Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

gamasutra.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 40 posts

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

#31

Post by orthecreedence »

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/

Holy shit, that's really impressive for QBasic. That was my first language, and I remember drawing/moving basic shapes around the screen. My magnum opus was a ray-tracing demo.

Well done! I'll add to my Steam list =]

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

#32

Post by pan69 »

copx wrote: post #26
notpeter wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I thought so as well, so I decided to Google it:

    QBasic was intended as a replacement for GW-BASIC. It was based on the earlier QuickBASIC 4.5 compiler but without QuickBASIC's compiler and linker elements.
So, from this, QBasic was not able to generate .EXE's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QBasic

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

#33

Post by Narishma »

jackvalentine wrote: post #21
notpeter wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No need. That person was wrong. QBasic didn't include a compiler.

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

#34

Post by mega-tux »

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.

there were several libs, mostly shareware, that extended the list of supported resolutions with VESA & VGA-modeX ones. I used it a lot of times. Nice days.

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

#35

Post by jlebrech »

wybiral wrote: post #18
zem wrote: post #11

i taught myself c by prototyping programs in qbasic and then converting them to c. nice language, and for their time, the integrated help files were some of the best i've seen.

Bingo. My computer as a kid wasn't even connected to the internet so those help files are the only way I would have learned. That, and breaking the few programs that were included with it.

seems like a great way to teach programming to kids, put on a raspberry pi with a few games and programs already make for it.

maybe a modern way to do somethign like this would be pico-8 https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php

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

#36

Post by scrumper »

khedoros1 wrote: post #15
scrumper wrote: post #4

The screenshot is telling: "Framerate: 4" Pretty mighty achievement though: no engine, no frameworks, no graphics SDK, a quirky language...

- Most 2D games I've played use their own engine. - Why would a framework be necessary? - QB64 provides a graphics API, a wrapper around SDL and OpenGL. - QBasic isn't that quirky, and QB64 looks like it pretty massively expanded the language. QBasic itself allowed for struct types, a limited dynamic memory allocation, and the standard flow control structures. The author apparently modified QB64's use of SDL/OpenGL t…

I don't play as much as I used to, but these days most 2D things I come across are based on Unity.

Was not aware of the extensions made in QB64 over QBasic (though I knew the author had extended QB64) - thanks for pointing that out.

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

#38

Post by khedoros1 »

scrumper wrote: post #36
khedoros1 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Most 2D games I've played use their own engine. - Why would a framework be necessary? - QB64 provides a graphics API, a wrapper around SDL and OpenGL. - QBasic isn't that quirky, and QB64 looks like it pretty massively expanded the language. QBasic itself allowed for struct types, a limited dynamic memory allocation, and the standard flow control structures. The author apparently modified QB64's use of SDL/OpenGL t…

I don't play as much as I used to, but these days most 2D things I come across are based on Unity. Was not aware of the extensions made in QB64 over QBasic (though I knew the author had extended QB64) - thanks for pointing that out.

It seems like Unity really blew up around 2013. The first references that I can find to this game are from April 2013, so he'd likely been working on the engine for a long while before that.

And most of what I've played reach back before then too ;-) My point was that Unity's probably been used for "just" a few hundred games, mostly in the past 4 years.

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

#39

Post by scrumper »

khedoros1 wrote: post #38
scrumper wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't play as much as I used to, but these days most 2D things I come across are based on Unity. Was not aware of the extensions made in QB64 over QBasic (though I knew the author had extended QB64) - thanks for pointing that out.

It seems like Unity really blew up around 2013. The first references that I can find to this game are from April 2013, so he'd likely been working on the engine for a long while before that. And most of what I've played reach back before then too ;-) My point was that Unity's probably been used for "just" a few hundred games, mostly in the past 4 years.

And also I don't think he'd have chosen Unity either; he talks a lot in the post (or the forum, I forget which) about being very comfortable with QBasic and choosing it for his familiarity with the language.

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

#40

Post by jacobparker »

copx wrote: post #27
jacobparker wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$ 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 creatio…

Wow, I don't remember that part at all (I was really young when I used it.) Thanks.
Post reply on HN