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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, QBASI

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 https://twitter.com/manfightdragon/status/319786194395357185

kevingadd 13y ago
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 BASIC syntax, but it's really dishonest to pretend this is being built in classic QBASIC and leverage it for press without making any distinction between the tools you're using and the tools people actually had available to them in QBASIC. Quote from the PC World article, that is supposedly from you: "It would show that even old, abandoned tools and the most basic pieces of software can still be put in the hands of someone who wants to create their dream and result in beautiful things happening." This to me suggests that your goal is to show that actual QBASIC, the abandoned programming tool from the DOS era, can be used to build cool games. A noble goal. Using QB64 and SDL and a bunch of modern tools, however, does very little to achieve that goal. Maybe this is just nit-picking, but QBASIC is a very specific name - the name of a particular BASIC interpreter that came with versions of DOS. You could have easily been more general and said you were building the game in BASIC, and been completely accurate, but then I suppose that wouldn't have gotten you an article on PC World. And to give some context, I have in the past encountered people who were ACTUALLY building cool modern games in QBASIC. They did this by writing commands out to disk from their QBASIC game and then running windows apps to do the work of talking to libraries in order to do MIDI playback or read from game controllers. This, at least, counted as using QBASIC, and was quite a feat of engineering - even if those games weren't pure QBASIC. The game looks cool, though!
- manfightdragon 13y ago
  Yeah, the game's written in the QBASIC language but I certainly don't use QuickBASIC 4.5 or PDS to compile it.
  - laumars 13y ago
    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).
    - jaredsohn 13y ago
      It is possible to compile QuickBASIC code (i.e. a variant of BASIC that contrasts with (among others) GW-BASIC) via QuickBASIC 4.5 and PDS. Often at the time, you could write some code using the free QBASIC which came with MS-DOS and then decide that you need to purchase one of those other programs to compile it prior to distributing it as a standalone executable.
      - laumars 13y ago
        I hadn't realised there was a non-free version of QBasic. Also, I went to download QB64 and compile a very basic app then opened that inside a hex editor to see if the it was just a standalone exe interpreter with the .bas attached as a resource (a bit like how self extracting zip files work) and appears that QB64 does genuinely compile the code. So I stand corrected on both the old and new instances of QBasic. There is some strange stuff inside the QB64 generated exe though. References to automation.whatismyip.com (stranger still, that sub-domain isn't DNSed). QB64 is definitely a Window app that's written to look like it's running in DOS though. There's even a character map compiled into the exe so that the fonts look native to DOS. It also looked quite fun, so I can see the appeal of using QB64 for personal projects.
        manfightdragon 13y ago

kevingadd 13y ago

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 BASIC syntax, but it's really dishonest to pretend this is being built in classic QBASIC and leverage it for press without making any distinction between the tools you're using and the tools people actually had available to them in QBASIC. Quote from the PC World article, that is supposedly from you: "It would show that even old, abandoned tools and the most basic pieces of software can still be put in the hands of someone who wants to create their dream and result in beautiful things happening." This to me suggests that your goal is to show that actual QBASIC, the abandoned programming tool from the DOS era, can be used to build cool games. A noble goal. Using QB64 and SDL and a bunch of modern tools, however, does very little to achieve that goal. Maybe this is just nit-picking, but QBASIC is a very specific name - the name of a particular BASIC interpreter that came with versions of DOS. You could have easily been more general and said you were building the game in BASIC, and been completely accurate, but then I suppose that wouldn't have gotten you an article on PC World. And to give some context, I have in the past encountered people who were ACTUALLY building cool modern games in QBASIC. They did this by writing commands out to disk from their QBASIC game and then running windows apps to do the work of talking to libraries in order to do MIDI playback or read from game controllers. This, at least, counted as using QBASIC, and was quite a feat of engineering - even if those games weren't pure QBASIC. The game looks cool, though!

manfightdragon 13y ago
Yeah, the game's written in the QBASIC language but I certainly don't use QuickBASIC 4.5 or PDS to compile it.
- laumars 13y ago
  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).
  - jaredsohn 13y ago
    It is possible to compile QuickBASIC code (i.e. a variant of BASIC that contrasts with (among others) GW-BASIC) via QuickBASIC 4.5 and PDS. Often at the time, you could write some code using the free QBASIC which came with MS-DOS and then decide that you need to purchase one of those other programs to compile it prior to distributing it as a standalone executable.
    - laumars 13y ago
      I hadn't realised there was a non-free version of QBasic. Also, I went to download QB64 and compile a very basic app then opened that inside a hex editor to see if the it was just a standalone exe interpreter with the .bas attached as a resource (a bit like how self extracting zip files work) and appears that QB64 does genuinely compile the code. So I stand corrected on both the old and new instances of QBasic. There is some strange stuff inside the QB64 generated exe though. References to automation.whatismyip.com (stranger still, that sub-domain isn't DNSed). QB64 is definitely a Window app that's written to look like it's running in DOS though. There's even a character map compiled into the exe so that the fonts look native to DOS. It also looked quite fun, so I can see the appeal of using QB64 for personal projects.
      - manfightdragon 13y ago