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I learned to program on a commodore 64 at age 7. There was a game were a gorilla threw an explosive banana on a city skyline. I think it was more a demo for the
by iamthepieman 6y ago
I learned to program on a commodore 64 at age 7. There was a game were a gorilla threw an explosive banana on a city skyline. I think it was more a demo for the basic language than a game but it was awesome to 7 year old me when my dad let me use his work computer and play it. I learned that there was a file that controlled the game and it had easy to understand text in it like explosion_radius = 7. A few years later I wrote an "artificial intelligence" program that was just a few hundred if statements and input prompts on my dad's brand new 286. It asked you questions and then responded, carrying on a very basic conversation. Thanks basic (and dad)
- steve_taylor 6y agoSounds like QBasic. C64 basic identifiers are limited to two characters.
- duskwuff 6y agoYeah, that game sounds exactly like GORILLA.BAS, which was distributed with QBasic. It would have actually been somewhat difficult to implement in BASIC on the C64, as much of the graphics functionality of the C64 was only accessible from BASIC using PEEK/POKE.
- vidarh 6y agoThe manual for the c64 included examples of animating sprites in basic using poke. It was not hard, though not very user friendly.
- vidarh 6y agoSort of. They can be longer, but C64 basic ignores anything past the first two. So e.g explosive and expensive would be treated as the same identifier.
- iamthepieman 6y agoYes that's it. The details are hazy and now that you mention it I think they might have been only two characters. I just remember spending hours fooling around see what I could change and then rerunning the game.