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Text adventure classic Colossal Caves converted to BASIC

Published: 18th Apr 2009, 14:48:35 | Permalink | Printable

Gareth Lock has translated the C source code to Colossal Caves to BBC BASIC, documented it and now needs text adventure fans to play test it.

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Discussion

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Interesting. I'm working on a BBC BASIC compiler for .NET/Mono and have been hunting around for interesting BBC BASIC programs to feed it. Some of the early Acornsoft text adventures, like Sphinx Adventure, have pretty horrible code!

is a RISC OS Userrobsmallshire on 19/4/09 6:50PM
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Unfortunately, your aim is impossible, due to BBC Basic's dynamic and arbitrary nature. An interesting project, none the less; especially if you separate parser from code generator!

is a RISC OS Userrjek on 20/4/09 12:14AM
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Interesting. What makes you say it's 'dynamic and arbitrary'? Most previous attempts at compiling BBC BASIC have stopped short at translating EXEC call, and that seems to make the lanuage non-dynamic. And as for it being arbitrary, do you mean it has undefined behaviour? I can't think of any examples off the top of my head - though given it has so few implementations and they're mostly written by the same people the defacto behaviour is probably consistent. Don't get me wrong, BBC BASIC is a perverse language for many reasons but I've always considered it to be a simple subset of a more modern language (and an impressive feat for a 16k ROM).

But yes, a nice reusable BBC BASIC parser would be a good thing to have.

is a RISC OS Userninja on 21/4/09 6:03PM
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Nonsense. You just need a decent runtime system, containing enough of a compiler to deal with the dynamic features. The vast majority of BBC BASIC code in any program is eminently compilable. The small parts that aren't can be interpreted or jitted; I never claimed that all compilation could be done ahead of time...

is a RISC OS Userrobsmallshire on 22/4/09 6:02PM
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You'll need an entire compiler in the runtime. And the hoops to jump through some of the baroque control structures you can create will be flaming and radioactive.

is a RISC OS Userrjek on 23/4/09 12:12AM
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Or an entire interpreter; and we know one of those will fit into as little as 16 kB.

is a RISC OS Userrobsmallshire on 23/4/09 2:10PM
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Sorry you said something was impossible with BBC BASIC?

is a RISC OS UserAW on 20/4/09 1:53PM
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Sorry, you said something?

is a RISC OS Userrjek on 20/4/09 3:45PM
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