TILE w,h TO x2,y2
TILE w,h AT x,y TO x2,y2

The above draw a section of screen from a tilemap. Number of tiles to draw is width w, height h. The AT draws from tile offset x,y in the tilemap (or 0,0 if not specified as in the previous example), and the TO draws to the tile offset x2,y2 on the screen (or 0,0 if not specified).

Accessing non-supported graphics modes

We spoke previously about how NextBASIC does not support the higher resolutions provided by Layer 2 and the Next hardware. That's not entirely accurate however as there are ways through the power of Next Registers (See Chapter 22) and BANK POKE (See Chapter 23) to do it regardless. There are a few unknown commands in the following short program which you will soon encounter, however the point of the exercise is to show what is possible. For now type it and run it and we'll revisit it in Chapter 23:

 10 RUN AT 3
 20 REG 112, @10000:REM L2
    SELECT 320x200
 30 REG 24,0:REG 24,159: REG
    24, 0: REG 24,255: REM
    setup clipping window
 40 REG 105,128:REM SHOW L2
 50 FOR %f=0 to 16383
 60 BANK 9 POKE %f, %RND(255)
 70 BANK 10 POKE %f, 30
 80 BANK 11 POKE %f, %RND
    (230)
 90 BANK 12 POKE %f, 60
100 BANK 13 POKE %f, %RND
    (128)
110 NEXT %f
120 PAUSE 0

Exercises

1. Play about with PAPER, INK, FLASH and BRIGHT items in a PLOT statement. These are the parts that affect the whole of the character position containing the pixel. Normally it is as though the PLOT tatement had started off:

   PLOT PAPER 8; FLASH 8; BRIGHT 8;
   

   and only the ink colour of a character position is altered when something is plotted there, but you can change this if you want. Be especially careful when using colours with INVERSE 1, because this sets the pixel to show the paper colour, but changes the ink colour and this might not be what you expect.

2. Try:

   CIRCLE 100,87,80: DRAW 50,50
   

   You can see from this that the CIRCLE statement leaves the PLOT position at a rather indeterminate place – it is always somewhere about halfway up the right hand side of the circle. You will usually need to follow the CIRCLE statement with a PLOT statement before you do any more drawing.