Programing Games

[Tawmis]

I really need to play the original Laura Bow games in preparation for this, which I've been meaning to do for ages anyway.

They're both AMAZING games. The first one is, admittedly my preferred one.
It was a big inspiration for when I made the text adventure game Final Soul (which I wish I still had the source code to fix the bugs)

EDIT: Splitting this from the original topic since it's generating conversation. - Tawmis

[Collector]

What did you write it in?

[Tawmis]

What did you write it in?

QBasic _eons_ ago.

To be honest, I could probably redo the whole program if I had some spare time on my hands. It's not overly complicated.

I wish I'd continued in college to take Programming to have a... more up to date... programming language to do it in.

[Collector]

C# is pretty easy to learn.

[tassieboy]

I remember using an engine called AGT (Adventure Game Toolkit) back in the day. Easier than implementing my own parser. It's been released into freeware now.
Downloaded Final Soul and had a quick play with it at lunch time today.
Your short list of single letter commands is interesting, because it simplifies things somewhat, to prevent frustration over how to phrase what you want to do, in much the same way that the limited number of verbs in point and click games did.

[Tawmis]

I remember using an engine called AGT (Adventure Game Toolkit) back in the day. Easier than implementing my own parser. It's been released into freeware now.
Downloaded Final Soul and had a quick play with it at lunch time today.
Your short list of single letter commands is interesting, because it simplifies things somewhat, to prevent frustration over how to phrase what you want to do, in much the same way that the limited number of verbs in point and click games did.

I don't want to side track the purpose of this actual thread too much ("Too late?") - but I looked into AGT - downloaded it - and... All I see is a RUN.EXE and a COMPILE.EXE and a 200 page document to read. And you said this was easier?

[Rath Darkblade]

Visual Basic is pretty simple. Mind you, Tawm, it's not really for the kind of games you have in mind ... but I used it to create a pretty smart program that played Tic-Tac-Toe and never lost.

Mind you, this was in the late 90s ...

[Tawmis]

Visual Basic is pretty simple. Mind you, Tawm, it's not really for the kind of games you have in mind ... but I used it to create a pretty smart program that played Tic-Tac-Toe and never lost.

Mind you, this was in the late 90s ...

Never underestimate the type of games I enjoy!
My VERY first game I "wrote" was a BASIC game - where it put your health and your opponents health at the top (similar to where Sierra used to put their score).

Then in the center of the screen a box ran super fast with things whizzing by - you pressed - I think ENTER - to stop it - and it'd do whatever it stopped on.

So for example, it might say, "Body blow! Your opponent takes 5 damage!" (then it'd take 5 health away from Player 2) until Player 1 or Player 2 went below 0 health.

From there, I started trying my hand at text adventure games... did a few of them - but the Final Soul one was the one I spent the most time on.

I'd made a small text adventure game called "GoblinQuest" (inspired by Hero's Quest/Quest for Glory) - where you're just a guy in a field, fighting a never ending army of goblins (did the same thing with health, weapons, etc) - so sometimes you'd find weapons to upgrade your stuff or health potions to try and stay alive before the next wave randomly appears.

[Collector]

I hate basic. It gives me a headache just trying to read it. I started on Visual Basic, but have successfully purged it out of my head a long time ago, thank God. C# is fun.

[MusicallyInspired]

I wrote a game in C++ with ASCII graphics called FACEMAN. The goal is to collect all the gems in as few moves as possible. You use the arrow keys but also the standard word processing keys Pgup, Pgdn, Home, End to move to the far edges of the screen instantly. Also 'C' puts you in the center. Simple little game and a little weird but I accomplished what I set out to do and it was fun. I've had glimmers of ideas to enhance it and make it a little more playable and enjoyable, starting with adding levels by increasing gem counts and move limits every time you win but just haven't done it.

