Turbo Basic has recently become very popular and
we have received so many requests for more information about the
various commands available and offers of programs written in Turbo
Basic that from this issue we start a regular page devoted to Turbo
Basic. The future of the column depends on you. We need short
programs written in Turbo Basic to demonstrate some of the features
of this amazing language together with an explanation of what the
program does and how it is programmed. Anything will be considered
provided it uses the commands unique to Turbo Basic and the only
limitation is size — the program and article must not be more than
one page in total. Let's hear from you.
To get the ball rolling from this issue, here is a
short little graphics program very quickly thrown together to
demonstrate how programs can be written in Turbo Basic easily and
quickly. It is certainly not a great example of programming — you
could do better — but it does show smile of the features not
available in ordinary Atari Basic. Study the listing carefully and
you will begin to understand how programs can be structured in Turbo
Basic.
The program simply draws circles in Graphics 8 to
allow you to design patterns on screen. The joystick will move the
cursor around and pressing the fire button will plot a circle of the
size currently chosen. Just press START to choose another size and
then press any key, the size is chosen quite arbitrarily from the
keyboard.
It's not a brilliant program but was dead easy to
write and it's fun. Let's see what you can do. We'll pay you £20 for
any programs that are published. Remember they must have brief
supporting documentation and must fit on one page.
WHAT IS TURBO BASIC?
Turbo Basic is a new Basic language for the
Atari originally published in a German magazine and now released to
the public domain. It adds over 60 new commands to Atari Basic, runs
three to five times as fast, is totally compatible with all your
existing programs and comes with a compiler to compile any Atari
Basic or Turbo Basic program to run at machine language speed. You
should be able to get a copy from any source of public domain
software such as your local user group or a friend or even from the
Page 6 Accessory Shop.
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