping (Syntax Highlight)  -The resulting in version of the parser that's some 10 times quicker.   Which is acceptable..  

       Anyway, now the builder is running find I can focus on tweaking the compiler/runtime.  



  What's New In V1.64 Learning Edition ?

       Rather than type out a huge list of new features,  why not see for yourself..
 
        PlayBasic V1.64k  WIP  Gallery  

        PlayBasic V1.63 -> PlayBasic V1.64 Gallery  




PlayBASIC Retail Upgrade History

    For newer upgrade work in progress see,

     See  PlayBASIC V1.64P (login required)   -     Convert PlayBASIC To Machine Code Dll's

    See  PlayBASIC V1.64O

    See  PlayBASIC V1.64N2 & V1.64N3

    See  PlayBASIC V1.64N

    See  PlayBASIC V1.64M

[kevin]

   PlayBasic (V1.64) Work In Progress

     I've had a lot less time to tinker with PlayBASIC this week than normal,  due to a combination of an overheating power supply and some baby sitting.   But anyway, the progress that has been made between crashes (P/S issues are  fixed now) has mainly been on address some older bugs.    While none of which we're show stoppers, it's always good to get those things cleaned up.

    The V1.64 learning edition is being built from the V1.64L sources, these are latest versions of the PlayBASIC language.   That doesn't mean the LE version will be able to do everything the RETAIL editions can,  but there are some changes such as the addition of DLL support in LE editions.  So users can use 3rd party libraries with the LE edition (Ie. Physics), Which should prove interesting.  



  PlayBasic V1.64L - New Features

      The spec's for the RETAIL versions of this upgrade we're outlined a few months ago, however that's the Retail edition, the LE is being scaled back some.   However one of the area's that was tagged for updates was the Mapping library.   Namely adding some helper functions to aid users detect impacts on maps using various methods.    PLus perhap some commands to help reduce scene overdraw.    Such as something like the methods outlined in here

      Atm, i'm working on collision functions.  Important one's are detecting if a Point/Line hits the Map (rect & at pixel level) as well as sprite a few others.   The attached picture is a demo where the user can scroll through the xenon maps and the mouse pointer has collision (pixel level) against the foreground map layer.  Although it's a bit hard to see in this pic.

 

[kevin]

 PlayBasic V1.64L -line Hit Map Tile/Pixels  

  Been working on detecting if a line intersects with a PB map,  which is the logical extension from detecting if a dot impacts with a map.   So far, i've just been looking at a few different techniques, but I think i'm going to go with the following.    Which is a sort of customized ray trace.   This should perform pretty well and be pretty accurate.

   While the current version doesn't handle pixel level impacts, you can happy find the first impact along the ray with the map at vector level. Which is nothing that new if you're familiar with worlds commands, which are designed for this very purpose.   But anyway, the picture bellow is showing the ray being traced through the map space.   The demo currently shows the first impact point (the circles) plus it highlights if the ray is passing over any solid tiles in the map.

   This will be mostly used (i would think) in keep characters walking around a map.  So you'll cast a ray down from the character position to detect ground height.  Then adjust the characters position accordingly.   Much like the (Walking on Sprite Collision Map) examples..   For the best results, it's recommended that you use two maps though.  One map for display and another collision version, commonly called a collision mask.   The collision one would be a 2 colour version basically.   This allows means you can tweak the block sets better than running collision on the actual map data.  

[kevin]

PlayBasic V1.64L -Moving to Example /Help Files phase

    Haven't had anywhere near enough time to implement the handful of mapping features as i'd hoped this week.  So they'll have to be shelved for the time being, really don't want to this blow out into a long winded affair.    I'd much rather get a update out now, so we can hopefully (if there's enough user demand) get back to releasing updated LE versions on a more regular basis. 

    While I haven't been writing much code, I have been running though the example pack the last couple of evenings.   Not much to do really, mostly just making the odd the change here and there, as well as adding some of the more recent tidbits.   The temptation is to add everything, but then there's too many examples.   

    The main thing I've been wanting to take a look at really is the doc's builder.  Se if adding sub categories is viable..  Should be, i'm hoping to get out of it with the lease amount of work possible.     

[kevin]

 PlayBasic V1.64L Help Files -> Sub Category Support in Doc Builder V0.62

   The Help files are important, we know that.  However, arranging them, so they're easy to navigate isn't something that we can do by hand. So the doc's are created from a specifically designed program (pictured bellow).  The program does all the grunt work (cross linking, parsing examples, highlighting etc etc) for us, allowing us to add pages to the main categories with relative ease.   While this was OK back in the day, when PlayBASIC had only a 1/3 of the commands and command sets it has today,  over time lt had become obvious that we need to split up the main categories into sub-categories.

   So in the past couple of days i've updating the DOC Builder to incorporate some type of basic sub-categories functionality.  it's a bit tricky, as it has to fit inside how it currently works.  But, after a little bit of messing around,  it's finally  starting to behave itself.   At the moment the only section i've been testing is the About section.    So far, all i've done is cut into 3 sub categories (pictured bellow).   While i'm not too crazy about how it looks,  the separation should help people find whatever functionality they're after.  


   How can you help ?  By contributing to this topic -> Documentation Request - Help Sub Categorize Command Set




 

[Big C.]

Do you make the Docmaker public?

[kevin]

no.

