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Author Topic: Homescreen or graphscreen?  (Read 7142 times)

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Offline JosJuice

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Homescreen or graphscreen?
« on: October 05, 2010, 12:59:45 pm »
Yeah... It wasn't long ago since I started coding TI-BASIC and now I've gotten to the point where I want to display graphics that aren't just ASCII characters. So I'm wondering: Should I use the homescreen or the graphscreen? As I understand it, graphscreen allows stuff like drawing lines, but homescreen allows Disp. Are there any other important differences, and which screen would be the best to use when drawing sprites?

And also, how do I swap between the two screens from a program? Do I simply use a function for drawing to the screen I want to swap to? I didn't exactly see any function for swapping when I looked in the manual.
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Offline Raylin

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Re: Homescreen or graphscreen?
« Reply #1 on: October 05, 2010, 01:08:30 pm »
Graphscreen. You cannot make non-ASCII characters any other way.

Also, in regards to the swapping thing, certain commands drop you back to the homescreen. Try fiddling with some of those.
« Last Edit: October 05, 2010, 01:09:21 pm by Raylin »
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Offline JosJuice

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Re: Homescreen or graphscreen?
« Reply #2 on: October 05, 2010, 01:13:17 pm »
Quote from: Raylin on October 05, 2010, 01:08:30 pm
Graphscreen. You cannot make non-ASCII characters any other way.
So the function that draws a single pixel only works on the graphscreen?
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Offline Raylin

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Re: Homescreen or graphscreen?
« Reply #3 on: October 05, 2010, 01:20:57 pm »
Yes. It also switches to the graphscreen on execution if I recall correctly.
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Offline JosJuice

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Re: Homescreen or graphscreen?
« Reply #4 on: October 05, 2010, 01:22:54 pm »
Is that function fast or should I avoid overusing it?
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Offline Builderboy

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Re: Homescreen or graphscreen?
« Reply #5 on: October 05, 2010, 01:49:36 pm »
None of the Basic commands are what i would call fast, but the pixel routine is (i believe) the fastest graphical command. NOTE however, that there is a very important difference between Pixel plotting and Point plotting.  Pixel plotting works off of the screen coordinates, so 0,0 is always in the top left hand corner.  Point plotting works off of the graph screen coordinates, so they depend on your window settings.

Also note that while a single pixel plot is faster than a single line command, it is definetaly faster to use the line() command to draw a line than use a bunch of pixel() commands to draw it.  And actually you kind of can switch between the screens, Disp without any arguments brings you to the homescreen, and dispGraph brings you to the graph screen.  Using graph functions will also bring you to the graph screen (except ClrDraw) and using homescreen functions will bring you to the homescreen. 

Its also worthy to note that no command that works on one screen also works on the other screen.
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Offline JosJuice

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Re: Homescreen or graphscreen?
« Reply #6 on: October 05, 2010, 01:53:22 pm »
Okay. Thanks to both of you. I'll start coding something soon (or maybe in a week if I'm lazy :P)
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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Homescreen or graphscreen?
« Reply #7 on: October 05, 2010, 02:39:27 pm »
Another way to speed things up is to use two (or three?) ASCII character combined together to draw tilemaps.

ClrDraw
For(A,0,56,7
Text(A,0,"OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
End
Storepic 0
For(A,0,56,7
Text(A,1,"HHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
End
Recallpic 0
Storepic 0

It gives some pretty amazing results sometimes, while still running pretty fast. :)

Example of game using such technique:
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Offline ztrumpet

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Re: Homescreen or graphscreen?
« Reply #8 on: October 05, 2010, 07:32:54 pm »
Here's a summery of Graphics: http://tibasicdev.wikidot.com/graphics
I hope you are able to do well with this first transition to the graphscreen. :)  Good luck! ;D
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Offline Deep Toaster

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Re: Homescreen or graphscreen?
« Reply #9 on: October 05, 2010, 07:34:46 pm »
Quote from: Raylin on October 05, 2010, 01:08:30 pm
Graphscreen. You cannot make non-ASCII characters any other way.

Plus, you can combine the two, and even ASCII chars aren't that slow on the graph screen if you draw them with Text(-1.
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Offline AngelFish

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Re: Homescreen or graphscreen?
« Reply #10 on: October 05, 2010, 08:26:28 pm »
Quote from: JosJuice on October 05, 2010, 12:59:45 pm
Are there any other important differences, and which screen would be the best to use when drawing sprites?

Sprites are rather difficult to do [quickly] in BASIC with non-ASCII characters, especially if you have a constantly changing background.
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Offline Deep Toaster

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Re: Homescreen or graphscreen?
« Reply #11 on: October 05, 2010, 08:35:16 pm »
Pixel-based sprites are actually faster than text sprites, but bigger.
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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Homescreen or graphscreen?
« Reply #12 on: October 06, 2010, 01:43:54 am »
I don't think so. Good luck, Deep Thought, at rendering a 12x8 tilemap in 3 seconds in pure-BASIC. With dual-layer text as shown in the screenshot above, it takes about 2-3 seconds and with single-layer ascii it takes half a second.
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Offline JosJuice

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Re: Homescreen or graphscreen?
« Reply #13 on: October 06, 2010, 01:46:57 am »
Quote from: Deep Thought on October 05, 2010, 08:35:16 pm
Pixel-based sprites are actually faster than text sprites, but bigger.
Bigger in which way? Does the program get larger?
Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on October 06, 2010, 01:43:54 am
I don't think so. Good luck, Deep Thought, at rendering a 12x8 tilemap in 3 seconds in pure-BASIC. With dual-layer text as shown in the screenshot above, it takes about 2-3 seconds and with single-layer ascii it takes half a second.
I guess I'll have to try to avoid drawing too much stuff, then. (Or maybe I should switch to Axe :D)
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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Homescreen or graphscreen?
« Reply #14 on: October 06, 2010, 01:54:34 am »
There is also xLIB or Doors CS that supports sprites. But yeah if your sprites are just made of two lines for example it should not be too slow. But they still becomes much larger in file size than text ones. In Axe they aren't too large, though (8 bytes for a 8x8 sprite)
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