The received wisdom of the ancients — the M100SIG of Compuserve — is that integers are much faster than the default type on the Model 100. See the Treatise on Elegant BASIC by Richard Horowitz: https://github.com/LivingM100SIG/Living_M100SIG/blob/main/M100SIG/Lib-08-TECH-PROGRAMMING/ELEGNT.BAS
As for Pac-Man chomping slower when eating dots, YES! It is critical for game strategy when a ghost is chasing you. A slight slowdown when gobbling would be a professional touch. Unfortunately, it doesn't work in this 1-D version as the ghost is faster than you even when you aren't eating dots. By the way, excellent work, David. PAC.200 is surprisingly fun! —b9 On Wed, Jan 28, 2026 at 9:09 PM Joshua O'Keefe <[email protected]> wrote: > On Jan 28, 2026, at 7:17 PM, David Plass <[email protected]> wrote: > > Pac moving slower when chomping isn't a feature...I'll have to take a > look... > > > Now, I don't want to be telling you what your design goal is, but as far > as I remember even in 1984 Pac was slower when he ate a dot. It was a > reason to book it in the other direction if the maze was clear instead of > making a turn. This wasn't present in some of the ports (like Atari 2600 > where the sprite moves at a constant rate across the blocks) but was in > others. Paku Paku plays more like, and looks more like, 2600 Pac, so if > you're specifying with that in mind the slowdown is something to look at > for sure. > > And ints are supposed to be 30-50% faster than floats in Tandy basic. > > > Now I have to try to remember where it's the other way around, because > *something* I own does ints slower than default floats and now I have no > idea what it is.... >
