#retro programming

This time it's 800x600. And the color palette is like MS DoS. Four colors.

Two backgrounds to choose from. The sprites are different colors from them.

Blue and pink backgrounds.

This time, science fiction about spaceships!

Basic Pascal version 1.21 "Sand Road" – most newest version. In this version there are 4 new games! Straight Road, Galixanar, Crest and Shooting Mod X, Fish Arcade Extreme Mod. And even more retro games! It is a pack of retro games with modern versions of Basic and Pascal.

Basic Pascal: http://www.dimalink.tv-games.ru/games/basicpascal/index_eng.html

Website: http://www.dimalink.tv-games.ru/home_eng.html

Also music and sound. From the previous game. Just a demonstration of the feature.

And the in-game menu. It's the life force, a portal. At the bottom of the screen. Real font. Not a picture.

Basic Pascal version 1.21 "Sand Road" – most newest version. In this version there are 4 new games! Straight Road, Galixanar, Crest and Shooting Mod X, Fish Arcade Extreme Mod. And even more retro games! It is a pack of retro games with modern versions of Basic and Pascal.

Basic Pascal: http://www.dimalink.tv-games.ru/games/basicpascal/index_eng.html

Website: http://www.dimalink.tv-games.ru/home_eng.html

Another development of this type. I'd love to make different games like this.

It has screen scaling. From Magnitude 1 to Magnitude 5.

I spent time on this engine. Specifically, for programming. To load PNG files, play MP3 music, and write True Type fonts. In Russian and English.

Basic Pascal version 1.21 "Sand Road" – most newest version. In this version there are 4 new games! Straight Road, Galixanar, Crest and Shooting Mod X, Fish Arcade Extreme Mod. And even more retro games! It is a pack of retro games with modern versions of Basic and Pascal.

Basic Pascal: http://www.dimalink.tv-games.ru/games/basicpascal/index_eng.html

Website: http://www.dimalink.tv-games.ru/home_eng.html

I'm also currently learning Lazarus. Good old Delphi. As they say. For a modern Windows system. And I want to share some simple points. I'm spending time learning myself. And I've decided to write about this as a blogger, too. Simple things. In line with the popularity of Delphi and Lazarus.

Anyone who programs in Turbo Pascal, Free Pascal, Delphi, or Lazarus knows the wonderful Case of operator. The selection operator. In other programming languages, it looks like Select case, Swith. It's like a variant of the conditional operator. They're studied right next to each other. Right at the start.

It's convenient to iterate over values ​​using Case of. This has saved me more than once. In the Lazarus environment, you can create variations on this operator.

You can specify multiple enumerations, writing multiple values ​​directly in a line. You can demonstrate this using the alphabet as an example. Specify a bunch of possible values ​​in one line.

C:='f';

case С of

'a','b','c','d','e','f','g','h':

Memo1.Append('[a-h]!');

'i','j','k','l','m','n','o','p':

Memo1.Append('[i-p]!');

else

Memo1.Append('out of range [a-p]!');

end;

Or you can write ranges. For example, when we encounter a case in the range from 1 to 10. Perform such-and-such action.

A:=15;

case A of

1..10: Memo1.Append('[1-10]!');

11..20: Memo1.Append('[11-20]!');

21..30: Memo1.Append('[21-30]!');

else

Memo1.Append('Out of range [1-30]!');

end;

When I first started learning, I was confused by the Else branch of actions. This branch is different. There's no colon there. So that you can start describing the case later. Just the else keyword. And the case starts right away. And you don't have to put begin and end there. You can even do without them. Even if there are a bunch of operators. This really surprised me. For me, the entire Pascal-Delphi language family is closely associated with the begin-end construct. Don't know what to write? Write begin-end. As they say. It'll look smart. You write some operators. Something there called begin. Somewhere there called end.

A:=15;

case A of

1..10: Memo1.Append('[1-10]!');

11..20: Memo1.Append('[11-20]!');

21..30: Memo1.Append('[21-30]!');

else

Memo1.Append('Out of range [1-30]!');

Memo1.Append('your A is' + IntToStr(A));

end;

So I'm learning! And I'm sharing my impressions of learning. About simple things!

Dima Link is making retro videogames, apps, a little of music, write stories, and some retro more.

WEBSITE: http://www.dimalink.tv-games.ru/home_eng.html ITCHIO: https://dimalink.itch.io/

I've already done some ideas. And I can improve them or change something. On the other hand, my illness has slowed my activity. I'm recovering now. I'm still feeling a bit weak, but my activity isn't quite where it should be. I also noticed a few things in my Free Basic projects that I wanted to change.

First, the graphics. Free Basic itself understands the BMP format via the BLoad command. I decided to try other graphics formats. Jpg, PNG. Anything along those lines. There are many libraries for these things, and I've tried them all. It's been a while. I made mistakes every time and couldn't quite get it right. But I settled on FbPng. It worked.

