The best QBasic game ever? • Hacker News Board

Re: The best QBasic game ever?

#61

Post by pointyhatuk » Wed, Apr 17, 2013, 6:48 AM UTC

kevingadd wrote: post #56

manfightdragon wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, guys! I'm the guy making this game! :D Yeah, I compile it in QB64 and use the SDL hooks in it to actually make it run on windows/mac/linux. But yeah, QBASIC has all those things you mentioned already. Also, yeah, I use the big ugly eye-burning white-on-blue screen. You can see a photo of the development box here: https://twitter.com/manfightdragon/status/319786194395357185

I'm a little offended that you call this building a game in QBASIC when it clearly would not actually run in QBASIC. I built games in QBASIC growing up, and definitely didn't have access to the stuff you have in QB64. I was excited to hear about someone building such an impressive game using that toolchain, so it's a letdown to find out that it was a lie. It's cool that you put constraints on yourself by using the BA…

Visual Basic is derived from the same roots. I think the use is acceptable.

For reference, I started on PDS (QBASIC 7) and used VB for DOS for a number of years. Awesome products. My father built a piece of software on PDS 7 which basically ran most of London's bus and payroll system. It had networking and everything.

Re: The best QBasic game ever?

#62

Post by precisioncoder » Wed, Apr 17, 2013, 6:55 AM UTC

This was the first programming language I was taught. I got super excited with it, by the second class I already had a working etch-a-sketch. By the third I was writing a roguelike based on Moria. At the point my teacher told me to do my own thing and went back to trying to get the other less enthusiastic students to learn. I had a blast that semester, loved that class.

Re: The best QBasic game ever?

#63

Post by tdicola » Wed, Apr 17, 2013, 7:04 AM UTC

kevingadd wrote: post #56

manfightdragon wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, guys! I'm the guy making this game! :D Yeah, I compile it in QB64 and use the SDL hooks in it to actually make it run on windows/mac/linux. But yeah, QBASIC has all those things you mentioned already. Also, yeah, I use the big ugly eye-burning white-on-blue screen. You can see a photo of the development box here: https://twitter.com/manfightdragon/status/319786194395357185

I'm a little offended that you call this building a game in QBASIC when it clearly would not actually run in QBASIC. I built games in QBASIC growing up, and definitely didn't have access to the stuff you have in QB64. I was excited to hear about someone building such an impressive game using that toolchain, so it's a letdown to find out that it was a lie. It's cool that you put constraints on yourself by using the BA…

I think you're being a little harsh on him--regardless of what language this game was written in it looks great. This is obviously a labor of love and not something made to get press attention. If someone wanted to get a story written about them in PC World I would venture there are much easier ways to do it than spend a year slaving away at writing a modern game in basic.

Re: The best QBasic game ever?

#64

Post by DanBC » Wed, Apr 17, 2013, 7:58 AM UTC

dpcan wrote: post #32

Scaevolus wrote: post #5

It's written in QB64, a slightly more modern variant of QBasic. http://www.qb64.net/

Yes, thank you. He is NOT using QBasic, it's QB64. He gets instant access to some pretty sweet functionality that was never in QBasic. Transparent PNG support, resolutions with more than 16 colors above 320x200, double buffering, TCP/IP, and the list goes on. Regardless, this guy is getting some awesome press with the QBasic thing. If you want to make money with games, it's all about the marketing. I'll give him a li…

> used that tiny dos-box blue editor that comes with QB64 to code the entire game tho :)

And had a screen at an EGA text resolution of 80 x 25 chars with each character being in a box of 9x14 pixels. (With pixels means 'dots on the screen'.)

And saved the result on 5 1⁄4-inch or 3 1⁄2-inch discs.

And fiddled about with FOSSIL drivers and kermit or Xmodem or Ymodem and ProcommPlus to upload the game to a BBS. At 9600 baud.

(I'm not taking anything away from the game! )

Re: The best QBasic game ever?

#65

Post by DanBC » Wed, Apr 17, 2013, 8:03 AM UTC

The game author can't really be blamed for the awful article.

Putting a screenshot of the game above a video of Gorillas, and then claiming they're both written in the same language, is misleading.

Re: The best QBasic game ever?

