Atari 8-Bit Action
Hot on the heels of the poker game, I wrote a blackjack game for the 10-line BASIC contest. It is also in TurboBASIC XL on the Atari 8-bit, and also in ten 120-character lines. I borrowed the card shuffling code from the poker game, but otherwise it’s all new code.As always with these short...
Atari 8-Bit Action
A quickie, final entry for the 2019 10-liner BASIC contest: GARDEN. Inspired by arjanvandermeij’s #plottertwitter art “8 bits binary flowers,” I wanted to create something similar on the Atari 8-bit. I recently learned how to draw ellipses in my work on Renderiffic, my SVG renderer for Atari...
Atari 8-Bit Action
My sixth entry in the 10-line BASIC contest is Bomber, a Kaboom! clone. It’s written in Turbo BASIC XL and fits in the PUR-120 category. You need a paddle controller and quick reflexes to catch the mad bomber’s falling bombs. The game ends when you miss five bombs. You earn one point for catching...
Atari 8-Bit Action
My fifth 10-line BASIC contest entry is Bouncy, a throw-the-ball-into-the-goal game loosely based on “Cup” by Jonathan Freidin from the 1979 book “More BASIC Computer Games.” I have never actually played Cup, but read the sample game and code in the classic red book many times over as a kid. The...
Atari 8-Bit Action
One of the great features of the Atari computers was the ability to redefine the character set. Normally, the character set — the collection of letters, numbers, punctuation, and special symbols that the computer can display — is pulled from ROM, where it can’t be changed. But the Atari had the...
Atari 8-Bit Action
I love the BASIC 10-Liner contest! I didn’t find the time/energy/whatever to enter in 2018, so am excited to write some short BASIC programs for this year’s contest. First out of the gate is Floody Bot. This will be an entry for the EXTREME-256 category.My soft overarching theme for entries this...