Direct Links to In-Browser Demos

[jgharston]

Just a bit of fun:

http://mdfs.net/tty/

There's a few little bugs in the implementation, and ESCAPE and BACKSPACE aren't recognised yet.

[Deleted User 9295]

I've added Alien Eliminator to the list of in-browser demos at the top of this thread.

[BigEd]

There's a lot going on there - feels to me that a reimplementation of Swiv would be possible. Although, on my machine, the controls were perhaps just a tad sluggish. I think the frame rate dropped to about 17 too, at some points.

[Deleted User 9295]

Although, on my machine, the controls were perhaps just a tad sluggish. I think the frame rate dropped to about 17 too, at some points.

Yes, running Alien Eliminator in a browser is a bit daft, it's more to show what's possible rather than a serious application (some people are seeing consistently higher frame rates than either you or I get; I suspect they have gaming PCs with superior GPUs).

If you actually want to play the game, download the native bundle for your platform:

• Windows: http://www.rtr.myzen.co.uk/AlienEliminator_win32.zip
• MacOS: http://www.rtr.myzen.co.uk/AlienEliminator.dmg
• Linux (64-bits): http://www.rtr.myzen.co.uk/AlienEliminator_linux.zip
• PiOS (32-bits): http://www.rtr.myzen.co.uk/AlienEliminator_rpi32.zip
• PiOS (64-bits): http://www.rtr.myzen.co.uk/AlienEliminator_rpi64.zip

The Linux/PiOS versions need SDL2, SDL2_ttf and SDL2_net to be installed from your repository, if not already. The MacOS bundle is Intel, but it runs at full frame rate on an Apple Silicon (M1) Mac under Rosetta2 emulation.

David Williams's games are some of the best demonstrations of what can be achieved with 'modern' BBC BASIC on a 'modern' platform, although I know neither of those holds much interest for the majority of Retro Computing enthusiasts at this forum.

[Deleted User 9295]

I've added Cowboy Shootout, Treasure Tower and metronome to the in-browser BBC BASIC demos linked at the top of this thread.

They should work in the following desktop browsers: Brave, Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Opera and Vivaldi, and also in the Android versions of Chrome and Firefox Nightly. They unfortunately will not run in Internet Explorer, Safari or any iOS browser (complain to Apple, not me!).

[Deleted User 9142]

I've added Cowboy Shootout, Treasure Tower and metronome to the in-browser BBC BASIC demos linked at the top of this thread.

I feel I should mention that the original BB4W* version of Cowboy Shootout was conceived as an instructional example program which once came as part of the GfxLib2 (game library) package, and that the original BB4W version of Treasure Tower is actually a minigame or subgame of Maizie Bones (remember Lazy Jones, anyone? ) which in 2018 won 1st place in a maze-themed code-a-game contest over at SyntaxBomb. As they are now part of the BBCSDL package, I hope the source code (pure BBC BASIC!) will be useful to those thinking of making games with BBCSDL.


* BBC BASIC for Windows

[Deleted User 9295]

I feel I should mention that the original BB4W version of Cowboy Shootout was conceived as an instructional example program which once came as part of the GfxLib2 (game library) package

It says this in the post at the top of the thread: "cowboy: David Williams' Cowboy Shootout GFXLIB demo".

If you worry that people will judge your program harshly because of its simplicity, that would at least be some reaction! It's preferable to total apathy, which is a more typical response to BBC BASIC for Windows and BBC BASIC for SDL 2.0 at this forum.

[BigEd]

It might just be silent appreciation, Richard!

(On another forum, a calculator forum, a quite prolific writer appears to have withdrawn because he felt he was getting insufficient encouragement. But I do believe he did have an appreciative audience, and one or two of them said as much in response to his farewell. It's a shame to lose a contributor, but some people are lurkers, or prefer only to post substantive points, and that doesn't work well when a person needs some positive feedback.)

[danielj]

It might just be silent appreciation, Richard!

I can absolutely guarantee it's this. People just tend not to comment unless they're complaining about something. It's the same with absolutely everything (including everything I do at work).

[Soruk]

It might just be silent appreciation, Richard!

I can absolutely guarantee it's this. People just tend not to comment unless they're complaining about something. It's the same with absolutely everything (including everything I do at work).

It's like the IT department at any workplace. Nobody thanks you for everything working perfectly. But the moment something has the slightest wobble they're all over you like midges in the Scottish Highlands.

[Deleted User 9295]

It might just be silent appreciation, Richard!

No, it's not. When I first joined this forum, my (naïve) thinking was that "these people are interested in the BBC Micro, so they are probably also interested in BBC BASIC, so perhaps they'll be interested in my BBC BASIC". What I failed to appreciate is that if you're interested in 40-year-old BBC BASIC you inevitably judge it to be an obsolete language, irrelevant in the 21st century. So rather than being more inclined to take an interest in 'modern' BBC BASIC, they are less so than those with no historical background.

[BigEd]

Best, I think, to think of this as a place where some people are going to be interested in some particular idea, and it's a good place to find those people. Even if most people here are not those people - that's not a problem. Anyone who speaks purely out of negativity will soon be noticed by the mods.

[1024MAK]

We have a mix of different members here.

Just as on other forums for 1980s, 1990s and other 8 bit, 16/32 bit ‘home’ computers.

Some (well, in some cases, most) are most interested in gaming. Some are interested in tinkering with hardware. Others are interested in programming. Of this, some in high level languages like BASIC (yes, there are some members who want to learn to program in BASIC), while others are interested in learning to code, or making new software using assembly language/machine code. And of course, some are interested in multiple areas.

Of those that want to use BASIC, some want to learn on original machines or emulators of real hardware. While others prefer using more advanced versions and using these on more modern hardware (such as PCs).

Hence, yes, the number of members here that will be interested in ‘modern’ versions of BBC BASIC may well be a minority. But instead of dwelling on this, instead look at the number of views at the topics about your BBC BASICs. Even taking into account that some people will have viewed a topic multiple times, the count number indicates that far more people are reading about your topics than many other topics on here or other computer forums.

Mark

[danielj]

Hence, yes, the number of members here that will be interested in ‘modern’ versions of BBC BASIC may well be a minority. But instead of dwelling on this, instead look at the number of views at the topics about your BBC BASICs. Even taking into account that some people will have viewed a topic multiple times, the count number indicates that far more people are reading about your topics than many other topics on here or other computer forums.

And the forum doesn't count views by non-logged-in individuals. We have MANY more of them than we have registered, logged-in users viewing topics.

[Deleted User 9295]

Added DW's 'Bouncing + squishing GFXLIB graphic' demo.

[BigEd]

Impressive!