GW BASIC Game Dev Blog "The Lost Art of Programming"

[ron77]

Hi all Well, I intend to participate in the "Jam for all Basic Dialects number 5"...

I'll be coding my game to the jam in GW Basic and have already started - the game jam starts in 9 days and will end on the 31st of December, meaning I have a month.

The game will be a text game, mostly with sound effects and maybe some graphics (mostly ASCII art). The Title (temporarily might change in time) is "THE LOST ART OF PROGRAMMING."

Here are a few details about the game idea:

PROGRAMMERS TRUE DEFINITION:
PROGRAMMER(S) WERE SPECIAL TRAINED WORKERS BEFORE THE GREAT AI REVOLUTION
THEY WERE TRAINED TO PROGRAM COMPUTERS AND ROBOTS
THEY LEARNED FOR MANY YEARS THE CRAFT OF PROGRAMMING
AND CODING IN SPECIAL HUMAN LIKE PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
THEY SOLVED ALGORITHMIC PROBLEMS AND WERE TRAINED TO THINK LIKE COMPUTERS
THE JOBS FOR PROGRAMMING HAS DRIED UP ONCE THE AI REVOLUTION STARTED
AND PROGRAMMERS WERE NOT NEEDED ANYMORE SINCE ALL WORK WAS DONE BY AI
THE LAST PROGRAMMERS WERE FIRED IN 2025
THEY WERE REPLACED BY AI PROGRAMMERS

THE TIME IS THE SECOND HALF OF THE 21ST CENTURY
THE WORLD HAS CHANGED BEYOND RECOGNITION
ALL WORK OR MOST OF IT IS DONE BY ROBOTS AND AI
HUMANS ONLY WORK IN THE SERVICE INDUSTRY
THE WORLD IS RULED BY A FEW ELITE
THEY ARE THE RICHEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD
THEY OWN THE WORLD AND EVERYTHING IN IT
THEY ARE THE MASTERS OF THE WORLD
THE REST OF MANKIND ARE CONSIDERED AS USELESS
THEY PASS THE TIME DOING ART AND CREATING MUSIC
PLAYING GAMES AND WATCHING MOVIES AND TV
THEY ARE GIVEN A BASIC INCOME TO SURVIVE
THEY ARE NOT ALLOWED TO WORK OR TO OWN ANYTHING
THERE IS A STRICT 'ONE CHILD' POLICY
THEY ARE NOT ALLOWED TO HAVE MORE THAN ONE CHILD
THE RULING ELITE IS CORRUPT AND EVIL
CRIME IS RAMPANT AND THE POLICE IS CORRUPT
THE WORLD IS A DYSTOPIA
YOU AS A MEMBER OF THE COMMON PEOPLE TRY TO SURVIVE BY LEARNING PROGRAMMING
PROGRAMMING IS FORBIDDEN SINCE ALL WORK IS DONE BY ROBOTS AND AI
YOU MUST DISGUISE YOUR IDENTITY WELL ONLINE
OTHERWISE IF YOUR TRUE IDENTITY WILL BE EXPOSE YOU WILL BE TERMINATED!
WATCH OUT AND BE CAREFUL YOU ARE A SHEEP AMONG WOLVES!
YOU HAVE A CONNECTION TO A MENTOR WHO TEACHES YOU PROGRAMMING
HIS NICKNAME IS 'T-807' AND HE IS A MASTER PROGRAMMER

some screenshots so far















The game will include chat simulations and possible adventure features (where you do stuff by typing commands in a text world). As there are lots of networking and IRC/internet simulations - the player will have to interact with various entities. With His mentors, other programmers, enemies, and AI systems 

He will have tasks in doing stuff with programming (maybe) mainly in basic programming - he will (maybe) have to do stuff outside the net in the real world (go to work or get equipment to connect to the net, etc...

It will be a real PITA making this game. I hope not to lose motivation.

I'll keep you posted here about how it is coming along (dev blog) if that's okay

ron77

[ron77]

Well, today kicked started again on the game... I fixed a minor bug - you need to make sure there is a last line empty in your program; otherwise, gwbasic.exe on DOSBox will not be able to read it (no CRLF), so if your DATA statements are on the last line, it will throw an "out of data" error unless there's an empty line (this like quirk doesn't happen on PC-BASIC emulator)

Anyway, I have been testing a new intro to the game: (opening Title)



Nice hum? BMP Loader image on screen 8

and another possible opening Title (ASCII ART)



I think I'll keep them both...

[CharlieJV]

Looks great!

[ron77]

Ok, so I got the main Opening Title Screen for the game...



So far, I've made a chat simulation and a message simulation - this game is supposed to be one big gigantic Simulation...

anyway, now that the Opening Screen Title is Done I can focus on coding the game...

[ron77]

The Lost Art (of Programming) on Itch.io