Prog8 language and compiler topic

borgar · Post by **borgar** » Mon Jun 20, 2022 1:14 pm

On 6/15/2022 at 10:57 PM, desertfish said:

- greatly improved code gen for logical expressions and array / pointer indexing.

I didn't get around to checking out the new compiler before now but there is a marked improvement in Petaxian when all enemies are on screen and moving with the latest update.

I definitly use a lot of logical expresion and tons of array indexing so assume the above update is why ?

Very very nice.

desertfish · Post by **desertfish** » Mon Jun 20, 2022 5:09 pm

Yeah! I noticed this as well (I am using Petaxian as a test bench for compiler changes). The prg shrunk by a couple hundred bytes too.

I do think I'm at the limits of what I can reasonably improve in the current codegen. For the future I want to write a new one based on the 'vm' intermediate code but that will be a big undertaking. I do think that may eventually be a) way better to maintain and better structured and b) generating better code.

desertfish · Post by **desertfish** » Tue Jun 28, 2022 3:43 pm

@borgar with the recent improvements made, is the game still too slow on the C64?

borgar · Post by **borgar** » Tue Jun 28, 2022 6:19 pm

On 6/28/2022 at 5:43 PM, desertfish said:

@borgar with the recent improvements made, is the game still too slow on the C64?

No, I'm not experiencing noticable slowdown on C64. The last update really helped a lot here.

I've just commited some updates with a couple of more enemies, more stages and a new bomb types now so the games should hopefully be more challenging as well. I got some comments that it was a bit easy ? At least I have not been able to complete the game myself yet after the update.

desertfish · Post by **desertfish** » Tue Jun 28, 2022 7:11 pm

I was asking because the readme still contains the note about the speed on C64.

borgar · Post by **borgar** » Wed Jun 29, 2022 7:14 am

On 6/28/2022 at 9:11 PM, desertfish said:

I was asking because the readme still contains the note about the speed on C64.

Ah, yes. The description hasn't been updated for a while. I took this as a gentle reminder and have done so now. The text should better reflects the current state of the project.

I'll update the game in the CX16 pages when it can work with the latest emulator.

desertfish · Post by **desertfish** » Tue Jul 12, 2022 5:19 pm

Prog8 version 8.3 has been released. It introduces the new 'bool' datatype, a psg library to play with Vera's psg sound generator, and several other new features that you can read about in the release notes:

https://github.com/irmen/prog8/releases/tag/v8.3

desertfish · Post by **desertfish** » Sat Aug 13, 2022 10:51 am

Version 8.4 has been released,

<https://github.com/irmen/prog8/releases/tag/v8.4>

desertfish · Post by **desertfish** » Thu Sep 22, 2022 2:15 pm

Version 8.5 has been released.

https://github.com/irmen/prog8/releases/tag/v8.5

arkorott · Post by **arkorott** » Sat Oct 08, 2022 3:33 am

Hello just trying out Prog8. Installed everything and compiled the hello world example with no issues.

I load the HELLO.PRG in the emulator and when I list it everything seems fine, but when I run it the screen flashes and the emulator seems to reset itself.

Might I be doing something wrong?

Compiling with: java -jar ~/Documents/workspace/prog8/prog8compiler-8.6.2-all.jar -target cx16 -emu hello.p8

Compiles with no issues. Using R41 emulator.

BTW, thank you for doing this and the great effort you have put behind it!

I just went through all the comments here. Impressive work.

Been using so far cc65 with C and mostly asm. Intrigued to try Prog8 and benchmark my prime number finder using trial division comparing cc65 vs Prog8 performance.