Traditionally, programming tutorials begin with a script that displays a simple greeting.
Here is your first Axbasic script. You don't need to type anything yet - just keep reading for now.
REM A trivial Axbasic script
PRINT "Hello, world!"
END
The script contains three lines. Let's examine them one by one.
REM A trivial Axbasic script
REM is short for remark. When running the script, Axmud ignores the whole line, so you can type anything you like after the REM.
PRINT "Hello, world!"
In the early days of computing, computers did not have monitors. Output was actually printed on a roll of paper, not displayed on a screen.
In Axbasic, PRINT is an instruction to display something in Axmud's main window. It doesn't send anything to your printer.
The message must be enclosed within double quotes. If you miss out the quotes, when you try to run the script you'll see something other than what you were expecting.
END
END is, unsurprisingly, an instruction to stop running the script.
Every Axbasic script must contain exactly one END - no more, no less.
If you were to add anything after the END - another PRINT, perhaps - it wouldn't be executed. You wouldn't even see an error message.
Above we said that you didn't need to type anything. That's because Axmud comes with three Axbasic scripts, including the one we've just been discussing.
Let's run the script now. The script is called hello, so type this client command:
;runscript hello
;rs hello
The output will look like this:
AXBASIC: Executing 'hello'
Hello world!
AXBASIC: Execution of 'hello' complete
In a moment we'll modify the script to display a different message.
By the way, you can use a so-called script command to run an Axbasic script. Script commands, if they are enabled, start with an ampersand character followed by the name of the script:
&hello
The second script is called test.
REM Write your own Axbasic code here
END
Try it for yourself:
;runscript test
;rs test
The output will look like this:
AXBASIC: Executing 'test'
AXBASIC: Execution of 'test' complete
As you can see, this script literally does nothing. Execution of the script starts and then stops.
Why do you need a script that does nothing? Well, in a moment we're going to start editing the scripts ourselves.
You can use the test script to try new ideas, or to test lines of code. When you're ready to execute them, you could type this long command:
;runscript test
;rs test
But, instead, you can miss out the name of the script altogether. When you don't specify a name, Axmud executes the test script.
;runscript
;rs
The third script is called wumpus. It's a copy of the 1972 classic Hunt the Wumpus, one of the first adventure games ever written.
It’s not much fun to play, but it proves that Axmud really can run BASIC programmes written over the span of many decades.
;runscript wumpus
;rs wumpus
If you decide, after several moments of play, that Hunt the Wumpus isn't quite as much fun as Grand Theft Auto, you can halt the script by clicking the Cancel button in one of the INPUT windows that appear.
Axmud stores all of its data files in its own data directory. (MS Windows users prefer to call it a folder.)
Inside the data directory there's another directory called scripts, and this is where you can store all your Axbasic scripts.
That directory can be easy or difficult to find, depending on the system you're using. The foolproof way is to use the following client command:
;listdirectory
;ldr
The files themselves must end with the extension .bas (short for BASIC, of course). We've already mentioned that Axmud comes with three scripts; the files are called:
hello.bas
test.bas
wumpus.bas
Axmud won't interfere with any of the files in this directory, so you can add, edit and delete scripts as you please.
When you run a script with this command:
;runscript something
Axmud will look in the directory for a file called something.bas. If the file doesn't exist, the script won't run. (Later we'll discuss how to you can store scripts in different directories, if you need to.)
Of course, you're free at any time to open a file browser, navigate through several directories, find the script you want to edit and then open it in a text editor. But there's a simpler way.
Axmud comes with a task, called the Launch task, that makes things easy. Use this client command to open it:
;starttask launch
;st launch
The task opens a window which lists all of your Axbasic scripts.
You can run a script by clicking on hello.bas, then clicking the Run script button.
Axbasic scripts tend to fall into one of two types.
The first type of script is one that runs very quickly. It starts, does something, and then stops.
During this time, Axmud can't do anything else - it can't react to the commands you type, or communicate with the world - but that doesn't matter, because the script takes only a tiny fraction of a second to run.
The hello script is one such script.
The second type of script takes several minutes (or hours, or days) to run. It might even run continuously.
Axmud tasks are designed to do exactly that - run continuously without interrupting everything else. If you click the Run as task button, Axmud will create a task especially for the script you want to run.
The wumpus script is a game that takes several minutes to play, so it should definitely be run as a task. By the way, you can also run a script as a task using this client command:
;runscripttask wumpus
;rst wumpus
Let's modify the hello script to display a different message. (If you don't want to modify it, you can create a brand new script with the New script button, and modify that instead.)
In the Launch task window, click on hello.bas and then click Edit script.
Try editing the script to show a different message. For example, you might change it to:
"Hello, mother!"
You can make the script display as many messages as you want. You can also add as many comments as you want.
For example, your edited script might look something like this:
REM A trivial Axbasic script
PRINT "Hello, mother!"
PRINT "Where is my cat?"
REM I can add as many comments as I want
PRINT "Oh, never mind, I found him"
END
When you've finished editing, don't forget to save the file. (CTRL + S works in most text editors.)
As soon as you've saved the file, you can run the script. If you can get it to run without an error message, you're ready to move on to the next Section.