My recent personal BASIC for DOS projects->
Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2025 11:16 am
Occassionally, when I get around to it and feel like it I will still write something fun in an old BASIC dialact for DOS (GWBasic/QBasic/QuickBASIC/VBDOS/TurboBASIC).
None of them are really useful except perhaps as examples for those wanting/needing to learn a really old BASIC dialect but they might be amusing to hobbyist retro-programmers. So what things have I written in these old BASICs?
-An analog clock
-A digital clock.
-A simple paddle tennis game.
-A Tetris clone.
-A rudimentary scrolling background demo.
-A MIDI player (a heavily modified version of Bisqwit's MIDI player)
-A method for rendering rotating 2d geometric shapes.
-A viewer for 3d-wireframe shapes. (Probably not very effecient but works without libraries and demonstrates the basics.)
- A few geography practicing games.
-A Connect Four clone.
-A Pac-Man like maze game. (Call it a Pac-Man rip-off if you must.)
-A really simple space shooter.
-... And lots more.
Could I improve any of these with some effort? Probably. And I might, but I view these programs as fun little projects I do in my spare time. There are a few vb6/vbnet programs meant for more serious use which got more work put into them. Feedback is fine, but keep it reasonable.
Oh and where can you find all of this?
http://github.com/peterswinkels
PS:
Normally I wouldn't advertise myself in such a banal manner on a forum, but I expect only people who even remember using such classic BASICs bother to visit here anymore to begin with.
If you want point to your own repository or post something here. Perhaps we can chat about it a bit.
None of them are really useful except perhaps as examples for those wanting/needing to learn a really old BASIC dialect but they might be amusing to hobbyist retro-programmers. So what things have I written in these old BASICs?
-An analog clock
-A digital clock.
-A simple paddle tennis game.
-A Tetris clone.
-A rudimentary scrolling background demo.
-A MIDI player (a heavily modified version of Bisqwit's MIDI player)
-A method for rendering rotating 2d geometric shapes.
-A viewer for 3d-wireframe shapes. (Probably not very effecient but works without libraries and demonstrates the basics.)
- A few geography practicing games.
-A Connect Four clone.
-A Pac-Man like maze game. (Call it a Pac-Man rip-off if you must.)
-A really simple space shooter.
-... And lots more.
Could I improve any of these with some effort? Probably. And I might, but I view these programs as fun little projects I do in my spare time. There are a few vb6/vbnet programs meant for more serious use which got more work put into them. Feedback is fine, but keep it reasonable.
Oh and where can you find all of this?
http://github.com/peterswinkels
PS:
Normally I wouldn't advertise myself in such a banal manner on a forum, but I expect only people who even remember using such classic BASICs bother to visit here anymore to begin with.
If you want point to your own repository or post something here. Perhaps we can chat about it a bit.