Just to keep you guys on your toes:
I'm trying to use the "Help" function while programming, using "Keyword Index", and I get the error message :
Internal IDE Error (module: Wiki Methods, on line 767) every time.
It's not my coding - it happens when I start a new, empty programme as well as every completed (and working) one.
Can this be something to do with my installation (again), or is it a genuine fault in QB64PE?
Riddle me that, Batmen! 

Inspired by Phil's topic about _KEYHIT (Trying to understand keyhit function (qb64phoenix.com), I couldn't help but become curious myself about how often do we need to poll _KEYHIT?  Phil's original routine had a limitless loop polling for key events, which is something that I personally *never* think is a good idea.  Unthrottled loops are for processing things inside a program -- not for waiting for the user to complete some interaction!  What happens if the user suddenly has someone show up at their door at the moment it enters one of these input-feedback loops?  They're not there to actually press a key, so what you're dealing with is basically nothing much more than a DO: LOOP which is going to use 100% CPU power, run your PC hot, kick the fans in, use more electricity, and do *NOTHING* beneficial for you!!

Obviously, there should be some sort of limit in how often we check the keyboard for an input event, so my mind instantly begins to ask, "How many times is enough to keep up with reading the buffer, as much as the OS writes to it?"  How often does your keyboard record a keypress, and how often does it report it to you?  Does it report those events every 1/10 second?  every 1/100th?  1/1000??

Honestly, I don't know!!

So, I wrote this little bit of code below to try and see how often my OS would report key events for me:

Trying to get my tiny brain around the _keyhit command... It seems to switch to the negative key value when the key is released, but with this simple piece, it seems to have retained its positive value. Where am I going wrong?

I updated the game tutorial to now reflect links that point to qb64phoenix.com

All links on the home page have been updated. All images, links, and directions have been updated in Task 1 to reflect using the Phoenix site and resources to install QB64 and the tutorial asset files.

I need to go through all the other tasks and update the Wiki links to point to the phoenix Wiki as well.

I'm currently looking into using something like WordPress to bring this tutorial into the modern era. I currently use Notepad and Kompozer which is a big pain in the ASCII to use when it comes to updating things. I've never been great at HTML and a WYSIWYG solution would be ideal. I've looked at WordPress and Wix. Any thoughts?

Perhaps the tutorial could somehow be incorporated into the Phoenix Wiki?

The program requires some sound files - the attached 7z file has everything.

Changes

• Added some basic gauges to show fuel and power level
  
• Simple gauge to indicate if the surface directly beneath the lander is level enough to land on safely
  

• Created but disabled gauges to show horizontal and vertical speed
  which would turn red when moving too fast to land safely,
  but it was not displaying in a useful way
  (on a scale of 1-10, only 1 or 2 is a safe speed). 
  Holding off on this 'til I find a better way to display the info 
  (Any Tableu experts out there? LoL) 
  

Attached Files

  lunar-lander-bloatware-v0-81.7z (Size: 78.65 KB / Downloads: 28)

Along with being a hobbyist programmer I've been a tabletop RPG fan for over 40 years now. this program was written as a simple utility for my own home RPG campaign. The output will be amusing and baffling if you have no idea what this is all for.   WhatI  really want to share here is how I generate the lists using data reads and tags inside the data to build the lists.   

The buildlist sub does most of the work. I keep fiddling with the data for lists like this so working up this sub to work as it does was the simplest approach for me.  I could get fancy and make it work when reading from a data file but I haven't had the need to do that yet. I had an older method that restored to specific blocks of data but tracking the locations is very cumbersome in a more dymanic program model (can't keep labels in strings all by themselves).

I use a simple trick to randomly select an entry from each list (which are each string arrays). I  record the upper bound when the list is read and shove it into element 0 for recalling later.  I could probably just do the Ubound call but I have another utility that uses similar lists where I use a more complicated dice roller algorithm that stores the dice range in that position so I'm keeping the general method consistent across programs. 

The output goes to a console window so I can copy and paste the output into another document with ease and don't have to worry about tracking data files and then just copying and pasting into my game documents  later.

I could have created a boringly generic example to share, but that's just not much fun.

This is a computer version of a very old wooden peg pyramid game. Everything is manual so please read the directions at the start page. If you have any questions, please ask. I would also like comments. I thought about making it non-manual with it detecting jumps, etc. but it would add a lot of programming time and I thought that it's good enough the way it is, just like the original. I think I saw someone make this, or something like this many months ago on the old forum, but I wanted to make my own version. I also know there's a lot of code here and better programmers could have made it a lot less, but I just kept it simple.  

I hope you have fun with it!

I had someone contact me about using the CHAIN command and not being able to get it to work for them. They sent me their source code and after a few rewrites I can't get it to work either? QB64 continuously complains that it can't find QB64.bas two parent directories below the current working directory.

This also happens regardless if I'm using two .BAS programs from within the editor or using two compiled .EXE files outside the editor as pointed out by the CHAIN Wiki entry.

Has anyone been able to successfully use the CHAIN command? If so, please post some example code so I can see what I may be doing wrong.

For now I gave the user that contacted me other ways of achieving their goal without using CHAIN. I also explained to this user that CHAIN is really no longer needed as it's a relic from the golden age of BASIC, however I would still issue a possible bug report all the same.

Terry

On this forum and some others
i see tensions to move from Windows to Linux.
I am not sure why exactly such a "hate" for Windows when i know 
that most of -them or us- ...use it before .
I like Windows and Windows is OS for me , i use Linux
just for testing purpose not on every day basis.
So now i am interested to know how many real Linux users use 
QB64 for programming .
Is number of Linux users bigger than number of Windows users here on forum?
thanks!

Is there a way to set the waveform for a sound in QB64PE?

I'd like to go about doing things in BAM, if possible, the same way as it would be done in QB64PE.

For reference, here's how I've prototyped SOUND to handle things via a third parameter:

i.e.: SOUND frequency, duration, waveform

Based on "SOUND Example 1: Playing the seven octaves based on the base note DATA * 2 ^ (octave - 1)" 

• view the source code
  
• run the program