djsures / nabu-lib Goto Github PK

When I load and run one of my ports of Del Horn's "Golden Flutes and Great Escapes" text-based adventure games, it will sometimes crash with a bogus error message reading "Undefined line number." Upon LISTing the program, I find that MBASIC has shuffled a line in the program; that is, it has placed a line where it does not belong. For example, in "Treasure Hunt" (the annotation is my own):

...
950 IF B(CP)=10 THEN 1520
1690 IF C=6 THEN FR=FR-DC        'ERROR!
960 IF B(CP)=20 THEN 1560
...

Or again, in "The Golden Flute" (once again my own annotation):

...
5440 IF D=1 THEN PRINT"BROMBIRAN";:BR=0
5780 R=RND*9+1:IF R>8 THEN RETURN        'ERROR!
5450 IF D=2 THEN PRINT"DAGGLETTE";:DG=0
...

This also happens in "The Great Escape" and "Mars," but those instances aren't listed here.

I originally thought this to be an internal problem within MBASIC itself, so I wasn't sure if the problem could be fixed, as, although MBASIC is classified as "abandonware," it's still copyrighted by Microsoft and, as such, can't be modified. However, when I ran the same programs (with a minor modification in each) in GW-BASIC (a later version of MBASIC for DOS), I get no line shuffling whatsoever. This leads me to believe that there's no problem in MBASIC or GW-BASIC.

As the problem happens only intermittently, I'm usually able to work around it by reloading the offending program. Sometimes, however, the problem remanifests itself several times in a row.

I was intrigued by your DUMPRAM program (in A:1). It showed me that MBASIC doesn't do a very good job of cleaning up the NABU's memory when a NEW or CLEAR statement is executed.

I'm enclosing my C: drive (in a ZIP file) containing the game programs. Also included on the C: drive are text files containing the instructions and "HELP" subroutine from "Mars", high score files for "The Golden Flute", "The Great Escape" and "Mars", and a small program that clears these high scores. (There's also a menu program which I based on the Apple ]['s version of the compilation, but you can use it or lose it as you see fit.)
C.zip

Hi DJ,

You said in Retronet, that I should post here if i wanted to let you know of updates to the Snake Game.

https://github.com/linuxplayground/nabu-games now has the latest with experimental joystick support. I was not able to test in mame, even with remapping. Perhaps I have the code wrong. Just going with whats described in nabu-lib.h

Anway - if you want to put this onto A: User 3 on cloud CP/M then feel free.

Thanks

Hi DJ. I've been building a NABU font editor in LibreOffice Calc. It allows you to visually edit the font (char 32-126), give it a name, and then outputs the pattern (this last part is not quite done).

I know some people are using FontForge, but I was hoping to share this with the community. I wasn't sure how else to reach you.

Anyway, if you see this, would love to hear back!

James

Thank you very much for your excellent work regarding the NABU computer.
I was looking into writing some software for it, and of course stumbled upon your repository. Unfortunately, while looking through the library, I noticed that there's no LICENSE/COPYING file, nor any licence headers that could indicate what this project is licensed under.

This mostly means that people are not allowed to use your code for any purpose. Since the code was published, I assume the intent is to help other people write software using it, thus it would help clarify a lot of things if you added a licence to it.

In addition, I noticed the following comment in NABU-LIB:

The TMS9918_Arduino project that the code was used from is licensed under the GNU GPL 3.

I am not a lawyer, however, it is my understanding that unless this project is now also licensed under the GPL, or that code is removed, then it is infringing on TMS9918_Arduino's copyright.

If NABU-LIB is licensed under the GPL, that means that all software using it might be considered derivative works, and thus will also need to be licensed under the GPL. Perhaps you can contact the author of TMS9918_Arduino and ask for some parts to be dual licensed under the GNU LGPL (Lesser General Public License) as well which is better suited for libraries, or some other licence instead.

Thank you for your time, and once again, thank you for your work!

Hello World C example does not compile.
Skeleton project also fails to compile.

I have to download z88dk nightly version from may 2023 to be able to compile examples.