it is 2025 and i am manually typing a 446-line basic game from a book

the software i'm using by the way is PC-BASIC which i found out about yesterday

it's a modern recreation of GW-BASIC, BASICA et al, simulating many video modes including Hercules and even Tandy 3-channel sound

robhagemans.github.io/pcbasic/

the book targets C64, TRS-80, Spectrum and Apple, so we'll find out what bugs arise and need to be fixed only once i'm done typing and try to run it

i think it's mostly working... but i think something on the parser is still wrong

on top of some typos i made, i've had to make quite a few modifications as the book doesn't recognize IBM/GW-BASIC as one of the languages the game is ported to

fwiw the parser on this is equal parts extremely clever and extremely jank - only the first 3 letters of a command are parsed

yes part of the typos keeping it from working were here πŸ˜…

oh nevermind!

went to check on a dumped BBC copy of the game (it has a fancy title screen, perhaps usborne published it as a disk at some point, or a superfan made a very fancy version?) and the behaviour i thought was a parser bug is there just as on my conversion

well, time to test play it through then :)

after fixing a couple more typos, it seems the game is playable

but i'm rubbish at it πŸ˜…

i'll take a break for today, i've taken down notes on what i found interesting about this experience to write a blog post on later

@mavica_again And of course, that means the beginning of the most frustrating^W rewarding phase of type-in software copying: Finding out if why it won't run is due to transcription errors or a printing error.

@arielmt because the book doesn't consider IBM PC/GW-BASIC one of the variants the game has been ported to :)

@mavica_again More type-in books needed encouragement and perseverance illustrations.

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