Oh, and F2 disables "sound."

http://brandonblume.com/_notseen/faceman.zip

The main version was made in Turbo C++ and only works in DOSBox, but there's also a 32-bit version that works in Win10 command prompt. Since it's running in a very limited command prompt environment I have to redraw the "screen" every time something happens which makes it flicker badly because there's no video buffering at all. That's the only way I could figure out how to make it functional at the time. If I were to refine it I'd not redraw the entire screen and instead just clear individual characters when objects move or disappear. Or I'd just use graphics with the SDL or Allegro libraries or something. Allegro was fun to program in, perhaps that. Some people have told me if I refined it it might work as a mobile game. I don't have a clue where to begin for that though not to mention it'd have to be reworked quite a bit to play with on a touch device. And it's still not really a fully worked out game idea yet. Just a little experiment. Maybe there could be powerups for granting you extra moves or random position transporters, or and item that allows you to skip multiple spaces at a time instead of one block at a time. Or something.

[Rath Darkblade]

Why do you hate basic, Collector? Maybe it's just me - but the first programming language I used was BASIC on ye olde Commodore 64, back in the days when dinosaurs ruled the earth.

[tassieboy]

I looked into AGT - downloaded it - and... All I see is a RUN.EXE and a COMPILE.EXE and a 200 page document to read. And you said this was easier?

LOL.
I seem to remember some pretty significant examples games all with full source code.
But, yeah, it was a loooong time ago. You know, back in the days before kids and mortgages and a thousand things to take your attention and energy. Back in the days when we could afford to read a 200 page manual for fun.

[tassieboy]

I hate basic. It gives me a headache just trying to read it. I started on Visual Basic, but have successfully purged it out of my head a long time ago, thank God. C# is fun.

Having worked with both Visual Basic and c# for the better part of my adult life at the day job, I can concur. C# is much nicer to use. Never tried to make a game in it, though.

[Tawmis]

I hate basic. It gives me a headache just trying to read it. I started on Visual Basic, but have successfully purged it out of my head a long time ago, thank God. C# is fun.

Why.... Wait....

Why do you hate basic, Collector? Maybe it's just me - but the first programming language I used was BASIC on ye olde Commodore 64, back in the days when dinosaurs ruled the earth.

This.
Basic is insanely easy to read ...
PRINT = showing it on the screen
INPUT = asking for variable
IF THEN is literally IF THEN statements...
Other commands like LOCATE are exactly that, locate this line/space - and do whatever you want. (LOCATE 10,10,0: PRINT "HELLO!") prints it on the 10th line down, 10th line over.
Reading BASIC is like... reading English.

It is clunky, at times, if you're trying to do something complicated... but making a TEXT ADVENTURE game in BASIC is easy...

I wrote a game in C++ with ASCII graphics called FACEMAN.
http://brandonblume.com/_notseen/faceman.zip

Oh! I made my map in FINAL SOUL using ASCII (and the character representation was the SMILEY face ASCII)

I looked into AGT - downloaded it - and... All I see is a RUN.EXE and a COMPILE.EXE and a 200 page document to read. And you said this was easier?

LOL.
I seem to remember some pretty significant examples games all with full source code.
But, yeah, it was a loooong time ago. You know, back in the days before kids and mortgages and a thousand things to take your attention and energy. Back in the days when we could afford to read a 200 page manual for fun.

I just have entirely too many hobbies is my problem...

I hate basic. It gives me a headache just trying to read it. I started on Visual Basic, but have successfully purged it out of my head a long time ago, thank God. C# is fun.

Having worked with both Visual Basic and c# for the better part of my adult life at the day job, I can concur. C# is much nicer to use. Never tried to make a game in it, though.

I wish I had continued to pursue my interest in programming in College... might have eventually gotten to C#...
Had done BASIC -> COBOL -> PASCAL and had just gotten into C when I dropped out...

[MusicallyInspired]

I started in SCI scripting then learned C and C++ after that because they're similarly complicated. I've never done anything in BASIC, even though it's also used natively on the Tandy CoCo3 which I still have. I wonder how fun it'd be to reprogram Faceman for BASIC. I once wrote a game launcher in C for my old 486 but everything was hardcoded. When I got a new game I'd have to recompile the whole thing. I wanted to make it read a CFG file but I just never got that far.