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From: jmunkki@hila.hut.fi (Juri Munkki)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.games
Subject: Re: Robot games...
Message-ID: <1991Apr9.174522.10940@santra.uucp>
Date: 9 Apr 91 17:45:22 GMT
References: <1991Apr7.212327.6218@en.ecn.purdue.edu> <112421@unix.cis.pitt.edu> <1991Apr8.154729.24914@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu> <112698@unix.cis.pitt.edu>
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Reply-To: jmunkki@hila.hut.fi (Juri Munkki)
Organization: Helsinki University of Technology, FINLAND
Lines: 42

In article <112698@unix.cis.pitt.edu> bluecow@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Tobish E Smith) writes:
>In article <1991Apr8.154729.24914@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu> jtsweet@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu (Jonathan Thoma Sweet) writes:
>>Some of the problems I have found were:
>>
>>   1) No Arrays
>
>  A good point.  We'll add them to the registered version.  At this point
>we're leaning toward having a few built-in arrays of fixed size to use.
>
>>   2) No For-Next Loops    
>
>We've really been trying to stay away from this since it opens up a whole
>can of worms: hey, now that you put in for-next, how about an else clause?
>And what about functions?  and...  
>  As I've said before, we're trying to keep RIPPLE as simple as possible.
>However, since so many people are requesting for-next, we might just be
>inclined to add it.

Bah, you should have implemented Forth instead of a poor BASIC imitation.
Forth is widely used in robotics and microcontrollers because it is a very
simple and yet powerful language. I know some people have a hard time
"Thinking Forth", but once you learn how to use it, it's way better than
any robot programming language that I've seen in any of the games.

I've already written one Forth interpreter, but that one was more
string processing and speed oriented than is desirable for a robot
language. I'm now writing a different implementation that is slower,
more robust but also much more portable. It wouldn't be a big deal to
implement a floating point or fixed point (I prefer fixed point) class
for it.  (Yes, it uses operator overloading and has string, list,
pointer and numerical object types...)

If a language is correctly designed, adding built-in functions and
operations should be easy.

So, anyone want to have a Forth programmable robot battle program?
Would it be worth the trouble to write one?

   ____________________________________________________________________________
  / Juri Munkki	    /  Helsinki University of Technology   /  Wind  / Project /
 / jmunkki@hut.fi  /  Computing Center Macintosh Support  /  Surf  /  STORM  /
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