Japanese Military Chess for the BBC Micro

[komadori]

I've started writing a version of Japanese Military Chess for the BBC Micro, with a particular view to making it support multiplayer games over Econet. It's still in its early stages but, as part of my new year's resolution to start blogging (again), I've been releasing "playable" demos and writing up my progress as I go. Disk image, JsBeeb, and source code links are at the bottom of each post. Feedback welcome!

EDIT 22/01/2024: Added Part 3. Run the latest version in JsBeeb or download the disk image.

Posts:

1. https://www.robinkay.uk/posts/2023/12/31/jmc-part-1/ (Graphics)
2. https://www.robinkay.uk/posts/2024/01/04/jmc-part-2/ (Tube Support)
3. https://www.robinkay.uk/posts/2024/01/22/jmc-part-3/ (Keyboard & Menus)

Latest screenshots:

[Cruxinc]

this is really impressive, well done!
do you have any tips for me(a newbie) to get started coding basic and assembly?
thanks and have a good day!

[nicolagiacobbe]

Thanks for the effort komadori. It seems excellent just by looking. I have never played the game and this seems a good opportunity to learn.

[nicolagiacobbe]

Just read the diary and they are excellent, written with great knowledge of the beeb's working.

[komadori]

Thanks for the effort komadori. It seems excellent just by looking. I have never played the game and this seems a good opportunity to learn.

Thanks nicolagiacobbe. It's more show than substance at the moment, but more game play will come in due course and then, clearly, I'll have to write some instructions .

this is really impressive, well done!
do you have any tips for me(a newbie) to get started coding basic and assembly?
thanks and have a good day!

Thanks Cruxinc. Starting programming is a bit of a distant memory for me, but as far as writing assembly for the BBC Micro goes, I'm constantly referencing the following:

• Advanced User Guide
• New Advanced User Guide
• BeebWiki
• Andrew Jacob's 6502 Instruction Set Guide

I would start by trying to get something on the screen and then working backwards.

[Cruxinc]

thanks for the tips! much appreciated!

[Cruxinc]

do you have any tips for me(a newbie) to get started coding basic and assembly?

Hi,

Glad you’re enjoying your new BBC and kit that goes with. Two and a half years ago I started to learn to code in Basic from scratch and have been moving on to assembly of late. I have attached images of the books that I found really helpful, I’ve listed them below in the order that I went through them as there’s kind of a natural progression.

Once I’d worked through the BASIC books I then got hold of the Beebug magazines and started working through games that I liked the look of. I found those by Jonathan Temple and Matt Eastmond great fun to learn from. I started with a shooter, then a maze type game and then moved on to a couple of Jonathan Temple’s platform games “Ebony Castle” and “Tombs of Tutenkhamen”. I also found “Bouncer” an Arkanoid type game good fun to learn from and also Cubert but they were from personal preference. In between learning what these games did and how I wrote my own code to test my understanding of concepts from the games.

Beebug Magazines to Download:

http://8bs.com/beebugmags.htm

Beebug Games to checkout via BBCMICRO.CO.UK before you get stuck in:

https://bbcmicro.co.uk/index.php?rt_R=& ... bug&sort=b

Books I read and found helpful in the order I used them:

1. BBC MIcro User Guide / this is used a LOT and is always open!

2. BBC Basic - R.B.Coates / Basic stuff but a good one to get going from nothing along with the User Guide

3. The BBC Micro Book - Jim McGregor and Alan Watt / More advanced Basic, sound and graphics I found a good next step

4. BBC Micro Gamesmaster - Kay Ewbank and Mike James / This got me used to putting things on screen and moving it around plus more.

5. Structured Programming - Roy Atherton / I think this has helped me write tidy programmes that have good structure to them (well not bad!)

6. Creative Graphics -John Cownie / Lots of knowledge on graphics etc

7. BBC Micro an Expert Guide - Mike James / Lots of information at an understandable level for me when I was new about how the machine works.

Then on the assembler which is still very much work in progress for me:

1. Assembly Programming Made Easy - Ian Murray / A clear and understandable intro into assembly

2. Assembly Language Programming for the BBC 2nd Ed - Ian Birnbaum / A good grounding to build knowledge of how you do many of the things you can do in Basic in Assembler and more.

3. Creative Assembler - Jonathan Griffiths / Assembly games and getting started down this path.

4. Advance User Guide / for reference

My goal has been to work through this lot and especially the Beebug Magazine games and then start to learn how to convert some of the ones I like to assembly. I’m still a very big work in progress but it’s great fun. I’m also experimenting in a similar way on my A3010 as well with BASIC and C.

I hope this helps a little.

Cheers

Rob

oh wow! thank you so much for this info! will definitely be very useful. today i typed in the “brian” program in usernguide
thanks again!

[Rob_hawk]

do you have any tips for me(a newbie) to get started coding basic and assembly?

oh wow! thank you so much for this info! will definitely be very useful. today i typed in the “brian” program in usernguide
thanks again!

My pleasure and I hope that this helps you get a huge amount of fulfilment out of your new machine!!!

Have a great week.

Cheers - Rob

[komadori]

I've posted part 3 of the series now. I've edited the latest links and screenshots into the top post, but will also reproduce here for posterity:

Run the latest version in JsBeeb or download the disk image.





I know it's not quite playable per se yet, but would love to hear if you have any thoughts.

[SidewayRum]

Oh, great graphics.
My two cents:
ESC should toggle animations ON/OFF (probably you'd thought of it already).
I dunno why, but the dithered purple pulsating on plain red look disturbing to me. There's not a lot you can do by 4 colors, anyway. Red <> dithered red? You've tried for?

Anyway, your posts are perfect for people like me coming from high level languages. I've learned a lot of stuff the best way. I'd like for more coders to do the same.

[komadori]

Anyway, your posts are perfect for people like me coming from high level languages. I've learned a lot of stuff the best way. I'd like for more coders to do the same.

Thanks! I'm glad you're enjoying the series. It's encouraging to know I'm not just shouting into the void .

ESC should toggle animations ON/OFF (probably you'd thought of it already).

That's a good idea to have a toggle for the animations, although I'm not sure I would bind it to the escape key. The escape key is special in that it sets the escape flag rather than go into the keyboard input buffer, so it goes to the head of the queue and I then clear the input buffer in that case to stop anything else happening.

Most pieces in the game can only move a short distance, so watching the animations shouldn't usually be frustrating, but I envisaged the escape key as a get-out if you feel it's taking too long. Perhaps, ideally, the animations could be faster, but there are some technical complexities to moving more than one pixel per frame since I rely on the border of the front buffer to clean up trails.

I dunno why, but the dithered purple pulsating on plain red look disturbing to me. There's not a lot you can do by 4 colors, anyway. Red <> dithered red? You've tried for?

It's grown on me . You're right that there's not much choice with 4 colours. Alternating between red and blue didn't look good to me, and dithering with white looks awful. Dithering with black doesn't look bright enough, which is why I use that for the inactive cursor.