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Elite on the BBC Micro and NES

Dashboard: PZW

[BBC Micro cassette version]

Name: PZW [Show more] Type: Subroutine Category: Dashboard Summary: Fetch the current dashboard colours, to support flashing
Context: See this subroutine in context in the source code Variations: See code variations for this subroutine in the different versions References: This subroutine is called as follows: * DIALS (Part 1 of 4) calls PZW * DIALS (Part 3 of 4) calls PZW * DIALS (Part 4 of 4) calls PZW

Set A and X to the colours we should use for indicators showing dangerous and safe values respectively. This enables us to implement flashing indicators, which is one of the game's configurable options. If flashing is enabled, the colour returned in A (dangerous values) will be red for 8 iterations of the main loop, and yellow/white for the next 8, before going back to red. If we always use PZW to decide which colours we should use when updating indicators, flashing colours will be automatically taken care of for us. The values returned are &F0 for yellow/white and &0F for red. These are mode 5 bytes that contain 4 pixels, with the colour of each pixel given in two bits, the high bit from the first nibble (bits 4-7) and the low bit from the second nibble (bits 0-3). So in &F0 each pixel is %10, or colour 2 (yellow or white, depending on the dashboard palette), while in &0F each pixel is %01, or colour 1 (red).
Returns: A The colour to use for indicators with dangerous values X The colour to use for indicators with safe values
.PZW LDX #&F0 \ Set X to dashboard colour 2 (yellow/white) LDA MCNT \ A will be non-zero for 8 out of every 16 main loop AND #%00001000 \ counts, when bit 4 is set, so this is what we use to \ flash the "danger" colour AND FLH \ A will be zeroed if flashing colours are disabled BEQ P%+4 \ If A is zero, skip to the LDA instruction below TXA \ Otherwise flashing colours are enabled and it's the \ main loop iteration where we flash them, so set A to \ colour 2 (yellow/white) and use the BIT trick below to \ return from the subroutine EQUB &2C \ Skip the next instruction by turning it into \ &2C &A9 &0F, or BIT &0FA9, which does nothing apart \ from affect the flags LDA #&0F \ Set A to dashboard colour 1 (red) RTS \ Return from the subroutine