About 20years ago, a battle was being raged over the UK... not that disimilar to the one raged currently between Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony.
Difference were the players were Acorn, Sinclair and Amstrad; Thier platforms all ran at blistering 2MHz with 64KB RAM... boasting upto 16 Colours onscreen at once, these were the system that literally paved the way for what we currently use today.
Before the Acorn Electron (Late 1983) it was only those computer literate or schools that had a state of the art BBC Micro, a computer which until 1990 really was considered
the education computer for schools.
What the Acorn brought was basically a BBC Micro, cut down in features and cost (was half the price of the Micro). For the first time the British public were given the chance to see what a computer was useful for past silly computer games...
The Acorn also brought something else to the home market, and really the entire reason any of us are currently here.
BBC BASIC; The Original BASIC Language. Before the Release of the BBC in 1981, there was no such thing as BASIC Language. Even after release it really wasn't known what it was exactly.
The Acorn unfortunately although a good machine was in so much demand over the Christmas period of '83 that Acorn failed to keep up with demand, a demand which Amstrad were very happy to fill very soon after... boasting thier built-in tape deck, full size keyboard and dedicated monitor. As such the Electron suffered a pretty bad defeat which Acorn wouldn't really recover from. (Although the Atom was quite nice, failed to impress the public)
Oki so now we have a short history lesson, now what?
Well the recent talk of Retro Games really had me thinking back to the days of yaw. The Acorn came out of storage and is currently pluged into my TV with the:
Acorn Electon é
>
showing on the screen, just waiting for the command input.
I have missed the old basics, the basics that were just as they said on the tin; a Basic language not just a Basic syntax.
As such I've been drawing up a design for a compiler + cli-style ide; Based on the Electron/BBC BASIC.
Now the idea is to really more reproduce than simply base it on the orignial; believe it or not this is alot easier considering that the 6052 (Acorn/BBC-M Processor) direct decentant is the good ol' 80286 Processor. (to the point actually where it is possible to swap them and watch games fly at 8MHz hehee)
Well anyways, today I start actually programming it. Unsure how long this is going to take me, although it doesn't have thousands of functions it has far more depth than I originally remembered.
Infact it even has some features that not even DBP has.
Now there are a few things I'll need peoples opinions on.
-> Timer Loop, what do you think is the best way to go around it?
Currently my thought is an automatic speed adjuster. But I could just as easily add a timer and let the users deal with the loop speed, or maybe add an Update keyword so you tell the processor to run the memory stored code.
-> HID Support, Acorn BASIC didn't have them; but the Amstrad did. Should they be included? (Joysticks/Mice)
-> MultiLanguage Support, I want to add this, but to be honest no idea how to go about it... as i'd have to hard code the characters used which could be a chore. (especially as English is nice being it only has 26 letters)
Let me know your thoughts on this, I think if I did add such support I'd only really need Russian and Japanese to begin with; expand with Korean/Chinese later.
-> Sound Blaster Support, I am seriously thinking of adding this as an option turn/off. You'll still have the exact same sound controls, they'll just come out of a different speaker hehee.
Main reason i'm thinknig of adding it is cause my PC Speaker is bust ^_^
anything else you can think of which would be a modern day issue that wasn't back then let me know.
something I am adding is a basic file exporter. it will *NOT* access the Windows partition, so you can't simply use it as a CLI to browse your HDD, it'll only be able to access a protected disk area.
This is to also make 100% sure I have no windows dependancy, as it'll be released for Linux as well.
Oki before i cover the syntax i'll give you guys some time.
What I'd like to see is if any off you have old games, remember the BBC Syntax and wanna have a go at coding something to show or whatever... then please feel free to contribute.
The more examples I can get my hands on, the better I can sort out the compiler looking for bugs before I release it.
For those who wanna have a go I'll post up the syntax around 6pm after i've watched Kim Possible and started the exe headers and such.
Anyone expecting 3D... don't cause your not going to get it unless you program it yourself (that is the whole point in going back to our roots hehee)
