September 15, 2004

Four Line Game Competition

Check out the first QB Express monthly programming competition!

This month, QB Express is proud to start the first of its monthly programming competitions! Every month, a QB programming competition will be held and judged by the staff of QB Express. Then, in the following issue, the results will be announced. So without further ado, let's get to the first challenge: The Four Line Game Competition!


The Challenge

Your challenge is to make the best possible QBasic game program using just FOUR lines of QBasic code. Games may be of any genre or style, but players must be able to win or lose depending on their input (otherwise, it's not a game).

For this challenge, you may link as many commands together as you can on a single line, using colons or otherwise. Since QBasic is limited to 256 characters per line, your game is limited to a maximum of 1024 bytes of code. You may not use any libraries or external files with the exception of the standard QuickBasic library, QB.QLB. All games must be compatible with QBasic v1.1.

This challenge was originally held in 1999 as one of NeoZones Productions' CodeX challenges, and had quite a good response. During the month, if I can find any of the original entries of the contest, I will post them at the official message board topic.

Entries will be due on or before October 10th, 2004 at midnight, Eastern Standard Time. Results will be revealed in Issue #3 of QB Express, which will come out on or around October 15th.

Here is a complete listing of the rules for this competition:

Rules

• Your game may consist of a maximum of four lines of QBasic code, excluding remarks/comments. Each line may be up to 256 characters in length -- the maximum allowed by QBasic.
• Programs must be a game, meaning that players must be able to win or lose, or accumulate points based on their input. Games may be of any style or genre.
• You can link as many commands together as you'd like on a single line with colons (:).
• You may include as many lines of remark statements (comments) as you'd like in your program. These may include the title of the game, the programmer's name and contact information, and instructions on how to play for the user. Since you're limited to only four lines of code, your instructions for the controls and the gameplay should probably be included in the comments.
• You may also append remarks to the end of your four lines of code, but they will count as part of your program.
• Your program must be one uncompiled .BAS file.
• No external data files.
• No libraries other than QB.QLB.
• No modular SUBs and FUNCTIONs. (You may use GOSUB and GOTO...but no individual SUB / FUNCTION modules.)
• Your program must be compatible with QBasic v1.1.
• DATA statements will be considered part of your four lines.
• Entries are due no later than October 10th, 2004 at midnight Eastern Standard Time.

Submitted by Pete

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