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Donkey.bas is 45 Years Old – 131 line of Glory

donkeybas.com

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Re: Donkey.bas is 45 Years Old – 131 line of Glory

#61

Post by tomcam »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #24
gxd wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those who don't know why GORILLA.BAS is so cool... Back in the day, computers were expensive and games weren't readily available. Sometimes a parent would buy a computer for word processing or spreadsheets or take kids to the office which also had business computers. Children were curious about the computers but there wasn't really anything fun to do with them besides banging on the keyboard... ...Until you found…

It was also a very educational experience to start messing with the code until you broke it - forcing you to figure out how to fix it, to get your game back.

At my age, getting my game back sounds fabulous

Re: Donkey.bas is 45 Years Old – 131 line of Glory

#62

Post by hahahaa »

marcuskaz wrote: post #58

The game theory is all wrong, this is a cooperative game, either they both win or both lose. I don't see how the Donkey getting hit by a car should be classified as "Donkey wins"

Donkey is also a collective noun for the donkeys and so the army that is the donkey wins.

Re: Donkey.bas is 45 Years Old – 131 line of Glory

#63

Post by throwaway81523 »

wk_end wrote: post #10

It says something about what a thoughtful development environment these early BASICs were, that you could make a full simple little game like this in only 131 lines even though they're ostensibly far less powerful than modern languages. I'm not sure if you could even get an SDL window open and game loop running in 131 lines of (non-golfed) C. Never mind how compact, beginner-friendly, and just plain fun they were to…

BASIC was higher level (or anyway, more batteries-included) than C. You could probably do this game in 131 lines of javascript straightforwardly.

Re: Donkey.bas is 45 Years Old – 131 line of Glory

#64

Post by eastbound »

tomcam wrote: post #61
pavel_lishin wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was also a very educational experience to start messing with the code until you broke it - forcing you to figure out how to fix it, to get your game back.

At my age, getting my game back sounds fabulous

Yes, when did we start messing with the code? We need to fix it?

Re: Donkey.bas is 45 Years Old – 131 line of Glory

#66

Post by NuclearPM »

vunderba wrote: post #7

Nice job. The sound effects are a bit too advanced because early IBM computers shipped with pretty simple, magnetically driven dynamic speakers. On a related note, I’ve actually spent the last four months working on a 100% faithful adaptation of both QBasic and QuickBasic 4.5 that runs entirely in the browser on a virtual CPU and hardware abstraction layer. It’s a love letter to everyone who learned to program on Mic…

Do non-magnetically driven speakers exist?

Re: Donkey.bas is 45 Years Old – 131 line of Glory

#67

Post by plasticchris »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #24
gxd wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those who don't know why GORILLA.BAS is so cool... Back in the day, computers were expensive and games weren't readily available. Sometimes a parent would buy a computer for word processing or spreadsheets or take kids to the office which also had business computers. Children were curious about the computers but there wasn't really anything fun to do with them besides banging on the keyboard... ...Until you found…

It was also a very educational experience to start messing with the code until you broke it - forcing you to figure out how to fix it, to get your game back.

My earliest coding memory is messing with the gorilla code to get an advantage playing this against my brother…

Re: Donkey.bas is 45 Years Old – 131 line of Glory

#68

Post by racingmars »

NuclearPM wrote: post #66
vunderba wrote: post #7

Nice job. The sound effects are a bit too advanced because early IBM computers shipped with pretty simple, magnetically driven dynamic speakers. On a related note, I’ve actually spent the last four months working on a 100% faithful adaptation of both QBasic and QuickBasic 4.5 that runs entirely in the browser on a virtual CPU and hardware abstraction layer. It’s a love letter to everyone who learned to program on Mic…

Do non-magnetically driven speakers exist?

Yes, electrostatic speakers are a good example. Also a lot of PC motherboards I've had over the years have had the little piezoelectric speaker. And while still magnetic, there are planar magnetic speakers which are much more like electrostatic speakers (just using a magnetic field instead of electric field) than the typical moving coil / dynamic speaker drivers that you think of.

Re: Donkey.bas is 45 Years Old – 131 line of Glory

#69

Post by rzzzt »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #22
nfriend wrote: post #12

Brings back memories of GORILLA.BAS! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorillas_(video_game)

I was more of a Nibbles[0] person. I played it with other people on my XT-class laptop in high school. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibbles_(video_game)

My favorite is MONEY.BAS

Re: Donkey.bas is 45 Years Old – 131 line of Glory

#70

Post by alana314 »

vunderba wrote: post #7

Nice job. The sound effects are a bit too advanced because early IBM computers shipped with pretty simple, magnetically driven dynamic speakers. On a related note, I’ve actually spent the last four months working on a 100% faithful adaptation of both QBasic and QuickBasic 4.5 that runs entirely in the browser on a virtual CPU and hardware abstraction layer. It’s a love letter to everyone who learned to program on Mic…

Nibbles!
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