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by sras-me
1 day ago
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I am also doing something similar here [1]. But I decided to NOT use BASIC as the language. Instead I implemented a new language with more modern features like foreach loops, closures and a less verbose syntax etc. But the focus is still on getting the same IDE experience as QBasic IDE as well as the graphics/sound capabilities as the good old QBasic. Another priority was the availability of built in documentation help with example, which was also a great thing about QBasic. Not being able to run in the browser is a purposeful choice I made. I want the users to distance themselves from the browser (which I think is an abstraction that is best avoided in the context). You can take a peek here [2] where you can see a video demo of the IDE loaded with the program for a partial clone of the paratrooper game. [1] https://hackage.haskell.org/package/spade
[2] https://vimeo.com/835347764 |
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Mine is definitely more about achieving as close to perfect parity as possible with Microsoft QBASIC (a dog-eared copy of the Microsoft QuickBASIC Compiler book circa 1985 is sitting on my desk right now), but it also dives pretty deeply into the technical decisions behind some of QBasic’s quirks and how it worked with MS‑DOS at the time.
So it’s just as much an educational tool for understanding how BASIC pulled off certain effects. And with the hardware abstraction layer, it also mimics period‑appropriate hardware (386SX, 486DX, etc.).
I took a look at the video. The only thing is that I had a hard time making out what was going on. I could clearly see the green cannon at the bottom, but at the top it just kind of turned into a smeary, artifact-y mess. I don’t know if that was a result of vimeo's compression or what, but I'd consider re‑uploading it at a higher quality.