Well I'm not sure what the problem with the movement is even (and I don't know where my calculator is to test it :\) but for the efficiency bit, instead of redrawing the entire screen each time through the loop, how about filling it with .'s before the main loop then inside the loop all you need to do is replace the old position, which would be an 'O', with a '.' and replace the new position (which would be a '.' with an 'O'. Writing 2 chars each loop should give a decent increase over writing 8*16 chars.

Hopefully that made sense... but it also wouldn't be the first time I've been accused of not making sense. Also note that it's been quite some time since I've done any programming on my calc ;]

What specific problems are you having?

As for efficiency, one thing you could do is use lists rather than individual variables, for that you would first create a list (in this case named "Name") in memory, then to use it:

14->dim(lName)

essentially a list "lName" of length 14, to access the list you would write:

lName(n)

where 'n' is the index. This allows you to use more than 26 variables at any given time, which is especially good since all variables in TI-83 Basic are global (last I checked)

Keep in mind that TI-83 Basic was never meant to be particularly fast, for that you'll need a link cable and some of the TI tutorials on Z-80 assembly. They also have TI-83 emulators so you can test it on your computer without bricking your $100 calculator.

Good ole' TI-83 calcs. :) Programmed my first game on an 83, which was a very primitive version of number munchers (took forever). After that I did simpler games, such as blackjack, hi-low, several variations of those games where you have to memorize a sequence of lights and repeat it (although, I used numbers and characters instead), and once I even made a mini text-based RPG with combat and the works. Then I realized it was way better to do that sort of stuff in C++. :)

Anyway, as px said, you can cut down your drawing by pre-drawing the scene and then only updating the spaces where movement has occured. With TI-83's, never, ever try to redraw the entire scene each frame; 83's are way too slow at processing and you'll never get any decent graphics results trying to refresh so often. Just draw the field ahead of time before the While statement, and then all your while statement should be is checking for user input and then updating the spaces needed (also remember to take ClrHome out of the While loop). And draw only when there is user input; don't draw every frame.

Another suggestion: for your getkey, store it as a variable (such as theta). I'd do that because getkey grabs the current key the user is pressing, which could actually change between the if statements; storing the getkey as a variable keeps the same input throughout the rest of that iteration of the loop. I'd also turn the direction checks (left, right, up, down) into an if-else branch.

Hope that helps.

Quote:Original post by Tallun
Edit 2: Is it possible to erase a character in a specified position?

Yes. Just use Output() as you have been, only do something like Output(x, y, " ") with an empty character (i.e. a space).

Quote:Original post by Tallun
@Omega147: Yes, Simian Man posted code doing that already, but thanks anyway.

Actually, Simian's code is still redrawing at every pass through the loop...

Edit: Or, if you're referring to the key input thing, the Repeat is one way to do it, but if you want to check for other things within the loop (such as if you have a timer going) then I wouldn't take that route.