Erik_
I've been working on a QB interpreter written in COBOL...
Sat Dec 04, 2021 3:31am

I've been working on this on and off since early October. It's finally at a point I figure it's worth sharing. I'm not really sure "why" I made it besides just looking for something to write in COBOL at the time but here it is... a Qbasic interpreter written in COBOL. Being that it's in Gnu COBOL it's actually a Qbasic program interpreted by a COBOL program transpiled to C and compiled to binary. It's crazy that this many levels of converting work. lol

It's currently a bit slow with processing some loops and stuff. Also the start up is a bit slow as it loads up the whole program into memory and then iterates through each line and figures out where loops, ifs, subs, etc are located. When I side by side with my 486.. it runs the Qbasic programs at about the same speed (where no bugs pop up... that star field in Wry is a killer to performance!)

Here s a video of some old games side by side. Including Beefian Tail which inspired Wry which inspired Go Home. You can see the menu in all 3 looking very similar.. It's fun to go back at the source and watch the size shrink. Puck, your version is definitely, without question, the cleanest.

Anyway... here's the video:


Now that this is in a "workable" state, I can focus solely on the QB Christmas Challenge until its release.

    • The Wry is strong in that one... - Puckdropper, Sun Dec 05 2021 4:43am
      Or I guess the Beefian is strong in Wry. Wow, that's pretty awesome. 4+ levels of conversion! You should definitely throw up a "for sale" page and write an install guide for that... Then submit it to thedailywtf.com! Wow. And it works! Is your QB interpreter running at full speed on a reasonably... more
      • Go Home was really helpful in development.... - Erik_, Tue Dec 07 2021 2:45am
        It contained a good assortment of GOSUBs, SUBs, GOTOs, arrays, IF, SELECT, etc... it was a good CLEAN starting QB code to parse against. Wry and Beefian Tale have some really gross QB code that I'm surprised works honestly. There was even a spot in the video where Wry randomly crapped out on the menu... more
        • Yeah, I don't think I had anything really funny - Puckdropper, Wed Dec 08 2021 5:42am
          or cool. Maybe it was a cosmic ray? Those things hit, flip a bit on an already unstable piece of code, and boom! Crash! Sometimes I see code like that and wonder if I've come in long after something's been deleted. I mean it could have been: GOTO 1 PRINT#1, "AT LINE 1" 1 CLS I'm amazed... more
          • Yeah, nothing really hidden as far as I remember... - Erik_, Sat Dec 11 2021 2:53am
            Beefian Tale and Wry are loaded with unused subs or "secrets" in subs where Go Home doesn't really have that. Which is fine, it's a fun game without digging through a trash heap. :) Actually, I almost forgot how much I enjoyed playing it before I started this project. It's a solid text adventure that... more
            • "I was the man who created it. No one else shared my genius - Puckdropper, Sat Dec 11 2021 5:43am
              . I have forgotten, therefore no one knows." Text Game, ah man what a great game. It says right there in the credits "this was done in an afternoon because some moron asked for it." It's just too bad it never caught on. :-) There were a few secrets hidden in Going Home. A few random instant... more
              • Beefian Tale has a similar "instant win" - Erik_, Wed Dec 15 2021 2:26am
                There's an early point in the story where you can grab the crown and become the king and get the "cheap win". I always liked that. I'm glad CBI gave me an excuse to sit down with Go Home again. It's really a fantastic text adventure game. Ever think of making any more?
                • Not really. My wife says I should open a YouTube Channel - Puckdropper, Sun Dec 19 2021 4:41am
                  it'd probably that sort of humor... I just don't want to make my life revolve around "editing" like so many YouTubers seem to.
                  • My friend and I thought about doing that... - Erik_, Thu Dec 23 2021 4:47am
                    about 10 years ago. It was going to be a review of gross/weird food or something like that with a stupid humor approach. I'm sort of glad I decided against it too. I wouldn't want that to be my career path at this point... even more so after hearing all the crap some lower-mid level YouTubers went... more
                    • So Shamrice almost had YouTube? - Puckdropper, Thu Dec 23 2021 2:30pm
                      It would have taken the world by storm! You needed to show someone in the shower washing their hair (It's YouTube, G rated) and eating it too. (I guess you could upload the XXX video on some other site, but I just can't see it helping Shamrice any...)
"Forces act when not restrained" - Puckdropper