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The game Starflight (1986) was also written in Forth. The only game of that complexity I'm aware of where this was the programming language of choice. https://
by mhd 5y ago
The game Starflight (1986) was also written in Forth. The only game of that complexity I'm aware of where this was the programming language of choice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starflight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starflight
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y agoDoes anyone know if this is the reason for Starflight's madding save system[0]? I can't think of a technical reason it would need to work that way, but it is an exceptionally rare way to do things so I'm forced to wonder if the use of forth is partly responsible. [0] Starflight self-modifies as it runs, meaning the executable itself is re-written with the game state baked in. If the game exits without saving in the approved way the executable is broken.
- lebuffon 5y agoI have no inside information on Starflight but this is typical of Forth systems. They are an image structured environment. Unless you build your own data structures that are external to Forth's memory image, called a dictionary, everything exists in that chunk of memory. Variables and arrays etc. exist where they are declared in the code sequence. So to save the game they opted apparently to just save the system image. It was the simple way out IMHO. It's trivial to create separate data area and write that out to a file in Forth.
- timbit42 5y agoAnother game written in Forth, on the Atari 800, is Worms? by Electronic Arts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worms%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worms%3F Recent interview where the author, David Maynard, discusses writing Worms? in Forth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdIn4ndkcAU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdIn4ndkcAU