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GORILLA.BAS
- planckscnst 15y agoYes! I played this as a kid. Until then, I didn't realize such things were possible with QBasic. From that point, I wanted to make my own game. I remember looking at the source code and thinking I'd never be able to figure out how a program that long works. It's funny how trivial it looks now.
- atomicdog 15y agoDid you know Ken Silverman actually prototyped algorithms for the Build engine in QBasic before porting them over to C? He must have found it easier to work in.
- kristopher 15y agoRelated: A fun story about DONKEY.BAS [1] told by Andy Hertzfeld exists where he reminisces about comparing an 8088 with the Macintosh project and how they were disappointed at the lack of ingenuity. [1] http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Donkey.txt http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Donkey.txt
- fennecfoxen 15y agoGorilla.bas is okay, but if you're going to load up nibbles.bas please fix the bug where the number permanently disappears if the Pause dialog covers it. Thanks. (Also, the block-drawing character tricks in Nibbles were rather neat little affairs.)
- groovy2shoes 15y agoYou might like Steve Hanov's qb.js, complete with Nibbles pre-loaded! http://stevehanov.ca/blog/index.php?id=92 http://stevehanov.ca/blog/index.php?id=92
- mobileman 15y agoAtwood law in full swing!!!' awesome
- skeptical 15y agoGenuinely curious about the reason why this is oh HN's front page. It's a gorilla.bas, how is this news? Or am I missing some detail here?
- abrown28 15y agonostalgia?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- deadcyclo 15y agoHmm. Nibbles.bas and gorillas.bas are probably the main reason why I'm a programmer today.
- technomancy 15y agoSome of my fondest middle school memories are of hacking NIBBLES.BAS to add support for dropping mines. Nothing like the addition of weapons to spice up a game.
- phaedrus 15y agoMe too. I added a 3rd snake that was black and controlled by the computer. Also made it so the levels wrapped so if you went off one edge you appeared on the other side. The unintended consequence was you could get into the scoreboard and eat your own score numbers!
- signalsignal 15y ago"Don't call yourself a programmer." ;)
- deadcyclo 15y agoYeah. I read that. But I'm mainly into academia. So I'm not really referring to my professional life when I call my self a programmer, though I do program in my professional life as well. Just like I call my self I write when referring to my hobby/side-job as an online journalist.
- veyron 15y agoDoes anyone have a copy of the original QBASIC NIBBLES.BAS source?
- stagas 15y agoHere http://ge.tt/9aOwYN9?c http://ge.tt/9aOwYN9?c
- jiggy2011 15y agoOh this brings back memories of my 386! Probably one of the first open source programs I used , before I even knew what open source meant.
- radiowave 15y agoIf you just want to go ahead and play it, Gorilla is re-implemented in flash ready to run in the browser at: http://www.kongregate.com/games/Moly/gorillas-bas http://www.kongregate.com/games/Moly/gorillas-bas
- atomicdog 15y agoUpvoted the moment I saw the title :)
- garethsprice 15y agoWonder how many people here got interested in development because of spending time poring over GORILLA.BAS and NIBBLES.BAS? I know it was my first exposure to source code, and the ability to create your own game. Sad that MacOS/Windows no longer includes any simple source code for curious explorers to discover.
- gildas 15y agoI didn't remember that you could do graceful degradation with qbasic :p 'This is a clever way to pick the best graphics mode available ON ERROR GOTO ScreenModeError Mode = 9 SCREEN Mode
- gildas 15y agoUnfortunately, it does not work on qbasic emulator at http://repl.it/ http://repl.it/