I’ve been struggling with Codea now for close to 6 months (I think) and I have read all the guides recommended on here and even bought a book on Programming and Lua (which was pretty worthless)
Anyway to cut a long story short I’ve decided that codea is either a: not suited to my needs or b: I am too retarded to learn it (yes, I’ve tried and tried and tried)
So… I’ve decided to buy an ipad basic app (like the old basic languages) but there seems to be a lot of them and I’m wondering if anyone here can recommend which app is the best to buy?
If you think another iOS language would suit me better then please suggest it. I’m looking to make games with text input from the user and nothing that auto updates 60 times a second, I really hate that about codea, it makes everything so flipping confusing to understand. Ideally I’d like something like basic where if I put text or a sprite on screen, it stays there until I move it and doesn’t redraw it all the time and make things so hard and confusing.
I’m not knocking codea, I’m sure for most people it’s the perfect coding app, but not me that’s all. I have tried and tried my best for months. I admit defeat
@Paul123 Well at least you’re honest and you tried. If you really want to learn a programming language for iOS then look for IDEs on google such as procoding for js. If you want help ask anyone here I’m sure they will be willing to help you no matter what the question, but if you’re getting rid of codea then fair well to you!
That’s ok, it’s not for everyone, and given your determination, I’m sure you’ll find a language that suits you much better.
I know you want to make games, but there is an alternative, too. If you work in business, you know that Excel is what everyone uses, and if you are good at it, it helps you get the pick of interesting new work. Not only do very few people bother to master Excel, but only a handful try to learn VBA, the scripting language behind excel. It is a fairly primitive form of basic because Microsoft hasn’t improved it since about 1995, but it is used widely in business and is extremely useful.
I know all this because for the past 25 years, I have been an excel/VBA specialist, and having those skills made my job infinitely more interesting and they were valued highly by my employers. If you’re interested, I can suggest how to get started and what to aim for.
@paul123 there is also Basic! Wich is simpler and cheaper that techBadic. It is has display capability as you want. For instance, here is an included program to move a sprite around
LOADSPRITE 1, "Test Sprite"
GirlX = ScreenWidth/2
GirlY = ScreenHeight/2
GirlW = SpriteWidth( 1 )
GirlH = SpriteHeight( 1 )
Scale = 2
ScaleMin = 0.5
ScaleMax = 5
Scaling = 0
CanDrag = 1
loop:
BEGINDRAW
CLS
COLOR 255, 255, 255
TEXTFONT 12
DRAWTEXT "Tap and Drag me", 16, 30
DRAWTEXT "Use two finger 'pinch' and 'expand' gestures to Scale", 16, 45
' Move sprite with one finger:
IF Touch = 1 AND CanDrag THEN
GirlX = TouchX - ( GirlW/2 * Scale )
GirlY = TouchY - ( GirlH/2 * Scale )
ENDIF
ENDIF
' Scale sprite with two fingers "pinch" or "expand" gesture:
IF Touch = 2 THEN
IF Scaling = 0 THEN
Scaling = 1
ScaleY1 = TouchY1
ScaleY2 = TouchY2
Scale0 = Scale
CanDrag = 0
ENDIF
dy1 = ScaleY2 - ScaleY1
dy2 = TouchY2 - TouchY1
d = dy2 / dy1
Scale = Scale0 * d
IF Scale > ScaleMax THEN
Scale = ScaleMax
ENDIF
IF Scale < ScaleMin THEN
Scale = ScaleMin
ENDIF
ENDIF
IF Scaling AND Touch < 2 THEN
Scaling = 0
ENDIF
IF Touch = 0 THEN
CanDrag = 1
ENDIF
' Draw sprite at current location:
DRAWSPRITE 1, GirlX, GirlY, Scale
ENDDRAW
GOTO loop
I dont use it because i love codea and lua, but otherwise i would.
@Paul123 techBASIC is wicked cool, but I do not believe it has any sound options, not even a beep.
I looked at Basic!, as @Jmv38 mentioned, and it looks simple and complete, like the old 8-bit BASICs we all know and love. Oh, and it apparently has facial recognition. How cool is that?
TechBasic - it’s good, and has some nice simple shortcuts for graphing things, but it’s a bit too focused on what it wants to do rather than being general purpose.
Basic! - good and easy, not sure about apis for sound etc, but I found it OK
Mobile BASIC - before I found Codea this was the best. It’s got APIs for just about everything and runs MUCH faster than either TechBasic or Basic!
Even though you find the Codea 60 fps thing confusing, the big issue with any of these basics is performance, and especially if you get into doing anything graphical, then I found Basic! and TechBasic are just far too slow.
Been looking at some, was going to get tech basic after it was recommended but looking at it, it seems more for an engineer than my simple needs. I’ll look at mobile basic, thanks!
