Small Basic AI Championship

[litdev]

AB,

I always advocate the game loop, but experimentation is fun so try different things.

Reasons:

1] For complex event driven fast moving games, all the action takes place in one ordered loop - much easier to debug
2] Events can occur at any time and may also be running at the same time using the same variables - chaos
3] The main UI thread may not be updated while running in an event thread
4] If events keep coming faster than they take to complete they can stack up

Compare these 2 programs

Code:

ball = Shapes.AddEllipse(20,20)
GraphicsWindow.MouseMove = OnMouseMove

Sub OnMouseMove
  x = GraphicsWindow.MouseX
  y = GraphicsWindow.MouseY
  Shapes.Animate(ball,x-10,y-10,100)
  Program.Delay(100)
EndSub

Code:

ball = Shapes.AddEllipse(20,20)
GraphicsWindow.MouseMove = OnMouseMove

While("True")
  If (mouseMove) Then
    x = GraphicsWindow.MouseX
    y = GraphicsWindow.MouseY
    Shapes.Animate(ball,x-10,y-10,100)
    Program.Delay(100)
    mouseMove = ""
  EndIf
EndWhile

Sub OnMouseMove
  mouseMove = "True"
EndSub

When there are multiple events, potentially firing at the same time using the same variables it can get complicated, so I think the game loop makes things simpler, even though for a very small program it looks like added complexity.  There are cases where it doesn't really matter - like button presses.

Main thing is try it out whatever way you like and be prepared to change - I tend to write little prototypes to test ideas out.