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Thread: A few of my QBasic games

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    Great Puma (Level 12) jb143's Avatar
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    Default A few of my QBasic games

    I was going though some of my old floppy disks and ran across a bunch of old Qbasic games and demos I made. Only a few were "finished" and playable as games so I thought I'd share them with you guys.

    You can download the games as well as Qbasic >here<


    Spaceships

    This one was a big hit in my high school electronis class. It's a two player arcade style game. The object is to shoot down your oppenent in three shots. To control the ship, push the direction you want to go. The ship will only turn 90 degrees each time and will keep moving straight until turning again.

    Pressing the fire button while moving left or right will will shoot a laser beam in that direction. 3 direct hits will destroy the other ship. Watch out though, as the explosion can destroy your ship as well if you're too close.

    The controls are just a tad hard to get used to at first but ends up adding a bit of stradegy and keeps the game from being too easy.

    Glitches I never fixed:
    The ships erase the starfield background as they pass over it. The laser beams also never go away once on the screen, although you can erase them with your ship(The only hurt you when first fired). These were annoyances for sure, but it never really distracted from gameplay.

    ---------------------------------------------
    3-D MAZE

    A pseudo 3d maze game. The object is to find your way out in the shortest amount of time. The game starts with you looking north and three directions to choose from. The door behind you is locked. To get out you must travel through the different rooms looking for secret items to help you along the way. If you come to a dead end, push the back arrow to turn around...not walk backwards. Also, watch out for the trap door, you will have to start somewhere else if you fall in!

    Improvements:
    I could have been made a little more intuitive to control and move around. It was easy to loose track of which direction you were facing. Adding a "map" that shows your general location might have been a good idea as well.

    ---------------------------------------------

    Well, there you have it. Let me know what you guys think(please keep in mind that I made these in high school about 15 years ago before ever taking a programming class)

    Also, if you made any QBasic games, feel free to dig out those old disks and add them here.
    Last edited by jb143; 11-13-2009 at 03:03 PM.
    "Game programmers are generally lazy individuals. That's right. It's true. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Since the dawn of computer games, game programmers have looked for shortcuts to coolness." Kurt Arnlund - Game programmer for Activision, Accolade...

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    Strawberry (Level 2) Damaniel's Avatar
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    I was a big fan of QBasic back in the day, so I'll definitely have to try these out when I get home from work.

    When I was in high school, I worked at a mom and pop video store, and things would get very slow during the middle of the week. When I didn't have anything else to do, I would pass some of the time by writing QBasic games, since that was the only programming environment available on their 386-era checkout terminal. I don't think I have any disks left (I do have some of the C-based projects I did from then, but that's a different topic entirely...). I may still have a printout or two sitting in a binder -- if I do, I'll type them in and post them.

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    Great Puma (Level 12) jb143's Avatar
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    I actually haven't played the games in forever until just, now other than last night to make sure they ran. If I was doing the same type of maze game today I'd make it control more like Shadowgate, which I had never played at the time, otherwise I probably would have. It's just a little hard to reprogram myself to think in the way the controls are set up after playing so many FPS's over the last 15 years. I did manage to find my way though in almost 2 minutes. You can't think of the arrows as rotating and moving you. Instead, they move you into the doorway you push toward and make you stand perpendicular to the doorway...if that makes any sense.

    For the spaceship game your going to want to slow it down by changing "speed = 500" down just a little ways into the program. 1500 worked well for my computer but it's going to depend on the speed of your PC. To really play it you'll want to find a second player. Preferably one who remembers the glory days of QBasic games.

    Also, if anyone has games of their own to add, feel free to add them to the drop.io account in the link above. I gave public access to add files.
    "Game programmers are generally lazy individuals. That's right. It's true. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Since the dawn of computer games, game programmers have looked for shortcuts to coolness." Kurt Arnlund - Game programmer for Activision, Accolade...

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    Strawberry (Level 2) Damaniel's Avatar
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    I had a chance to try out your games -- cool stuff! I see that you were making these at about the same time that I was (1995-1996).

    I found printouts of a few programs in a binder, and typed them all in -- reminds me of my Apple II days, typing BASIC programs out of books. None of them are very good or very fun (and the code is totally cringeworthy), but here they are (note: I used hard-coded loops for all of the timing in this code. Running in DosBox at ~20000 cycles will give you a good idea of what these ran like on the PC I did these on):

    Planet


    A very basic 'shoot the meteors' game. Only two meteors can be on the screen at a time. There are 5 difficulty levels.

    Race


    This was something I put together while experimenting with multi-directional thrust. If you hit the wall too many times, the game ends. It even tells you when you're going the wrong way.

    Hangman


    A hangman game. It's a little brain-dead -- you have to press space to type out the word when you think you know what it is. You have to do this, even if you've already guessed each of the individual letters. I was planning on a large dictionary of words, but only got to the 'D's, so there's about 550 words that can be randomly chosen. This is the only QBasic game I did that had some music in it.

    MGEdit
    MazeGame
    MAZE1.MAZ



    I started on these but didn't do very much with them. The goal of the main game ('mazegame.bas') is to get from the starting point of the maze to the end in as few moves as possible -- but you have to collect the key before getting to the exit. On top of that, the walls in the maze are invisible, and will only appear when you run into them. mgedit.bas allows you to make your own mazes (necessary, since I didn't ever make any official ones). I've included a simple maze (MAZE1.MAZ) to test it all out.

