[Coco] Back to BASIC

Thu Apr 6 15:22:35 EDT 2017

Hi all,
My BASICS came on the VIC-20.
I badly wanted a Commodore 64 or a Color Computer, but for my Commodore friends and I, the Tandy machines were "the other guys".
But RS's were everywhere in the Midwest, so the Tandy's were always very "drool worthy".
My friend and I did some type-ins and some small games and life moved on.
Now, I just want to get back to ALL that stuff that I wanted to learn then and never did.  Assembly Language still seems super cool to me, but definitely filled with "smoke and mirrors and magic" at the moment!
Funny, I work by day managing a US IT Datacenter for a large chemical corporation, but the only computers I like to play with at home are retro!  :)
For the the Retro-World is still wide open!  Lots to learn, lots to do.  Heck, I'd just like to know as much as some of you have already forgotten!  ;)
Thanks,

Johnny

      From: Steve Strowbridge <ogsteviestrow at gmail.com>
 To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com> 
 Sent: Thursday, April 6, 2017 9:24 AM
 Subject: Re: [Coco] Back to BASIC

Thank you Alexander for the kind words!

Seven Chapters!! Wow!! I hope you didn't get bored to sleep and end up
injuring yourself in the work shop :)

BASIC on the CoCo was my entry into computer programming, like most kids of
the day, I'm sure, I followed the very user friendly book, actually
"learned" the language and was able to apply it and create original
programs, I rarely "typed in" any programs, I enjoyed the process of coming
up with the ideas, then working out the logistics of making everything work.

I started on a 16K Standard BASIC, and cut my teeth on that for a year or
two, my 2nd CoCo was the 64K white CoCo 1 with Extended Color BASIC and I
went to town with that, loved doing high res games with PMODE 3 and 4,
using PCOPY and GET/PUT to create sprites, move objects without erasing the
background, experiment with screen scrolling, etc.

All the things I saw the pros do in assembly, I tried to mimic in ECB, and
other than the vast difference in speed, I was able to recreate most of the
tricks.  For whatever reason, it never occurred to me that I could also
attempt to learn assembly myself, I was a kid, and I thought that was what
grown ups did.  I went to college for computer programming, and thought it
would be taught to me there, I was disappointed that it wasn't, they were
covering DBase, Fortran, Cobol, and BASIC, and BASIC I already knew, and
those others, I had no interest in, so I didn't say in college for
programming.

I transitioned from CoCo to the Tandy 1000 in 1986, I got ahold of MS
QBasic sometime after that, and enjoyed many years through up to the late
90's programming in Quick BASIC on MS-DOS based systems.

Anything I ever made was always a game, I had no interest in anything
"serious".

My biggest claim to fame, with my own software was a game I made, which
actually started as an "I told you so" in College, where I told the guy
sitting next to me "I can make a space invaders game", and he said "no you
can't" and before the class was over, I already had the skeleton of the
game up and running in QBASIC.

That became a game called "Cosmic Aliens", it was DOS Text based, the
smiley faces characters were the aliens, they dropped bombs, there was a
text character that looked like a bomb, and your ship was two characters
together that looked like a line graphic space ship, you shot arrows up in
the air like Galaga.

That game grew over time, was circulated through BBS systems, I put the
usual shareware messages on there, like "if you'd like to support this
game, mail a check to..." and at one point and time, the "mail to" address
what the retail store I worked at in Fort Lauderdale called the Byte Shop.

Turns out, the game was a favorite of a person in the military, and he said
he and his buddies like the game, I found this out, because he came to
visit me at the Byte Shop to tell me that.  I was blown away by that.  I
grabbed the source code and modified it, and created a custom version for
him, and gave him the updated EXE file, he was happy about that.  I think I
also got a random product review of that game somebody mailed me, and even
an offer to buy it by a company in Canada called Ninga software or
something like that.  My 15 minutes of game fame were under a very small
spotlight, but it was very rewarding to know somebody in the military was
able to entertain themselves while at a base with my game.

Another game I made for DOS, which never got circulated was called "Garden
Worm" and it was a spin on Centipede, where you were the Centipede, so kind
of a hack clone of the various Snake type games, there was food to eat to
get larger, there were prizes for points, and there were special items that
would either make you bigger, smaller, faster, or slower, and there was an
enemy centipede "worm" you had to avoid.

I wrote a ton of games on the CoCo, my most interesting was a Donkey Kong
clone based on the rivets level where you jumped over rivets to clear the
board, to make this game, I created a level editor, and then it became sort
of game engine oriented where basically you could create any level with any
arrangement and number of rivets, and as long as you could get to them all,
and pop them all, you could clear the level.  You would have to specify
where you wanted the animated donkey kong to stand, and how many fire balls
you wanted and their starting position.  Other than that, the game ran with
whatever design you could throw at it.  This was all done in the low res
64*32*9 color mode, but was quite playable.

My biggest regret is not having any of my original floppies, I had them all
until the early 90's even, let somebody borrow my CoCo and my floppy case,
they ended up getting evicted from their apartment, and they were never
seen again.

Long answer, to your post, I'm sure, but... What I wanted to do with this
series, was to re-learn the language, perhaps get some new people
interested in simple programming concepts, and at the end of the book,
start working on a new, original CoCo game project in BASIC, maybe even a
few games.

That's still the plan, and I also plan on learning assembly, which I might
as well also turn into a series, and then come up with a game at the end of
that, which, hopefully, I'll be able to debut at next year's CoCoFEST!

-End of Line

Steve Strowbridge, aka
The Original Gamer Stevie Strow
http://ogsteviestrow.com
ogsteviestrow at gmail.com

On Thu, Apr 6, 2017 at 8:51 AM, Alexander Wallace <
alexander.o.wallace at gmail.com> wrote:

> I’ve worked as a software developer, mostly client/server and web apps
> since 1997, but my memory of CoCo’s Basic and other of it’s languages has
> pretty much disappeared as I’ve recently found out :)
>
> Your videos are a great companion tome while doing something else in the
> evenings, (metal or wood working or what not), I watched 7 yesterday, and
> really enjoyed it!
>
> I truly appreciate what you’re doing there and look forward to seeing all
> the videos for all the chapters, some for CoCo3 too and assembly :)
>
> Thanks a lot!
>
> > On Apr 5, 2017, at 3:30 PM, Steve Strowbridge <ogsteviestrow at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > It's been a long time coming, but I got around to going through and
> > recording two new chapters in my programming in BASIC video series, so
> > chapters 10 and 11 are now available for your viewing discomfort.
> >
> > The play list to the entire series is:
> > https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDfh7JjQaSYA1fP5KwRiOwefFIIF1Alid
> >
> > I started this series aimed at a non-technical, non-coco owner, so it's
> > based on using VCC as the emulator, and using the PDF of the CoCo 2
> > Extended color BASIC manual from the Color Computer Archive.
> >
> > I had planned last year to finish the book, make a simple game in BASIC
> as
> > a project putting all the pieces together, and then move on to assembly,
> > and try and learn that.
> >
> > That didn't exactly happen, so going to try and make that happen this
> year,
> > and have this series done, and some type of assembly project to show off
> at
> > CoCoFEST 27.
> >
> > Thanks to all who have encouraged me to continue to do these, it's can be
> > quite brutal for me at times :)
> >
> >
> >
> > Steve Strowbridge, aka
> > The Original Gamer Stevie Strow
> > http://ogsteviestrow.com
> > ogsteviestrow at gmail.com
> >
> > --
> > Coco mailing list
> > Coco at maltedmedia.com
> > https://pairlist5.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
>
>
> --
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>

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