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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

#101

Post by pjmlp »

gxd wrote: post #57
bluedino wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Back in the day, computers were expensive and games weren't readily available. You could get a PC for a thousand bucks back then, and shareware was a thing in 1990-91. Crystal Caves, Commander Keen, Duke Nukem were huge hits and there were tons of less popular games...not to mention copying commercial games from friends.

> You could get a PC for a thousand bucks back then In the United States ... In a lot of countries, computers cost a lot more than that in the local currency which, together with lower salaries, made computers inaccessible to most people. I remember seeing people playing GORILLA.BAS in computer stores...

Which is why in many countries we stayed on the Speccy and C64, until 386SX were already widespread.

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

#102

Post by vunderba »

pjmlp wrote: post #100
vunderba wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as importantly - it was an all‑in‑one. I think a lot of people tend to forget that there were already plenty of earlier BASIC dialects (GW‑BASIC, Apple II BASIC, C64 BASIC, etc). However QBASIC was likely the first freely available, all‑in‑one "batteries included" environment that came bundled with MS‑DOS 5 with a relatively friendly IDE that had built‑in help for every single command. GORILLA.BAS and NIBBLES.BA…

Only if you ignore the 8 bit home computers, we got all BASIC interpreters and machine code for free with each one. And there were "IDEs" that sometimes were offered in cover tapes, at the expense of even lesser RAM, I got one for the Spectrum. And the 8 bit computers with at least 128 KB, already could run CP/M, which opened the door for better BASICs, including compilers.

Definitely. I've used a few of them (Commodore BASIC, Applesoft BASIC) as a kid.

I could have worded that a bit better. What i meant was that as far as I'm aware, QBASIC was the first free OS-bundled fully featured BASIC IDE which even by today’s standards still kind of holds up:

• find and replace

• split panes

• an immediate mode

• debugging

• breakpoints

• built‑in help for every basic keyword and command.

• editing any lines (no need for line number at multiples of 10 to insert and modify at a later time)

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

#103

Post by pjmlp »

throwaway81523 wrote: post #63
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.

BASIC was the whole OS in 8 bit home computers.

Other than that, either you would have machine code via DATA statement, be lucky that there was support for entering Assembly like on the BBC, or have the opportunity to actually get a proper assembler.

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

#104

Post by jamwil »

hahahaa wrote: post #62
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.

¡Viva Donkey!

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

#107

Post by scoot »

_jackdk_ wrote: post #87
codebje wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You used to be able to do surprising things with those old speakers using a timer interrupt: on an IBM XT it was possible to get 8kHz quality out of it, enough to make 4-channel MOD playback sound about as good as hearing it over a phone. But your more typical use case was to play a single tone for some significant fraction of a second.

The 8088 MPH demo, for example, pushed the PC Speaker pretty far: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHXx3orN35Y

Using a sound card (read the comments)

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

#108

Post by shakow »

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…

How comes the modem panel is not “shader-ized” (scanlines + distortion)?
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