    I did other QBasic work as well (including a program for the video store I worked at -- it calculated pay, taxes and withholdings for employee paychecks, and tabulated totals for W2s at the end of the year), but unfortunately I don't have any of it anymore.
    Last edited by Damaniel; 11-14-2009 at 03:14 AM.

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    Kirby (Level 13) cyberfluxor's Avatar
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    Idea: Anyone want to start up a classic computer programming group? Nothing to seriously take up time or distract, but rather a down-time thing where if people have spare time they could post some of their homebrew games to share with the rest of the community for download and play? Maybe add a mixture where maybe once a month have a competition to develop a particular game with certain specifications or given a particular program who can get a high-score.
    Quote Originally Posted by Example
    Platform: PC - DOS
    Language/Compiler: QBASIC
    Genre: Racing, above perspective
    Specifics/Requirements:
    One screen racetracks in black and white and 8-bit colored cars. Minimum of 4 race tracks to choose from. Must contain at least two game modes: Time attack on any track or versus with 3 opponents of computers, but bonus points for additional players.
    Of course it can be more specific than that or have additional constraints, but you get the idea. Even a 2 month or so development cycle would also be cool. A decision of Open/Closed source would have to be determined, depends on how touchy a coder is with releasing their work.
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    Great Puma (Level 12) jb143's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Damaniel View Post
    I found printouts of a few programs in a binder, and typed them all in -- reminds me of my Apple II days, typing BASIC programs out of books. None of them are very good or very fun (and the code is totally cringeworthy), but here they are (note: I used hard-coded loops for all of the timing in this code. Running in DosBox at ~20000 cycles will give you a good idea of what these ran like on the PC I did these on)
    I remember typing in games from the C64 days...I applaud you for typing those in, it looks like it was a lot of work. I tried them out. Not too bad, a little more polished than mine were.


    Quote Originally Posted by cyberfluxor View Post
    Idea: Anyone want to start up a classic computer programming group? Nothing to seriously take up time or distract, but rather a down-time thing where if people have spare time they could post some of their homebrew games to share with the rest of the community for download and play? Maybe add a mixture where maybe once a month have a competition to develop a particular game with certain specifications or given a particular program who can get a high-score.

    Of course it can be more specific than that or have additional constraints, but you get the idea. Even a 2 month or so development cycle would also be cool. A decision of Open/Closed source would have to be determined, depends on how touchy a coder is with releasing their work.
    I like the idea but I doubt I'd have the time...even at a 2 month time limit. Also, looking over my old code it hit me, after switching to C/C++ years ago, I really don't remember much BASIC at all. If anyone else wants to do it though, that'd be pretty cool.

    I do have some more games somewhere that I might dig out though if the disks aren't corrupted.
    "Game programmers are generally lazy individuals. That's right. It's true. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Since the dawn of computer games, game programmers have looked for shortcuts to coolness." Kurt Arnlund - Game programmer for Activision, Accolade...

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    Strawberry (Level 2) Damaniel's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by cyberfluxor View Post
    Idea: Anyone want to start up a classic computer programming group? Nothing to seriously take up time or distract, but rather a down-time thing where if people have spare time they could post some of their homebrew games to share with the rest of the community for download and play? Maybe add a mixture where maybe once a month have a competition to develop a particular game with certain specifications or given a particular program who can get a high-score.

    Of course it can be more specific than that or have additional constraints, but you get the idea. Even a 2 month or so development cycle would also be cool. A decision of Open/Closed source would have to be determined, depends on how touchy a coder is with releasing their work.
    I'd be willing to do this from time to time. I haven't touched QBasic in 15 years, and most of my current work (non-game, unfortunately) is done in C and Java, but I think I'd be able to pick it up again. Hopefully, you'll be able to get some other takers.

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    Kirby (Level 13) cyberfluxor's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by jb143 View Post
    I like the idea but I doubt I'd have the time...even at a 2 month time limit. Also, looking over my old code it hit me, after switching to C/C++ years ago, I really don't remember much BASIC at all. If anyone else wants to do it though, that'd be pretty cool.

    I do have some more games somewhere that I might dig out though if the disks aren't corrupted.
    Time is the key since it's just a fun attempt to allow some of the coders on the site to have a side project to share with others on here. As for the language, it could technically be very flexible as QBASIC is just one example since it's freely available and there's plenty of documentation out there. The main idea though is for this code to be written on a particular machine/system and made available for other members to load onto their classic computers too. Nothing to be taken really seriously as if your reputation, liberty, and life depends on it.

    Quote Originally Posted by Damaniel View Post
    I'd be willing to do this from time to time. I haven't touched QBasic in 15 years, and most of my current work (non-game, unfortunately) is done in C and Java, but I think I'd be able to pick it up again. Hopefully, you'll be able to get some other takers.
    As I just wrote above it could even be a challenge for VBASIC, FORTRAN, Pascal, or any number of other languages. For example, if we wanted to we could even hit old Macintosh machines thanks to Macintosh Garden providing a number of SDKs and compilers under their Development Tools section. Or with Bloodshed they offer free Delphi, C/C++, FOTRAN compilers. Eclipse has a vast collection of languages as well. So the competition can be made very available to anyone who wants to join in as beginners or professional software engineers. The main idea of this is to offer a bit of entertainment to develop games for these classic machines while bringing some competition to the table to learn from each other.

    Oh, and past developed games/applications of members could be shared. I think a sticky thread in this sub-forum containing homebrew applications would be awesome. Only problems I see are ensuring people are posting their own code and not someone else's that may be violating intellectual property rights, or malicious code being released which is why making the source available would be best.
    Last edited by cyberfluxor; 11-16-2009 at 03:55 PM.
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