BASIC Computer Games • Hacker News Board

Re: BASIC Computer Games

#121

Post by drallison » Wed, Apr 10, 2019, 8:55 PM UTC

0815test wrote: post #75

jerf wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the Commodore 64, it was the only option. It had minimal support for a thing it called a "subroutine", but what it really was was a GOTO that pushed the source on to the stack and could be RETURN'd to that source. In particular, no concept of return value, no concept of parameters; everything's global. Modification of global values prior to the "call" is the argument passing, and modification of global values is t…

The 6502 processor itself also has very poor "stack" support, the hardware-supported stack is limited to 256 bytes at a fixed location. It's one of the things that make it hard to compile a modern language like C for the architecture, so even among compiled languages one would prefer something FORTRAN/BASIC-like.

The on-chip stack on the 6502 was not intended to be used for implementing the stack for programming language procedure calls; it was intended to provide system extension functions that provide things missing in the 6502 instruction set,(for example, multiply), which had to be implemented with multiple instructions. For "modern" languages like C, 16-bit 2's complement integer arithmetic was expected but the 6502 native instructions were for 8-bit numbers.

Re: BASIC Computer Games

#122

Post by drallison » Wed, Apr 10, 2019, 9:01 PM UTC

scottlegrand2 wrote: post #12

Also: https://archive.org/details/Whattodoafteryouhitreturn/page/n... With my personal favorite BASIC game: Star Traders

Star Traders was designed and written by Dave Kauffman who was one of the People's Computer Center staff. It was many people's favorite. Another PCC game, Hunt the Wumpus, written by Greg Yob, has been a favorite of AI researchers as well as computer game freaks.

Re: BASIC Computer Games

#123

Post by drallison » Wed, Apr 10, 2019, 9:08 PM UTC

khazhou wrote: post #57

ansible wrote: post #56

Had great times with this one and the "More Basic Computer Games" book. My favorites were the Eliza clone, and ICBM, where you are trying to intercept an incoming ICBM with a anti-ballistic missle. My first use of trig functions, which really helped solidify the concepts to me. I also converted the 2-D version to 3-D (with altitude) for even more fun. I was originally using a TRS-80 Color Computer, with a slightly di…

Raise your hands everyone who typed in Eliza clones in the mid-80s and thought you would solve general AI using BASIC in the not-too-distant future.

I was a ACM National lecturer and gave a formal version of my Computer Faire talk, EPIC COMPUTER GAMES, written with Lee Hoevel. The talk (and article) described a visit-travel-explore-discover game played in a virtual space. It suggested that the user interface could be natural language, which could be done using an Eliza-like system. Computers then were mostly textual so instead of shooting with laser guns disputes were to be resolved by solving problems or completing riddles.

Re: BASIC Computer Games

#124

Post by jefurii » Wed, Apr 10, 2019, 10:48 PM UTC

jptoto wrote: post #55

CWuestefeld wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had it too, but typed them into my Atari 800 - after which I'd save it to cassette tape.

Nice! My Commodore PET had a tape cassette drive. It was SOO unreliable.

My first computer was a TRS-80 Model I. The cassette tape storage was just Radio Shack's regular tape recorder. For some reason you had to use different volume settings for BASIC and machine language programs. The volume setting was horribly imprecise and I was always having to reload programs. The Commodore 64's tape recorder was a big upgrade.