It's the sound. Free Basic can play WAV files. But they're very large. My games are simple. And things like a WAV track can be extremely large, much larger than all the graphics and code. The sound was faster. That was the first thing I started changing. And it worked quickly. It gave me hope that I could use libraries to expand Free Basic's functionality, and do so with a simple interface.

It's the font. Again, I don't know if Free Basic can handle Russian text or UTF-8. I haven't figured it out yet. I decided to use a library, too. It's FreeType2. I use it to create text. I tested it. I've already gotten some results, but I haven't figured it all out yet.

Right now, I'm working on things like this: graphics, sound, and text using libraries in Free Basic. In a simple version. I haven't figured everything out yet. So the projects themselves are on hold for now. I'm working on these developments.

The sound worked right away. I quickly Googled it. The FBSound library popped up. I stumbled upon it right away. I tried it right away. It worked. There was a slight, extraneous, harsh sound, though. At first. But it just lost everything.

But I struggled with graphics. I tried a bunch of libraries. It was basically like studying. AI isn't exactly an implementation. I had to figure it out a lot. I had to try them out. They were all different. I tried FBImage; it seemed like it was a simple library. But I didn't get it. Then there was something about JPG. But I didn't get it.

Then came more serious developments. Like OpenIL, now called DevIL. Everything there is originally in C. And there is documentation. But it's not that clear. I even configured something there. But I still couldn't get it. I realized I'd spend too much time trying to figure it out. Basically, I need to put it aside for studying. Learn how to use it. Then there was Cairo. Also a large library for graphics. I thought I was starting to get it working. But I spent a lot of time figuring out how to run it. It was starting to work. But only the beginning. In the end, it didn't work out.

And FBPng was the last thing that saved me. And a separate program like ImageMagik. To convert everything from jpg to png. Lots of sprite images. That's all I've figured out so far. I can scale images. I can just output images. That's all I've figured out so far. I still need to figure it out.

So, about sound. FbSound seems to work. But there's a sharp sound when playback starts. With FbPng, I still need to figure out how to make the background of an image transparent. And it looks like it'll be ready.

And Freetype2 for text. I've only just figured out how to write English text. It's also a pretty tricky output format. But I wrote a procedure that can print something. But I need to keep working on it. It's still a bit wonky.

That's the progress I've made on developments and projects. All of this is for Free Basic. Although there are options for other programming languages. I haven't figured that out yet. A lot of it is for C. That's for sure. But for Free Basic, you also use BI files that sort of link these libraries to the Free Basic environment. It's tricky, of course. But it seems to be working. But it's still a bit wonky, and not everything.

Basic Pascal version 1.21 "Sand Road" – most newest version. In this version there are 4 new games! Straight Road, Galixanar, Crest and Shooting Mod X, Fish Arcade Extreme Mod. And even more retro games! It is a pack of retro games with modern versions of Basic and Pascal.

A turn-based tactical game. Cover and shooting. You emerge from cover and shoot at the enemy. The enemy does the same.

The game's core is the same as the original. It just has a few new features. These are effects. Some are purely visual, while others affect gameplay. This is a visual choice of cover. As the game's title suggests, there are tank crosses here. That's why they're available. Double, triple. Just the letter X drawn multiple times.

Also concrete, a square like this. A brick wall. A square with a pattern. And a house. This is a wall with a pattern and a window opening. This is an external visual choice. And a choice of weather. This is rain. Snow. Small, medium, or large. This is a visual effect. A static image of stripes or stars symbolizing snow and rain.

There's also fog. It's also small, medium, or large. There will be horizontal stripes on the other half of the screen—where the enemy is. And the option of pitch black or long range. This affects gameplay. You can't see the enemy. It's either very dark or very far away. You only see the bullets fired by the enemy.

The initial idea for the modification was to use the long range or pitch black mode. The menu has also changed a bit. The title screen, but not much.

Fish Arcade Extreme Mod. Another modification. This one revolves around line of sight. Gameplay has been sped up. And the line of sight is constantly decreasing. You swim like a fish. And dodge rocks. It's still the same game. But there's a line of sight. And as you level up, it gets smaller. So, the game has become more dynamic. And a life bar has appeared.

The first level is similar to everything before. And during the first half of the game, the line of sight decreases as you level up. Little by little. At first, it's unnoticeable. But starting in the second half, you only see half the screen. And you have to react a little faster.

A nice game about a fish. I also changed the story. There's a bit of text here. And the main menu background. You just use the arrow keys to move. Only up and down. And you move within a narrow plane. And avoid the black rectangles—rocks.

The fish swim everywhere. In the ocean and the river. In the pond and the lake. In dark water and clear water. Otherwise, it's the same game as before. About a fish that swims and swims. Still, the dynamics have increased. But again, not by much. This is where the limitations of the Graph module come into play.