#66

Post by manfightdragon » Wed, Apr 17, 2013, 8:16 AM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #65

The game author can't really be blamed for the awful article. Putting a screenshot of the game above a video of Gorillas, and then claiming they're both written in the same language, is misleading.

Yeah, I was really shocked by that angle when I saw it in the article. It's pretty bad.

Re: The best QBasic game ever?

#67

Post by stuaxo » Wed, Apr 17, 2013, 8:24 AM UTC

songgao wrote: post #19

When I was a child, nibbles was my favorite: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZF6tnrfAX0

Somewhere in the depths I've got a version of this I customised ... up to 4 players, powerups, cheats and about 20 levels..

[and probably loads of bugs]

Re: The best QBasic game ever?

#68

Post by laumars » Wed, Apr 17, 2013, 8:39 AM UTC

tdicola wrote: post #63

kevingadd wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a little offended that you call this building a game in QBASIC when it clearly would not actually run in QBASIC. I built games in QBASIC growing up, and definitely didn't have access to the stuff you have in QB64. I was excited to hear about someone building such an impressive game using that toolchain, so it's a letdown to find out that it was a lie. It's cool that you put constraints on yourself by using the BA…

I think you're being a little harsh on him--regardless of what language this game was written in it looks great. This is obviously a labor of love and not something made to get press attention. If someone wanted to get a story written about them in PC World I would venture there are much easier ways to do it than spend a year slaving away at writing a modern game in basic.

I think he's being quite fair as he's acknowledged the hard work behind this game (any modern game written in any language is impressive work), he's just saying that this project is getting a lot of media attention because it's advertised as using certain tools which it actually isn't.

If I'm honest, I feel the same way as the aforementioned poster. Writing any modern game in QBasic is akin to A-Team style engineering (building a rocket launcher out of an old shoe and some duct-tape). QB64, however, is basically just like any other modern scripting language. The former would require massive hacking and "outside the box" thinking to build even the basics of the game engine; where as the latter is just Python written in the syntax of BASIC.

That all said, I can't blame him for misleading people a little (whether that's intentional or just dumb journalists not understanding the distinction between QBasic and QB64) as making a project visible can be as hard as the actual development process. So at least he's hard work will see some reward. Plus he's offered to release the source because of public interest - which is quite honorable.

Re: The best QBasic game ever?

#69

Post by laumars » Wed, Apr 17, 2013, 8:45 AM UTC

manfightdragon wrote: post #58

kevingadd wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a little offended that you call this building a game in QBASIC when it clearly would not actually run in QBASIC. I built games in QBASIC growing up, and definitely didn't have access to the stuff you have in QB64. I was excited to hear about someone building such an impressive game using that toolchain, so it's a letdown to find out that it was a lie. It's cool that you put constraints on yourself by using the BA…

Yeah, the game's written in the QBASIC language but I certainly don't use QuickBASIC 4.5 or PDS to compile it.

Sorry to nitpick, but "QBasic" is an IDE (Just like QuickBASIC, which incidentally is the predecessor of QBasic). The language is just called "BASIC".

Also you're not compiling anything. It's all interpreted at run time (which is why performance is dog slow).

Re: The best QBasic game ever?

#70

Post by laumars » Wed, Apr 17, 2013, 8:55 AM UTC

benatkin wrote: post #59

laumars wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back then Microsoft was working for IBM, so it's not that surprising that IBM ended up with the copyrights for QBASIC. What's more surprising is that IBM didn't end up buying the whole of DOS outright (but that's another topic entirely). Also, I seem to recall reading (or seeing a video interview) where Bill Gates said QBASIC was his last ever coding job.

Oh, I see. It still seems lamesauce for an article that's targeted toward techies to say that IBM created it. Seems like it's a journo looking for a story rather than someone who really cares about the subject matter. Oh well, it was interesting, but I'd rather read a blog post about it than a MSM magazine article.

> Seems like it's a journo looking for a story rather than someone who really cares about the subject matter.

Welcome to the world journalism. It's full of people who either aren't technical enough to work in the field they're reporting on, don't care that much about such industries (they're reporting on it for the love of journalism/writing), or have to dumb stuff down so much to appeal to a wider audience that the article loses accuracy / objectivity.