Tag: BASIC

An interesting project- Converting BASIC Computer Games

An interesting project- Converting BASIC Computer Games

Posted on by David

Basic Computer games bookYes it’s that book again, one I have mentioned a few times.  Now there’s a project to convert all of the games from the book into C#, Java, JavaScript, Python, Ruby and VB.NET. As with all Git sites, you can download all code from the site in a zip file or individual files. So far though its very early in the project and there’s only a .BAS file in each of the subfolders for each of the games in the book. If you fancy getting involved, pick a game, a language and start coding. Sadly there’s no desire for C or C++ but that still leaves C# .

I still have this book and its sequel (More BASIC Computer games!) but to be honest I wouldn’t have bothered with most of the games in either book. They are all very much of the era (1978) which was just on the cusp of the home computer revolution and so were mostly obsolete within seven or eight years, due mainly to the terminal I/O. They’re ok for learning programming and of course you could run them in a Linux terminal.

Creative computing games

Creative computing games

Posted on by David

Hammurabi BASIC listYesterday’s post reminded me of one of the joys of my youth. The Creative Computing magazines’ “BASIC Computer games” book and it’s sequel “More BASIC Computer games.” . I bought these in 1982, and they weren’t cheap then- about £20 each.

Of course over the years they got lost but I bought them again a few years back. Some of the games in here are classics- A simple Star Trek game, Hammurabi, mugwump, golf, various landers. Of course they are all in BASIC but relatively easy to convert to C.

You don’t have to buy the books (they are pretty expensive on Amazon and no I’m not selling mine!) as many of the games are available online. One source is this classic BASIC games web page. Here’s another link  with more games but they are scans of the pages.

I promise I won’t be putting any more BASIC listings up. These are just an  inspiration to create small games in C or adapt these.

While at Uni in my first year, I adapted a copy of the Star Trek game adding in a whole lot of new features. It doesn’t say much about the interactive mainframe there that with just four people playing the game, the mainframe was brought to its knees!