For Turbo Pascal or Free Pascal. The Graph module is perfectly suitable for graphics, but more static ones. You can draw and color beautiful graphs. That's true. But full 60 frames per second gameplay will flicker the screen a lot. I deduced this from my attempts to do something about it.

And so the happy fish swims somewhere further! And you have 10 lives. The stripe at the bottom is like this. Bright green. Or blue. Such a bright color. A bright toy about a fish.

Basic Pascal version 1.21 "Sand Road" – most newest version. In this version there are 4 new games! Straight Road, Galixanar, Crest and Shooting Mod X, Fish Arcade Extreme Mod. And even more retro games! It is a pack of retro games with modern versions of Basic and Pascal.

The game is simple, and perfect for relaxing. Eight simple levels. Two lines of enemies. There are 10 enemy sprites. Two lines of 10 enemies per line. They move slightly left and right. So the image isn't static, but a little more dynamic. They dance a little. Left and right. One step left, one step right. One step left. One step right.

And now they move forward, about 5 pixels at a time. For example, take a step forward 5 pixels toward the player every five seconds. It's just like Space Invaders. As soon as those monsters get right up to you, you lose!

Also, you have 1,000 energy units. That's lives. Monsters shoot 100 at a time. And if you shoot, three shots equals one monster. So you have to hit the monster three times. I tweaked the entire menu so everything displays properly. I wrote my own image display method. But there, it's just letters and numbers. That's a task for a programmer.

And then a language selection screen appeared. Russian and English. Before the game starts. All the text in the game is actually BMB images. There are 8 levels. And the odd levels have a dark purple tone. And the even levels are pure black. For variety. And a retro effect. Also, the odd levels have all the monster sprites. So, there are 10 different types. And there are 20 of them on the screen. And on even levels, only one enemy type is always shown. So, all 20 monsters are some kind of one type. Everything is done randomly.

Something like music appeared. In WAV file format. It's not even music. It's underwater sounds. As if you're underwater. Deep in water, submerged in the ocean depths and blowing bubbles there. It turned out very atmospheric! Deep-sea diving.

At the same time, the detail that this is happening in the game became clear. It's like Space Invaders – this is space. And here everything is deep underwater on another planet. Imagine a planet that is one big, deep ocean. You are deep underwater.

In the deep sea depths. As if on a distant planet in space. People only imagine such a planet in theory. An element of science fiction. And there is a deep ocean. And everything around is one continuous water. Dark. And water. Black. It's dark. Purple.

And some creatures might live there. Like in Lovecraft, something dwells in the depths. A life of its own. Not much like humans. Something dark lives there. Some kind of fish. Or reptiles. Or octopuses. It's not clear what. But they have submarines there. They're like spaceships, but underwater. And there are some strange-looking creatures there. Some creatures, like deep-sea fish.

And the game takes place in the depths of this ocean. That's why I chose the background sound to resemble bubbling bubbles deep underwater. As if a bathyscaphe were floating there. Some kind of apparatus. Or a diver. Complete immersion in the darkness of the ocean. And there are monsters and submarines.

Quiet. And only the air escaping to the surface. This is a distinctive feature. It makes this game unique compared to Space Invaders. There's space. And here it's deep underwater. On another planet. And the game is simple, in a small window. So you can play in the office! Quick! For a positive person. It's not difficult to play. Like! Oh! I completed eight levels deep underwater. On another planet. And it's like Space Aliens. All arcade games aren't that simple, usually.

The shooting is active. That is, you have to press the spacebar. Or you can hold it. But it's designed so that you press it. Like typing on a keyboard. You tap the spacebar moderately and rhythmically. And press left and right. The dynamics are moderate.

That's about a shot every 0.3 seconds. Roughly. Enemies also have their own shooting rating. As they level up, their abilities increase. They fire more often. This is a limited number of bullets on screen. And the firing time is determined by the interval. For each monster on the screen.

At the beginning, for example. Only two shots on the screen. But in the last level, there are a lot! And on the first level. It's rare. And on the last level, the monsters fire much more often. Lots of bullets on the screen.

Deep underwater, there's a world of its own. And its own space aliens. Underwater aliens. It's a simple game!

Basic Pascal version 1.20 "Lagushka" – most newest version. In this version there are 4 new games! Udochka, Parohod, Auto Car Stop, Lagushka. And even more retro games! It is a pack of retro games with modern versions of Basic and Pascal.

8 game levels. 33 car sprites. And 9 types of things on the side of the road. Left and right arrow keys. And just drive and avoid other cars.

A simple game for the office. And for a sunny mood. Even if it's virtual! But a sunny day! Let's go to the seaside.

Basic Pascal version 1.20 "Lagushka" – most newest version. In this version there are 4 new games! Udochka, Parohod, Auto Car Stop, Lagushka. And even more retro games! It is a pack of retro games with modern versions of Basic and Pascal.

Basic Pascal: http://www.dimalink.tv-games.ru/games/basicpascal/index_eng.html

Website: http://www.dimalink.tv-games.ru/home_eng.html