[kevin]

  PlayBasic V1.64L Help Files -> Adding Sub Categories To Help

     While the doc builders now handle the sub category stuff inside command set categories,  the real work is running through the  entire command set and assigning the sub-categories to them.    Was initially doing this by hand, but with over 1200 command & libraries to got through manually, this gets old real fast.   So of course, the lazy man's solution was to knock up a little tool that'll take a list of commands and add each commands category definitions to the individual command files database.  The doc files are just formatted text files with various fields in them.  So adding the cat's just means loading/parsing & saving them out. All of which is trivial in PlayBASIC...

     The little category tagger program is only part of the problem though, you still have to create a main command lists with the sub categories in them (like these) - For that,  I just threw another bit of code together to create the global list of the commands in their commands sets.  Equally trivial  (see bellow), but a real time saver..  These couple of junk app's have saved me days of manual work. Not bad for less than hours investment :).

PlayBASIC Code: [Select]

Function ListAllCommands(Path$)

   Dim files$(0)
   GetAllFilesInDir(Files$(),path$)

   Dim Row$(100)

   LastCommandset$=""

   For lp=1 to Getarrayelements(files$())
      f$=files$(lp)
      ext$=getfileext$(f$)
      if lower$(ext$)=lower$("PBDoc")
         f$=replace$(f$,path$,"")
         f$=replace$(f$,".PBDoc","")
   
         Count=SplitToArray(f$,"\",row$(),0)
         if Count=2         
               CommandSet$   =row$(0)
               Command$      =row$(1)

               if CommandSet$<>CurrentCommandSet$
                  #print ""   
                  #print ""   
                  #print "["+CommandSet$+"]"   
                  CurrentCommandSet$=CommandSet$
               endif
               #print Command$

         endif
      endif
   next

Endfunction
 

outputs

Code Select Expand



[Worlds]
CameraGrabWorldAt
CaptureToWorld
CreateWorld
DeleteWorld
GetFreeWorld
GetWorldClosestPoint
GetWorldElements
GetWorldElementVisible
GetWorldQuantity
GetWorldStatus
NewWorld
PartitionWorld
QueryWorldRegion
RayIntersectWorld
WorldElementVisible


[Time & Date]
CurrentDate$
CurrentDay$
CurrentHour
CurrentMinute
CurrentMonth$
CurrentSecond
CurrentTime$
CurrentYear$
Timer
Wait


[Text]
CenterText
CursorLineFeed
CursorMargin
GetCursorLineFeed
GetCursorMargin
GetCursorX
GetCursorY
GetTextHeight
GetTextWidth
Print
SetCursor
SetCursorX
SetCursorY
Text

etc tec tec


[kevin]

  Sub Categories Are Go

      The sub-cat pass over the documentation is complete for the most part.  I say the most part, as I haven't bothered with standard libraries.  Since most of these will soon be officially discontinued anyway.   What I would like to add some controls in the doc's builder to tag command sets type.    This should allow built in commands and optional libraries to be separated in the documentation, much the same way the commands can have associate categories now.      

       All in All it's coming along,  we really need some USER CREATED CONTENT though in the forum of examples..  So head over the Source Code board and get posting...

[kevin]

  V1.64L  Help Files Beta #1

      Here's the current work in progress release of the PlayBasic V1.64L documentation.   This edition is suitable for use with  PB V1.64L (Retail) and of course the upcoming Learning Edition.   The main changes (apart from another round of tweaks) are the categories /sub category support.     There's a few other changes that were added yesterday.  Namely that  documents now have a type.  Types are limited to either a command dizzy or a tutorial page currently.   Pages default to a command if no type is assigned.   The purpose of this is that when the HTML pages are created, the documents can have sections optionally included/excluding depending upon the document type.  So on tutorial pages the parameter stuff is now removed (finally).  Another parser change is that the commands that don't have a associated example projects attached to them, it'll automatically remove that section from the template.  Which just stream lines the page a bit better.  A little more to the point...        


    Download

     DELETED


  Installation

     The file above is a zip of the HELP folder.  To install this version either unzip, or drag the HELP folder from this over your existing one.   



 What's Next ?

    Well, this version is a pretty reasonable step from the last version of the docs,  but there's still a few things that i'd like to add.    Mainly adding a tutorial section, as well as adding some (rough most likely) doc's for more of the standard libraries.

[kevin]

  Blit Image Help

   Still pottering away on the Help files, tonight's little session has seen the addition of the Blit Image library into the help.   

[kevin]

  More Help

       Adding a few more libraries to the help, namely the clipboard and dialogs libraries.    There's still a number of them to get done.  Dunno if they'll make it in this revision or not..  Only a few more days allocated to this before testing the package..   

[kevin]

  Learning Edition V1.64L features Frame Sheet Anims V0.03 

     Been putting this library into the documentation over the past couple of editing sessions.  Progress is moving a bit slower than i'd like,  mainly due to the need to make more new examples for the functions as I go.    Thankfully,   most of them are fairly self explanatory, so some examples can double up.   In terms of the help aspect, i'm about 90% of the way through adding the  updated library to the doc's.  Only a few commands left to document.

     The new version of the library just includes a few extra functions and makes better use of some new compiler features found in  PlayBasic V1.64.   Such as optional parameters.  Which is handy when loading a frame sheet, when you've no idea how many frames it contains.     There's definitely a need for a tool to quickly throw frame sheets together though.   If only I could find the source for PlayANIM..  I know i've got it... somewhere :)
   

  Release On Schedule ?

      Yes, this snap shot of the package will be released on the 24/25th  of April 2010, regardless.     

[ATLUS]

great job!!!
these features appear in the retail version???

[kevin]

great job!!!
these features appear in the retail version???

What features are you talking about ??   Stuff like optional parameters is already in it.