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Looking for 2 items

Casey

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May 31, 2016
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Fairfield, Ohio
Not sure where to put this request, or even if I should split it into two posts. Both are mainly sentimental.

The first part is simple; I've lost my copy of 101 BASIC computer games from a long time ago. My "friends" might have tossed it when I was in the hospital a few years ago. It shows up sometimes on fleabay at inflated prices. Can someone point me to a non-extortionate priced copy or an online version?

The second one is tougher. A long time ago, when I first bought a 2 floppy Compaq Portable (with a whopping 256K ram) I also bought a book on BASIC programming. This was interesting in that they explained concepts of structured programming, then provided examples. Basically each chapter had me type in a different section of the total program so I wasn't overwhelmed by trying to type it in all at once.

The program itself wasn't flashy; it was sort of like a non-TSR Sidekick PIM. I remember specifically the routine where pressing F4 brought up a small window to add notes to an appointment.

The book itself was in the form of a 3-ring binder, but with plastic fixtures, not metal. The covers were hard, and colored red with yellow and/or white lettering.

Does this ring a bell with anyone? It's a long shot, I know. Just feeling nostalgic.

Next up, seeing if I still have the issue of Dragon magazine that featured a BASIC program to generate 1st Edition AD&D characters!
 
Next up, seeing if I still have the issue of Dragon magazine that featured a BASIC program to generate 1st Edition AD&D characters!

Did it specify what it was written on? What do you mean by foist ed. AD & D? You don't mean the original digest sized manuals? I had all that stuff. The first "basic" or whatever it was called blue rule book. I actually found that in a Barnes and Noble in a mall of all places, long after they stopped printing it. I was an rpg nut back when. I don't have any of that stuff anymore though. Ebay has rpg magazines all the time. When I look though I only for stuff specific to space or superhero games.
 
Did it specify what it was written on? What do you mean by foist ed. AD & D? You don't mean the original digest sized manuals? I had all that stuff. The first "basic" or whatever it was called blue rule book. I actually found that in a Barnes and Noble in a mall of all places, long after they stopped printing it. I was an rpg nut back when. I don't have any of that stuff anymore though. Ebay has rpg magazines all the time. When I look though I only for stuff specific to space or superhero games.

First Edition AD&D, just as I said. All the books were hardback. NOT D&D, just to be clear.
advanced_dungeons_and_dragons_dd_players_handbook_1st_edition_original_cover.jpg
 
The DragonDex lists two computer programs with source code for AD&D.

Issue 74 has a character creator whose BASIC source runs to 2.5 pages of very small print in two columns. 620 lines if the line numbers did the usual jump by 10. A search on Spann and D&D turns up a pastebin of the source modified to work in QBASIC https://pastebin.com/iiFFWWU3 Edit: the pastebin code seems to work in PC-BASIC a modern Windows compatible clone of GWBASIC

Issue 80 has a program to simulate dice rolling and to calculate combat results. Much shorter at 317 lines.
 
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The DragonDex lists two computer programs with source code for AD&D.

Issue 74 has a character creator whose BASIC source runs to 2.5 pages of very small print in two columns. 620 lines if the line numbers did the usual jump by 10. A search on Spann and D&D turns up a pastebin of the source modified to work in QBASIC https://pastebin.com/iiFFWWU3 Edit: the pastebin code seems to work in PC-BASIC a modern Windows compatible clone of GWBASIC

Issue 80 has a program to simulate dice rolling and to calculate combat results. Much shorter at 317 lines.

I spent a lot of time on random number generation in modeling class, and have written several dice rolling routines myself, including Pascal & C++.
A long, long time ago I actually rewrote that program in FORTRAN. True story. ;-)

The listing you mention sounds familiar. Thanks for the pointer! Also for mentioning PC-BASIC. New to me.
 
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Online versions of 101 BASIC Computer Games:
DEC version: https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_decBooks10Mar75_26006648 includes PDF
Micro version: https://www.atariarchives.org/basicgames/ not a PDF. I'm sure a PDF is out there but I didn't spend any time looking.

The atari archive was very nice, but super star trek wasn't in there. I have fond memories of playing that in the early 80s on the Miami University Vax*. We used TeleVideo 950 terminals.
...I did a lot of work on one of those terminals. Had the PF keys all customized to save time.

I've found a copy of Super Star Trek, but they saved memory space by cramming the keywords together thusly: fori=1to9:foobar:nexti
This gags gwbasic. I found an gwbasic interpreter, but it uses a Windows command line windows, so I can't use full screen. :( Yeah, I know #firstworldproblems.

The D&D program runs just fine with GWBASIC (under DOSBox), but it's not AD&D. I honestly don't remember if that's the source code I used before. I know at the time I changed it to AD&D character generation rules, including roll 4d6, drop the lowest, and adds/subtracts to scores when you selected a character race, so it might be the original I modified. I rewrote it in FORTRAN and later Pascal. That was a long time ago.



I think it was a Vax; it was a long time ago.
 
Other GW-BASIC collections:

http://peyre.x10.mx/GWBASIC/ This has a readable version of Super Star Trek. Note that at 18K (tokenized) or 21K (ASCII), this is nearing the limit of what will run on a 64K 5150.
https://github.com/robhagemans/hoard-of-gwbasic Contains just about all the GWBASIC code ever posted to the web
https://github.com/robhagemans/basicode Basicode is a synthetic BASIC that when merged with the correct startup block would run under GWBASIC. Helps to know German or Dutch since those were the languages most examples were written in.
 
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