Relive the wonders of your youth and make 3D games with DarkBASIC

Filed under: Developer, Games, Retrocomputing

I'm looking at you guys and wondering if you remember MS-DOS. I mean, I'm not that old, and I had computers that ran MS-DOS, so... there must be some people here that remember BASIC? QBASIC? How about BASIC on the Atari? Tiny BASIC? Failing that, I'm sure those of you that went through college during the dot-com bubble experienced Visual BASIC?

Anyway, I'm rambling. Basically (!), there's a newer iteration of the Beginner's All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code and it's both awesome and shiny! DarkBASIC is as malevolently geeky as it sounds. It's crazy how far DarkBASIC actually extends the usual bounds of a 'beginner' language: it has high-level access to DirectX, support for almost every 2D image format, built-in 3D primitives (see the full feature list) -- but most importantly it's really easy to use. Despite all the extra functionality (and 730 commands!), the syntax is as simple as always.

Here's a sample block of code:

XRotate Object 1, 180
 
Scale Sprite 1, 100
 
Mirror Bitmap 1
 
Set Text Font "Arial"
 
Set Light To Object Position
 
If Joystick Fire A() Then GoSub PlayerShoot

Pretty simple, eh?!

It's free to download if you use the 'trialpay' option (where you sign up with a service like VistaPrint or Interflora), or you can buy it for $9.99 through Intel's netbook-oriented AppUp Center. There are also plenty of tutorials and quick-start guides to get you moving!

Curious? Check out the brief video walkthrough by Intel Atom developer Bob Duffy after the break!

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Relive the wonders of your youth and make 3D games with DarkBASIC originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 02 Feb 2010 07:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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