| ★ APPLICATIONS ★ AIDE A LA CREATION DE JEUX ★ SPRITES ALIVE - COMPILER VERSION ★ |
SPRITES ALIVE: COMPILER VERSION | SPRITES ALIVE + COMPILER (Amstrad Action) |
The release of Sprites Alive was a great boon to BASIC games programmers on the CPC. It added several extra commands to BASIC especially for the creation of games. Now a new version has been released that comes complete with a compiler to 'turbocharge' your programs.... Any program has to be converted into machine code before the computer can understand it. There are two ways of doing this. An interpreted language is converted as the program runs. When the computer looks at any particular line it is changed to machine code. Every time the computer looks at that same line it has to be reconverted even if has to do so several times. All this slows down the speed at which the computer operates. A compiled language is much faster. The whole program is converted into machine code in one go. The compiler in Sprites Alive doesn't make any claims to being a fully fledged compile-everything sort of program. Instead, it allows you to to use a subset of pseudo-basic, as well of course as the standard Sprites Alive, commands. Line numbers are not recognised, and labels are used to indicate jumps and the like. The limited subset of BASIC means you'll have to rework all your programs before they are suitable for compilation. The increase in speed you'll get with the compiler depends very much on what percentage of your program is in BASIC. All the Sprites Alive commands are efficiently coded already, and if your program is made up mainly of these instructions then there probably won't be a massive difference. If your program is very dependant on BASIC, however, then the speed gain should be more noticable. The beauty of Sprues Alive is that you don't need an awful lot of BASIC - just enough to string the RSXs together. So you can probably get away with not using the compiler for most things. However, the compiler can tidy up those loose ends, resulting in clean, compact code. It may well give your games just the touch of speed that they need. Included with the package are a couple of example programs. One, a Tetris lookalike, shows just how effective the compiled code can be. It certainly gives the original game a run for its money. If you already have the original Sprites Alive, then it's well worth upgrading to the compiler version - particularly when you can do it for just a few quid. Glenco has been very generous in only charging the difference to existing users. If you don't, then the Sprites Alive Compiler package is an improvement on an already excellent program. It's looking more attractive than ever. AA |
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