Bluer White

I presented a tutorial introduction at KansasFest 2010 on the Mindcraft Macrosoft programming language, a macro assembler package that allows the programmer to achieve machine language speed with a high-level Applesoft BASIC-like syntax.  Macrosoft and its companion Assembler run on you favorite 8-bit Apple II.  The presentation was well received, and several people left motivated to try Macrosoft for themselves. Don’t miss the history of Macrosoft from the author, Alan Floeter, that’s part of the presentation slides (page 11).

Ken Gagne has kindly shared a recording of my presentation and posted the slides.  Watch the presentation, buy a copy of the Mindcraft Assembler & Macrosoft, and write the next blockbuster Apple II software.

USE MACROSOFT.3.1
UEN
MUL
BEGIN
PRINT "Macrosoft Rocks."
CLEANUP
END

There’s a working Macrosoft example in the presentation slides.  Also, check out my “hello world” program in Macrosoft and with the Assembler.  Finally, don’t forget my winning KansasFest 2009 HackFest entry written with Macrosoft.

My KansasFest 2010 HackFest entry with source code is now available for your enjoyment.  This entry took second place behind Martin’s Wizardy crack.  I used Complete Pascal 2.0 with Pegasoft Draw Tools 3.1, both of which are freely available, to create my first 16-bit Apple II program.  The program displays pictures from KansasFest and asks related trivia questions.

The photographs are used with permission from Henry Courbis of Reactive Micro.  I converted the original JPEG images to GIF files on a modern Macbook then used Super Convert on a IIgs to produce packed SHR image files.

I hope some budding programmer will find the software to be a useful starting place for the next brilliant Apple II software!

There are just so many fabulous things to see and do at KansasFest that Hackfest has not gotten much attention!  Where else do you get to see the worst Apple product and a disk operating system almost twice as fast as ProDOS?

I want to include full-screen bitmapped images in my entry, and I’m figuring out how to load and display images.  The toolbox does not offer a convenient “load image from file” call so I must provide code to load, parse, and decompress the image file.  I found a CSA2 post with sample code and the Pegasoft Draw Tools package.  Draw Tools provides numerous handy drawing tools, including fades, wipes, animation, and image loading.  So, I’ve installed Draw Tools and have the sample code working.  The TML Pascal samples work well with Complete Pascal since Complete Pascal is really version 2 of TML Pascal.  Work continues …

The annual KansasFest HackFest is on!  I’ve heard rumors of Wizardy cracking and a Rockhurst text adventure.  I’m learning Complete Pascal, learning IIGS toolbox programming, and, just in case I run out of things to do, using those skills to write a graphical Apple II/KFest trivia adventure.  I have Complete Pascal running and am ready to crank out a bit of code.  Stay tuned for more …