QuickBasic Cafe Forum

Wow...this forum and some of the web sites related to QBasic are still active?  Pleasant surprise!  

I'm not the only one who still fiddles with it!   ;D

A few month's back in the forum I noticed someone asked "Who uses QBasic?"  
It sounded like mostly gamers and hobbyists, like myself.

Is anyone using QBasic for non-game programming?

I use QBasic for fun and, admittedly, for nostalgic value.  It's also not so "serious" a language, which helps me focus on the "fun" part, otherwise, I tend to get bogged down when using C++ and (God, help me), assembly.    Forget Windows programming...I never took the plunge.

Sure thing - am using QB.4.5 for graphics in train track display - having lotsa fun with old hardware!!!

Hi.
I came across this site just out of luck,
I havn't used QB in about 10 years, used to play with comport comms and  parallel port for control apps.

That was version 4 or 4.5 i forget  :-[

I just d/l the V7 of this site and will give it a go shortly, see what im missing  :o

I might even get my ancient Tandy 286 up and running again (if it still works) ;D

Cya

to an extent im doing some non game programming.
to tell you the truth im still learning QB
i use QB because its just simple and easy to use commands seems to get the job done.
i write simple AD&D utilities as well. working on my very first door program for bbs now.
cant find alot of reference on the net and no books to help me.
having trouble getting the program to display a welcome screen from the computer.
using C++ scripting language i can simply tell it to

cmdkey 1
             chkfile "c:\help.txt"
          if_true
                    printfile "c:\help.txt"
          end_if
end_cmd

i use that code in c scripting to simply if they hit the 1 key it displays help.txt
or if a program first starts up i simply tell it

          menu c:\menu.ans"
is there a simple way in QB to display welcome screens
and set input commands to display DOS files?

one of my projects is a bbs bulletin program

where a portion of my code looks like this

print " 1. newuser bulletins"
print " 2. info on free email account

input "Select Bulletin :>",input$
if input $="1" then goto 200
if input$="2" then goto 250
goto top

200 this line will tell qb to display bulletin 1

and so forth.

can you help

Daniel Spain
www.azonebbs.net229.ca

Try to use subs instead of line labels. Linelabels tend to get confusing and are harder to debug. sub and functions are very powerful if you use them right. Break down subs to simple tasks like displaying a file or sending a message. another sub may be to simply read in the message from the user, and so the sending one would only handle the communicaitons portion. Sorry, this is a lower level language than a script, and so you must use more simple tools to create things like printfile and cmdkey

I've used quickbasic (on and off) for nearly 13 years now for non-gaming purposes.  I never realy got into the gaming portion but I'm somewhat familiar with those capabilities.  I'm more the data manipulator than hardward, so I won't be answering too many h/w questions.

In the past, I've created full blown database management programs, report generating programs, created interface tools to printout barcodes and interact with DBase 3+ database for invoicing back in the DOS 4, 5 and 6, and Win 3.x days with dot matrix printers.

About two months or so, ago, a friend had d/l'd a game that she liked but it was one of those that stops after 12 times of usage.  I created a QB hack to reset it back to 0.  And she's happily used it about 185 times now.

Just recently, got out an old 'file splitting' program [which every programmer has gotta have/make one].  But, it was hastily written some 10 yrs ago, I'm just greatful that I DID put some REMs and used understandable variables to make the required changes.  I'm thinking of giving it a complete make over; more intuitive and possibly add mouse interface instead of only using the keyboard.

Funny thing was: I'd never would have given it a second look if my boss didn't want to email a 17 MB+ file (and this was WinZip'd) to 5 people, whose web servers only allowed 2 MB of storage or less.

Let that be a lesson to all you newbies out there, learn NOT just to code...but to code well.  Yes, it easier and faster to code a program without making notations, but what if you need to make changes ot it 10, 11, or 12 weeks down the road? let alone 10 years!  And yes, before you ask, it was time stamped and on a 5 1/4 disk.

Yes, QB is my first language of choice.  Even though I know several others, it's still my baby.  

--MiggyD