Basic-Reb0rn 1 (The beggining)

Welcome to my Basic-Reb0rn dev-blog.

The Task/s

2nd year UWE Games technology module, “Low level programming”, has given us an assignment that requires us to type up a “basic” Text adventure game using a book called “Write your own adventure programs for your microcomputer”, written by Jenny Tyler and Les Howarth and was published in 1983. After reading through the book and typing up the code we are then going make a Walkthrough with intructions on how to complete the game and finally we have to convert it into c++, and use ASGE (Awsome Sauce Game Engine), and add some new feature/s.

Starting with Basic

As you are probably aware we will be using much better “micro-computer” than what was available back in the mid 80’s. Also 90% of my peers have never used basic since the launguage has been made obsolete by newer, more modern launguages.

First things first, we need something to compile this code in. “Applesoft BASIC in Javascript” acsessed by a simple goolge search and run through the browser, is perfect for what we need it for.

Inital task completion

Typing up the game was pretty straight forward. Its interesting to see how things used to work and all the things we take for granted when it comes to modern day programming. IDE’s these days do a lot of essential background stuff for us. Even small things like line numbers have to be entered in manually. You also have to designate memory manually. Oh and ofcourse everything is hard-coded. After I finished coding, I played the game for a few hours and filled a page of notes on what the play needs to do in order to complete the game, and also thought up some possible improvements that could be implimented during the C++ conversion.

Thought on Improvements

Although halloween is next week, I would like to change the theme into a sci-fi adventure, simply because I write sci-fi stories occasionally in my spare time and I take great pleasure and pride in something that I have made up myself, so I see an oppourtunity to improve my motivation which is always a plus in my oppinion.

Pictures would be a nice addition. Nothing too fancy, just some visual representation of whats going on was definetly lacking in the originall basic version of this game. Maybe have a picture for inside the building and one for outside, or even a picture for every room, but we shall see how my time management is going.

A mini-map would be another cool addition. Giving the player a visual representation of the map, I thought, was also lacking in the original. This feature would also make the game easier I believe. I could make the map a little bigger to ame things more interesting.

These are just some ideas, and may not be implimented in the final version.