Pete's QBASIC Site

Hey
Since ive first visited Petes QBasic site ive seen many interesting and detailed programs from programmers that seem highly educated in the programming world. I am currently studying at college and im doing a piece of work on the differences on the visual and non visual enviroments of programming (in particular games). I was wondering if you could give me your personal opinion why the non visual environment such as Qbasic appeals to you so much and your thoughts on a visual environment such as Visual Basic. Oh and are there any good, very simple games i should have a look at to get a basic idea behind the coding of such games?

Thanks in advance to everyone that replies to this post
-Nova

Link to www.ascii-world.com and read our about.
Then see Contents page

Oh and are there any good, very simple games i should have a look at to get a basic idea behind the coding of such games?

Lot's of. What is good is up of your opinion. See games on this site for a start. Then see links. There is tons of good game sites listed.

Maybe you should give more accurate questions to receive more accurate answers

QBASIC is good because you arent restricted to a particluar set of GUI objects, like you are if you were to use a visual environment such as VB.

For example, in QBASIC I could whip up a simple aprticle engine in a matter of minutes. In VB, not so easy, not to mention it would be slower in VB than QBASIC (Due to the previously mentioned GUI objects)

If we move to modern programming, then you have OpenGL and DirectX, none of which are programmable in a "visual" environment.

Simply put, for making games, a "visual" environment isnt helping at all, so why use it? That said, a "visual" environment doesent have to mean a hindrance to your game either. Some games take quite an advantage of not having to make their own GUI, such as buttons, textboxes etc.

Also, QBASIC doesent appeal to me at all, FreeBASIC does.

Hi Novanic,

I think that a text IDE like QB and family or Borland IDEs would be most liked by generations that started programming on them. Back when, these were the "hot" environments so to speak and well back then you weren't a programming unless you coded in these environment. One ting I can say for them is how tightly integrated the IDE is to the language (especially in the case of the QB ide's) where everything you need is right there, a keyboard (or a mouse) press away. Though today alot of efforts seem to be made to reproduce that tight integration that the DOS IDEs had, they are not there yet. To me, that would be a major reason to like text based IDEs (providing that IDE does offer that tight integration to the language it was made for.

One of the "closer" wiundows IDE is VB for Windows. It is still missing something, but it atleast attempted to offer what the DOS IDE offered though the language itself went astray a bit. But you can see many features that are somewhat like it's DOS counter part (likie the option to show only one sub or function at a time, syntax completion/correction, and the likes. For those reason, yes, the VB for Windows IDE isn't all that bad, but not as tightly integrated as QB's IDE was.

The language makes a difference too. For example, a Pascal IDE works differently than a BASIC IDE because ultimately back then, people would use different language for different purposes and to a certain point (some higher than others) the IDE also tried to offer features that were relevant to the reason why you'd use that particular language.

Since Window's mentality is to do everything at once, some have used this concept to break up the ide/designers/compilers/etc which up to a certain point helped on certain aspects but ultimately broke that tight integration (that was probably mandatory in DOS (non multitasking) environment. So it was tightly integrated because it didn't have the luxury of breaking things apart back then.

As far as I'm concerned, even if broken into main components, today, in windows, it's till possible to integrate things if you want. But it might be harder to do just that compared to not integrating them. Likewise, by not integrating everything, it's easier to make one IDE that can handle more than one language. So there are pros and cons to both .

Like E.K. said above http://www.ascii-world is a good place to start looking for games. Another major site is right here on Pete's QB site (http://www.petesqbsite.com <- main site) you'll find alot of examples there as well.

As far as games are concerned, it's a question of personal taste and how much a programmer wants the players to use their imagination while playing the game. There's alot of types of games and it really all depends on the type of game you're making and what the most important aspect of that particular game is the most important to give to users. But today, that notion is dissapearing (which in my opinion isn't exactly all good).

Hope this helped you some.

I think it comes down to a question of interface. I prefer using a non-visual environment for producing games that are action-based in some way, or that do not rely on heavy on-screen interface. However, for games that require a lot of on-screen direction, a visual environment holds a great advantage over the non-visual environment. You're not really limited to GUI-specific widgets but it certainly boosts development time fourfold if you use the standard resources (I have coded quite a number of GUI-based games in VB that do not use standard resources but rather my own, even menus in a few of them). There's something to be said for standard resources though...they're familiar and don't require a lot of "figuring out", which means your player will spend less time learning how it works but of course, on the other hand, a nice custom-made GUI that looks nice is flashy and gives your game some additional personality, although often at the expense of familiarity.

Two main reasons:

1. QuickBASIC is simple enough that it can be learned easily, so expanse that you could learn something new everyday, and so powerful (for DOS) that you can do most tasks using it.
2. It's vintage EDIT IN REPLY TO NEK'S POST: by today's standards.

QB is vintage? Shyeah right! You want vintage? Code games in debug.com...now THAT'S vintage.

Thanks a load to everyone thats posted to my question. Your thoughts are very very informative and its helped me a great load! Not to mention the speed of the replies, thanks a lot everyone

Anytime.

well its kinda like tinkering with old cars or shooting muskets
or bows....its just something that attrachs different people
for different reasons...some folks want the newer easier/power stuff
some want the old less easy/power stuff...although qbasic is pertty
easy to start with most would say...

and i personally thinks its a foundation language(basic) that
leads to all others....

the fun in coding a game in qbasic (if you can call driving your self insane in trying to avoid memory problems fun) is the handicap you are working under.

although one of the main driving forces to make qb games was to top the best at the time and show of your work, but now days with the assimilation/evolution into the FB community that factor kind of gone , you could write a kick ass QB game but in the end if you show it off to the community at large you most likely get ah cool but why didn't you do it in FB and make it 10x better with high res and higher bitdepth etc.