My Little Menu Launcher

[t0nyt]

This is the code and information on my little menu launcher (over several posts).

Basically it is a 2 level menu system and visually was designed to look a bit like the PSION apps

It doesn't do anything in itself other than creating a "win1_menu_tmp" basic program that does the actual work (it does shrink memory when required before exiting though)

It needs TK2/SUB/RES (the menu BASIC code uses RESET rather than RES as I use my own micro-toolkit, so needs amending to RES)

Top level menu:

Lower level menu:

Warning that memory being shrunk and QL will reset

Game loaded (after just pressing F1/F2)

[t0nyt]

To launch automatically (especially after memory shrink) the end of my BOOT file is

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9100 IF FREE_MEM<500000 THEN 
9110 LRUN win1_menu_tmp
9120 ELSE 
9130 LRUN win1_menu
9140 END IF 

The standalone win1_menu launcher is

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100 PRINT #0,"Loading Menu..."
110 DELETE win1_menu_tmp
120 EXEC_W win1_boots_menu_menu_obj
130 LRUN win1_menu_tmp

win1_boots_menu_menu_obj is the "Liberated" version of the menu (for speed)

The win1_menu_tmp is the file created by the menu system (when nothing selected in menu the file is just a REMark)

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REMark Menu Temp
SUB_DRV WIN2
SUB_USE 1,games_VROOM
SUB_USE FLP
LRUN FLP1_boot

[t0nyt]

In the code line 7020 opens the "win1_menu_tmp" file, so this may need changing

Line 5050 uses "RESET", needs changing to "RES" or your preferred memory shrinking utility

From 8000 onwards are the data statements that make up the menu

8000 DATA "","Games->","","Games Menu","","",0,0

A null string at the start means it's a top-level item (can be menu or program), "Games->" is the item name, "Games Menu" is the description. The "->" is irrelevant, it's just my choice for denoting a menu item vs a program at the top-level

8020 DATA "Development->","Assembler","win1_utility_asm","Editor / Assembler / Monitor","","",0,0

This is a 2nd level item so first item is the top-level menu name (case-sensitive) and in this case as it ends "","",0 it means "win1_utility_asm" is just LRUN with no use of SUB

8040 DATA "Development->","QLiberator","TOOLS_QLIB","BASIC Compiler","WIN1","FLP",1,0

This is a 2nd level item again. In this case it maps folder "TOOLS_QLIB" on WIN1 as FLP1_ (the text file will "lrun flp1_boot") if the "1" was "2" it would map WIN1_TOOLS_QLIB to FLP1_ and WIN1_TOOLS_QLIBb to FLP2_ etc.

9270 DATA "Games->","Vroom","games_VROOM","from Boxset 4","WIN2","FLP",1,512

This is an example that will map WIN2_GAMES_VROOM_ to FLP1_ and lrun FLP1_ boot, but before that will RES the memory to 512k

When I need to EXEC something, instead of LRUN, I just create a basic program file somewhere that does the necessary and the menu item LRUN's that

[t0nyt]

And this is the current menu code

It's got a bit messy over time (but at least it doesn't have any GOTO/GOSUB)

The attached disk image contains the source (so arrow symbols aren't corrupted)

[t0nyt]

I've found the first program that won't run from the menu - Steve Davis Snooker

Because of it's fixed location in memory I can't see anyway around it with QIMSI installed

Am going to play with having code to mount an image on vmap/vdrive, though QIMSI (or at least the SD) would have to be removed before pressing F1/F2 after memory is reset

[Derek_Stewart]

Hi,

Can you not make a image file and use MDI to load from QIMSI.

If the game is too large for a MDV image, then use FDI.

[t0nyt]

Hi,

Can you not make a image file and use MDI to load from QIMSI.

If the game is too large for a MDV image, then use FDI.

Hi Derek,

The program loads into 5 fixed areas of memory (and doesn't seem to like more than 512kb of memory in the QL so I have to shrink memory) but those memory areas aren't available with QIMSI plugged in, so don't see how I can do anything that involves QIMSI?

I've tried moving it all up the memory area but that just crashes so am wondering if it's non-relocatable code

Many thanks

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100 a=RESPR(76*1024): b=184320
110 a=RESPR(512): IF a>=b THEN GO TO 110
120 a=196608: c=204800: d=245760: e=212992
130 MODE 8: PAPER 0: CLS: CLS #0
140 LBYTES mdv1_p1,131072
150 LBYTES mdv1_p2,b
160 LBYTES mdv1_p3,a
170 LBYTES mdv1_p4,c
180 LBYTES mdv1_p5,e
190 LBYTES mdv1_p6,d
200 CALL d

[t0nyt]

I tried using just a single 3mb WIN file, but that still only leaves 64kb of free RAM

[t0nyt]

Although it has no effect regarding SD Snooker I've added the following to the start of my BOOT file to maximise available available memory in 128k mode (nothing extra get's loaded other than SUB, which could also be skipped if the program didn't need re-mapping of course, so no TK2 etc.)

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100 IF INT( (PEEK_L(163856)-PEEK_L(163852)-1024)/1024)<128 THEN 
105 t=RESPR(14000)
110 s=RESPR(2372)
120 LBYTES win1_boots_sub_rext,s
130 CALL s
140 LRUN win1_menu_tmp
150 END IF