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Black Annex: A QBasic Game for the 21st Century (2013)

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Re: Black Annex: A QBasic Game for the 21st Century (2013)

#21

Post by jackvalentine »

notpeter wrote: post #20
pan69 wrote: post #3

How is this game distributed? If I remember correctly, QBasic was bundled with MS-DOS (from v6 onwards I believe) and wasn't able to produce EXE's. QuickBasic was a separate commercial version that was the able to produce .EXE's.

The original QuickBasic/QBasic could definitely generate standalone compiled EXEs using the Basic Compiler (BC.EXE). IIRC it wasn't included until QBasic 4.5 and was expanded further in QB7 (aka Basic Professional Development System).

12 year old me facepalms at not knowing that.

Re: Black Annex: A QBasic Game for the 21st Century (2013)

#22

Post by guidedlight »

dom0 wrote: post #14
guidedlight wrote: post #6

I just found this video of it. Incredibly impressive if that is QBasic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqlveWIhCFI#

Back in the day there were SVGA libraries (like aklib) that allowed high-resolution (like 1280x1024 modes) graphics; but even on contemporary GHz desktop processors it wasn't fast . Also sound systems using background daemons that relayed stuff to DirectSound (or FMOD, not entirely sure after all these years). This seems to be written in QB64 using SDL with OpenGL surfaces.

I think you are right.

QBasic was only capable of 320x200 with 256 colors.

Re: Black Annex: A QBasic Game for the 21st Century (2013)

#25

Post by slededit »

guidedlight wrote: post #22
dom0 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the day there were SVGA libraries (like aklib) that allowed high-resolution (like 1280x1024 modes) graphics; but even on contemporary GHz desktop processors it wasn't fast . Also sound systems using background daemons that relayed stuff to DirectSound (or FMOD, not entirely sure after all these years). This seems to be written in QB64 using SDL with OpenGL surfaces.

I think you are right. QBasic was only capable of 320x200 with 256 colors.

You could peek and poke as needed. I used to do BIOS interrupts that way.

Re: Black Annex: A QBasic Game for the 21st Century (2013)

#26

Post by copx »

notpeter wrote: post #20
pan69 wrote: post #3

How is this game distributed? If I remember correctly, QBasic was bundled with MS-DOS (from v6 onwards I believe) and wasn't able to produce EXE's. QuickBasic was a separate commercial version that was the able to produce .EXE's.

The original QuickBasic/QBasic could definitely generate standalone compiled EXEs using the Basic Compiler (BC.EXE). IIRC it wasn't included until QBasic 4.5 and was expanded further in QB7 (aka Basic Professional Development System).

No, QBASIC could not.

QBASIC was a limited, interpreter-only version of QuickBASIC which you got for free with MS-DOS.

QuickBASIC was a separate commercial product from Microsoft which did include an AOT native code compiler.

Re: Black Annex: A QBasic Game for the 21st Century (2013)

#27

Post by copx »

jacobparker wrote: post #19
googamooga wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is the code: http://www.qb64.net/forum/index.php?topic=12348.0 Though it won’t compile with ordinary QB compiler.

$ curl -s https://gist.githubusercontent.com/anonymous/8fdec5275b2c3e81e1e1/raw/blannex | wc -l 23708 Impressive. I wonder if it's edited as a single file.

In QBASIC/QuickBASIC the IDE is not file-based. By default it only shows the content of the current sub routine, as opposed to the content of a file.

If you want to look at / edit a different subroutine you open the sub routine selection dialog and select the one you want which then becomes the currently displayed one.

In the same way, if you want to add a new subroutine to the program you open the subroutine creation dialog, give it a name and then the IDE automatically makes the newly created subroutine the currently displayed one. I.e. you are only ever looking at one subroutine at a time.

Screenshot of the subroutine selection dialog: http://synapticnulship.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/q...

Sounds limiting to programmers used to modern IDEs where you usually look at multiple functions at once, but I remember it fondly. There is something to be said for completely focusing on one sub routine at a time and for the IDE presenting your program that way, while everything is actually stored in one big file.

Re: Black Annex: A QBasic Game for the 21st Century (2013)

#28

Post by joneholland »

guidedlight wrote: post #22
dom0 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the day there were SVGA libraries (like aklib) that allowed high-resolution (like 1280x1024 modes) graphics; but even on contemporary GHz desktop processors it wasn't fast . Also sound systems using background daemons that relayed stuff to DirectSound (or FMOD, not entirely sure after all these years). This seems to be written in QB64 using SDL with OpenGL surfaces.

I think you are right. QBasic was only capable of 320x200 with 256 colors.

You could link against native libraries. There were a handful of graphics libraries written in assembly that we used to do fast blitting and resolutions higher than 320x200.

Back in those days, drawing a pixel was just writing to the vga memory buffer, so it was pretty easy.

Re: Black Annex: A QBasic Game for the 21st Century (2013)

#29

Post by klangaroo »

hahah I'm the guy making this game. Funny to see it show up on Hacker News again (last time was in 2013).

Here's the latest gameplay video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkYcmipETak

And you can wishlist it on Steam at the moment: http://store.steampowered.com/app/248590/Black_Annex/

Re: Black Annex: A QBasic Game for the 21st Century (2013)

#30

Post by klangaroo »

klangaroo wrote: post #29

hahah I'm the guy making this game. Funny to see it show up on Hacker News again (last time was in 2013). Here's the latest gameplay video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkYcmipETak And you can wishlist it on Steam at the moment: http://store.steampowered.com/app/248590/Black_Annex/

I mostly post about my work on Twitter if you actually wanna keep up with my stuff :) https://twitter.com/manfightdragon
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