Remarks: Variations in BASIC
From Maze
(Difference between revisions)
(→Two Walls) | |||
| Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
| − | Even small changes to the 10 PRINT code can have a significant impact on the visual output and the pattern produced. The output of 10 PRINT has a unique visual appeal which can be understood in terms of design and composition (diagonal vs. orthogonal, for instance), and in terms of how it plays against the contextual expectations of the historical period when it emerged (all-text BASIC programs on the one hand and graphical software, particularly videogames, on the other). To understand this, we can take the ''Commodore 64 User's Guide'' and ''RUN'' magazine up on their invitations to modify the program and see what happens. | + | Even small changes to the 10 PRINT code can have a significant impact on the visual output and the pattern produced. The output of 10 PRINT has a unique visual appeal which can be understood in terms of design and composition (diagonal vs. orthogonal, for instance), and in terms of how it plays against the contextual expectations of the historical period when it emerged (all-text BASIC programs on the one hand and graphical software, particularly videogames, on the other). To understand this, we can take the ''Commodore 64 User's Guide'' and ''RUN'' magazine up on their invitations to modify the program and see what happens. Instead of modifying the distribution of characters (as suggested by the ''Commodore 64 User's Guide'') or adding code to cause random color changes (as suggested in ''RUN''), this section explores what happens if other PETSCII characters are chosen for display. |
As tweaking the program will show, 10 PRINT is a kind of optimal solution that is uniquely elegant in its design space, that of the Commodore 64 BASIC one-line maze generator. Any similar attempt is both less concise (it requires more code) and less expressive (it resembles a maze less or produces a less interesting visual pattern). In fact, the concision of the code and the expressiveness of the image are tightly related, and arise out of a unique set of constraints and interactions, particularly the interaction between the desire to constrain the program code to a single line and the sequence of adjacent characters in the PETSCII table. | As tweaking the program will show, 10 PRINT is a kind of optimal solution that is uniquely elegant in its design space, that of the Commodore 64 BASIC one-line maze generator. Any similar attempt is both less concise (it requires more code) and less expressive (it resembles a maze less or produces a less interesting visual pattern). In fact, the concision of the code and the expressiveness of the image are tightly related, and arise out of a unique set of constraints and interactions, particularly the interaction between the desire to constrain the program code to a single line and the sequence of adjacent characters in the PETSCII table. | ||
