Qbasic

[Timballisto]

Does anyone know if you can play chords using the Qbasic music commands?  I can only get single notes to play so far.

While we're at it, this can also be an all-around qbasic discussion area  .  (whoopee everyone's so excited everyone's hopping mad yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa....*whatever*)

[Shvegait]

I don't know if chords are possible... seems a little advanced for QBASIC

Here's a game I made 3 years ago in Programming 1 class in high school. It is probably coded quite poorly... I don't know a huge amount about programming now and I knew even less then... but it works anyway. It's called Niblets and it's like every other Snake/Nibbles game, except there are different terrains to play in, and you can get power-ups (shield protecting you from hitting the outside wall, "ghost" ability that lets you go through yourself, etc.) I never finished making the 9th level, though. The speed of the game is loop-based, but the loops are multiplied by a constant that you can set, so you can change the speed until you get it where it feels right. I realize this is a dumb way of doing it... but I really just needed to be able to get it to run on the computer at school and mine at home, and like I said, I knew little. It saves your configuration file for the options and high score file as well.

[G3K]

QBasic was released just over a decade ago now I think - at the time of its release, audio capabilities were limited to a simple internal buzzer capable of producing one tone at a time, so I'd say there's no chance of any chords; some proprietary versions of BASIC, however, for example BBC BASIC, do have this capability thanks to better hardware... well, if you can count three sound channels and one noise channel as "hardware" =P

[Timballisto]

Alright, thanks.  Any suggestions on a good Qbasic game?

[Shvegait]

Yes! Niblets  B)

[Timballisto]

No no.  I mean a suggestion for one to make.  I'm sure it's a good game though (I like the name...Niblets).

[Shvegait]

Oh oops  

You could make some sort of RPG, or... I don't know. Oh! I don't know if you've ever played Kroz, but an ASCII adventure game like that would be very cool. Are you going to go into a different Screen mode and use graphics? Or stay mostly text based? Hmm, I'll need to think some to come up with good ideas... One time I had this idea for a game involving some armies and castles, but I really never got anywhere with it. How much experience do you have with QBASIC? If not a lot, maybe you should start on some smaller games first before trying a big project.

[Timballisto]

I know I should start small.  I just took a semester course on Qbasic, but my teacher didn't teach me a lot of things (The following I have figured out on my own with some help from the not-so-great help file).

-subroutines
-making sounds/music
-using INKEY (which I still don't completely understand)
-using some ASCII stuff.

I'm thinking about a game where you dig ditches and try to make water go from point a to point b.  You dig up a square, and then you must deposit the dirt from that square onto abother surrounding square.  It could make for some interesting puzzles.  I've decided to run it like this:  In game, you have a main screen, which gives a couple of options such as

-view map
-view elevation guide
-dig (You have X digs left)
-concrete (You have X concretes left)
-quit
-run water (I might take this one out though, as I may decide to simply run the water while you dig).

These are the basic tools to play the game.

What do you think?

[guest]

Does anyone know if you can play chords using the Qbasic music commands? &#A0;I can only get single notes to play so far.

No.

QBasic's primitive sound and music commands are designed for back in the days when PCs don't actually come with a sound card.  Instead back then PC has this primitive piezoelectric "beeper" thing that basically can only generate square waves (beeps) of single frequencies.  And there's only one of that thing in the PC.  So no chords, sorry.

If you want to do sound and music, I suggest at the very least, switch over from QBasic to a language like Visual Basic.  Hopefully the switch is not too big a learning gap since there are both based off of Basic.  Using Visual Basic means you can take advantage of some capabilities offered by Windows, one of which is to playback MIDI files.

(Of course, this would mean you now also need to learn how to make MIDI files, but frankly this is probably far easier to deal with then trying to create your music as a string of notes.  Plus there are tons of MIDIs out there on the Internet for you to download.)

[guest]

I'm thinking about a game where you dig ditches and try to make water go from point a to point b. &#A0;You dig up a square, and then you must deposit the dirt from that square onto abother surrounding square. &#A0;It could make for some interesting puzzles.

That sounds interesting.  I don't understand all the details completely, but it sounds good.  Go for it!

[guest]

I know I should start small. &#A0;I just took a semester course on Qbasic, but my teacher didn't teach me a lot of things (The following I have figured out on my own with some help from the not-so-great help file).

The help file is meant to be a reference in case you forgot how to use certain functions you've already used before.  It's certainly not designed to be a tutorial.

I'd suggest go to your school library/local library/bookstore/online and try to find an actual book that teaches QBasic if you need to learn more.  Then again, it'd be best in the long run if you move on to a more modern language like Visual Basic.  Especially if you want your game to move beyond text and beeping into at least primitive 2D graphics and tolerable sound/music.

But yes, start small before anything else.  A text-based puzzle game is a good start.  Have fun and good luck!

[guest]

Oh oops &#A0;

You could make some sort of RPG

I definitely do not recommend starting off your first game programming project with an RPG.

RPGs are just too involved, even text ones.  You need to come up with a story, characters, enemies, menus & actions, world maps etc.  You then need to come up with reasonable algorithms for doing battles and other stuff (think about all the RPGs you've played.  How much do you actually know how they calculate damages etc. in battle?).  I'd save RPGs for much later.  In fact, it might be best to create RPGs not using an actual programming language but things like RPGMakers that already provides the backbone of an RPG engine so that you can focus more on the game design aspects of things, which for an RPG is like 90% of the game if you think about it.

Are you going to go into a different Screen mode and use graphics? Or stay mostly text based?

For QBASIC, I'd suggest forget about doing graphics.  The support for it is just too primitive, it's not worth the trouble.  And in any case, if you're going to start off small, text is the way to go.

How much experience do you have with QBASIC? If not a lot, maybe you should start on some smaller games first before trying a big project.

It's also good to keep in mind that in creating the game, there's game design and then there's game programming.  Since changing things in the program is generally harder and more troublesome, it's best to work out the game design to a point where it is mostly finalized, then program the game off of the design.

Sometimes you might design games that you never end up programming to completion either because it is too much trouble or because you don't have the know-how, but at least you have a game concept you can go back to in the future or share with others.

[guest]

For QBASIC, I'd suggest forget about doing graphics. &#A0;The support for it is just too primitive, it's not worth the trouble.

I just want to add a little to this comment.  Basically (no pun intended), if you're going to do graphics in QBASIC, be prepared to do most of your graphics as a combination of circles, rectangles and lines (and okay, I guess the occasional flood-filled polygon).  This is what I mean by primitive.  Yes, QBASIC technically has bitmap support, but it is so impoverished you really don't want to go there, trust me.

[Timballisto]

We had to do a graphics project in my class.  It was an animation, and just by doing that, I know what you mean.  The only graphics worth making would be still pictures.  Those would be possible and not bad looking if you put some effort into them.

I DEFINITELY didn't/do not plan on making an RPG.  I know how comlicated those are just by playing one and thinking about one.  Even a small one would take a lot of work.  When/if I do make one, I'm going to start small.  Maybe I'll make a sequel after that.  Oh, and I don't like RPG maker becasue of the combat style (final fantasy type).

I have already made one game that is so small that it's pathetic.  Maybe I could make an improved version of that.

Other than Qbasic, I can use flash, which I think has a lot of advantages in graphics manipulation, but is about the same in the aspect of the code.  Neither one can do anything 3d at all...well, maybe some flash genious could put together some kind of 3d system (with everything-cameras and all.).

Hey, whoever has any Qbasic games made should post them on here.