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[Aquin]

http://www.dreamofwinds.com/lonely/?p=863

Wherein I delve back into the world of QBasic to see if any great games have been made since I left.  I used to follow it along with ZZT way back in 1999.  I stopped sometime after that, distracted by other things. 

A lot of cool stuff has popped up since.  It's too bad QB is now on the way out.   

[team_q]

My brother and his friend used to make QBasic Adventure games called Lost, they had a fan site. I made a couple animations in QBasic, but that was about it.

[JoeHonkie]

Just use FreeBasic.  It's an upgraded version of QuickBasic with backwards compatibility modes and it's cross-platform.

http://www.freebasic.net/ - seems to be down at the moment.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i never used quickbasic but i used qbasic (they are different things)

[JoeHonkie]

i never used quickbasic but i used qbasic (they are different things)

They are very similar though.  Qbasic is mostly a subset of QuickBasic with a few small changes thrown in.

[Aquin]

Heh, I actually never realized that.  I just assumed that QBasic was Quick with a few little things thrown in.  I didn't realize they were really different.

I'm looking into FreeBasic right now and it looks like pretty interesting stuff.

[PsySal]

QBasic was the ``free'' version of QuickBasic that came with MS-DOS. I think with DOS 6 it may have no longer been included, but it was in DOS 5 I think.

QuickBasic mainly had the ability to create a .EXE and to link to libraries, so it was a bit more of a full-fledged tool. I think the language was nearly identical to QBasic. You had to purchase it separately.

There was something above QuickBasic, I can't remember what it was called, which included data structures and a few extra language features. I think it might have been called QuickBasic: Professional Development System.

TA-DA! QBasic really was awesomely fun, it had basic graphics that you could use for games, the best I think being MODE 13h which was 320x200 and had 256 color graphics. And you could learn to set the palette without too much difficulty, which made for some pretty graphics! Hooray!

[Alec S.]

I remember using something called "TrueBasic" when I was young, but I don't really know where that fits into the "BASIC" family.

[Iamthejuggler]

I programmed an awesome (i thought) text based farm management game in qbasic back when i was about 12. Those were the good old days! I'm not sure how i managed to escape being beaten up on a regular basis back then ...

[Ina Vegt]

FreeBASIC also has some pretty sweet performance, those guys know how to write optimizing compilers.

[deadeye]

QB4.5 was awesome, I rather miss it.  Had some fun programming with that back in the day on an ancient Compaq with Windows 3.1 installed on it.  Good times.

[Peti29]

Yeah, QB45 is my childhood . Ok, among many other things, but still. I remember well.
I also used that screen mode (320x200,256 color). Didn't know how to read bitmaps so I wrote my own "icon editor" with which I could create sprites pixel by pixel and save it in a raw format.
I programmed many half done games with it. (I only ever created unfinished games in my life  )

[Alec]

I used QB45 back in the day.

Was (sort of) part of the QBRPG scene. (although I never released my QBRPG)

Memories... 

[Kekskiller]

QuickBasic, QBasic, QB... my first programming language, yay! I hated the editor, the help system, the illogical syntax and just everything about it. During these days I was total programming noob - barely able to code something like procedures or functions :D .

[deadeye]

Didn't know how to read bitmaps so I wrote my own "icon editor" with which I could create sprites pixel by pixel and save it in a raw format.

:D I did exactly the same thing... I created a sprite drawing/animation program just to make sprites for my game.  I stole some mouse code out of someone's asteroids game and used it in my drawing program .  It had a Screen 13 color picker, copy/cut/paste, flip and mirror, frame selection, animation preview... you worked in a 4x zoomed window with a regular sized preview window to the side.  That thing was awesome, much better than the game I was making with it.

It's all gone now, though.  The 3.5" floppies I saved and re-saved to time and again went kaput ages ago.

[yesfish]

I learned to program with QBASIC. After searching long and hard for a way to make games, I finally arrived at that program (at age 10/11). I still have the most useful programming book to me on my shelf: "QBasic, the language of DOS". No programming book I know is clearer with the essential concepts, even though it is quite outdated now.

[Zaknafein]

I remember trying combinations of PSETs, RANDOMIZE TIMER and FOR loops that made colorful patterns that somehow formed parallel lines... My mind was blown.

It was such a fun, messy language to learn with.

[hatu]

Didn't know how to read bitmaps so I wrote my own "icon editor" with which I could create sprites pixel by pixel and save it in a raw format.

:D I did exactly the same thing... I created a sprite drawing/animation program just to make sprites for my game.  I stole some mouse code out of someone's asteroids game and used it in my drawing program .  It had a Screen 13 color picker, copy/cut/paste, flip and mirror, frame selection, animation preview... you worked in a 4x zoomed window with a regular sized preview window to the side.  That thing was awesome, much better than the game I was making with it.

It's all gone now, though.  The 3.5" floppies I saved and re-saved to time and again went kaput ages ago.

That's really advanced. I used to add a few PSET lines at a time and run to see how it looked.

[mirosurabu]

I made some music in it, I recall.

I didn't have a book. I just discovered it and experimented with it. I used to type random word in lower case so that after hitting enter if the word was automatically upper-cased I'd assume it's valid instruction and write it in my "instruction notebook".

There were some instructions I never knew what they were for or how did they work. Examples: POKE, DRAW, PAINT.

I made a pong game with continuous music and lots of other small games.

My PC had Hercules graphics adapter (which means - monochrome) so QBasic was all black-and-white for me.

[Alec]

I remember trying combinations of PSETs, RANDOMIZE TIMER and FOR loops that made colorful patterns that somehow formed parallel lines... My mind was blown.

It was such a fun, messy language to learn with.