A QBasic Text Adventure Still Expanding in 2025(the-ventureweaver.itch.io)
the-ventureweaver.itch.io
A QBasic Text Adventure Still Expanding in 2025
https://the-ventureweaver.itch.io/
39 comments
This brought me a wave of nostalgia for the old Qbasic "operating system" projects, of which there were many. This site has a lot of reviews and screenshots:
http://qbasicgui.datacomponents.net/
Ans this site has more
http://theguiblog.com/
It was a popular style of project. Some even implemented their own programming languages so they could multitask applications written for them by running lines from each app in a round-robin fashion.
http://qbasicgui.datacomponents.net/
Ans this site has more
http://theguiblog.com/
It was a popular style of project. Some even implemented their own programming languages so they could multitask applications written for them by running lines from each app in a round-robin fashion.
Was just about to link this. I was a part of this scene at age thirteen! Was largely how I taught myself fundamentals of programming and how to solve problems. When I'm feeling particularly nostalgic, I'm occasionally tempted to fire up something like DJGPP and finish my childhood dream of making a useful GUI for MS-DOS.
My own project is on there still!
http://qbasicgui.datacomponents.net/89_exshell.html
http://qbasicgui.datacomponents.net/89_exshell.html
I wrote a ton of QBasic / QuickBasic code as a kid. Until I got turned-on to Turbo Pascal it was my jam.
Because QBasic would run on versions of Windows NT that had the NTVDM (virtual DOS machine) I used it as a scripting language on early NT systems I supported. Eventually I moved over to VBScript under Windows Scripting Host when it arrived on the scene.
Because QBasic would run on versions of Windows NT that had the NTVDM (virtual DOS machine) I used it as a scripting language on early NT systems I supported. Eventually I moved over to VBScript under Windows Scripting Host when it arrived on the scene.
> I used it as a scripting language on early NT systems I supported
Me too! Well, sort of. Between the ages of 14 and 19 I worked as a part-time helpdesk technician. When I started we used a series of bootable floppies with DOS to use Symantec Ghost. If memory serves two floppies were required - the first had DOS and the requisite NIC driver and the second was universal and merely had GHOST.EXE on it. I developed a bootable USB memory stick image comprising all of the NIC drivers along with Ghost and a series of other useful things like a WinPE environment and maaaaaybe a Linux one via loadlin.exe. I ended up making a boot menu/shell for it in QuickBasic.
It was still in use a year or two after I'd moved to doing software engineering professionally. I wonder whether it's sitting in a drawer someplace on the other side of the country. I also wonder how this thread turned into a chronicle of my youthful programming misadventures :-D
Me too! Well, sort of. Between the ages of 14 and 19 I worked as a part-time helpdesk technician. When I started we used a series of bootable floppies with DOS to use Symantec Ghost. If memory serves two floppies were required - the first had DOS and the requisite NIC driver and the second was universal and merely had GHOST.EXE on it. I developed a bootable USB memory stick image comprising all of the NIC drivers along with Ghost and a series of other useful things like a WinPE environment and maaaaaybe a Linux one via loadlin.exe. I ended up making a boot menu/shell for it in QuickBasic.
It was still in use a year or two after I'd moved to doing software engineering professionally. I wonder whether it's sitting in a drawer someplace on the other side of the country. I also wonder how this thread turned into a chronicle of my youthful programming misadventures :-D
I did something very similar as a kid - a bunch of almost like DEMOSCENE stuff (simple line rotations, psetting all over the place, doppler sound effects, etc.) before dropping the user into a TUI with little games, etc.
I remember first reading about the DATA command in the IDE built-in help (what a fantastic resource) and laboriously copying my drawings of monsters on graph paper into lines of comma-delimited ones and zeroes in DATA statements.
Since we had a copy of QuickBasic 4.5 I was able to compile it to an EXE and place it in the AUTOEXEC.BAT - fun times!
I remember first reading about the DATA command in the IDE built-in help (what a fantastic resource) and laboriously copying my drawings of monsters on graph paper into lines of comma-delimited ones and zeroes in DATA statements.
Since we had a copy of QuickBasic 4.5 I was able to compile it to an EXE and place it in the AUTOEXEC.BAT - fun times!
Kindred spirits! Me discovering that QuickBasic was able to liberate my proggies (as I called them for a brief stint) from the confines of the editor by compiling them to EXEs was one of the happiest moments of my young computer life.
Hacking EXPLORER.EXE and changing the Start Menu side graphic with Borland Resource Workshop was another notable one.
Hacking EXPLORER.EXE and changing the Start Menu side graphic with Borland Resource Workshop was another notable one.
Love it. One fun hack that I figured out as a kid was that while you couldn't get rid of the mouse in Win9x - you could deliberately create a completely transparent "CUR" file.
Watching an adult try to navigate in Windows with an invisible mouse was like the digital equivalent of using a dowsing rod to find water.
Watching an adult try to navigate in Windows with an invisible mouse was like the digital equivalent of using a dowsing rod to find water.
> I'm always happy to see projects like this and OHRRPGCE where people did something useful with the language.
Also still active after 29 years in development :) and even still looks much the same as its MS-DOS days.... so decades of work left to do. Recently ported to modern consoles (for Fighto Fantasy & Axe Cop RPG)!
I hope it didn't take too long for you to discover the wonder of GOSUB -- simulating it with GOTO and IF is a pain! GOSUB is just a single x86 'call' instruction and RETURN a single 'ret' instruction. So simple; a taste of assembly programming without stack frames. I even reimplemented GOSUB/RETURN as macros with assembly in FreeBASIC that way (you could just push to the stack). And putting all your code in a single scope, no locals/globals/arguments, makes coding more "fun".
Also still active after 29 years in development :) and even still looks much the same as its MS-DOS days.... so decades of work left to do. Recently ported to modern consoles (for Fighto Fantasy & Axe Cop RPG)!
I hope it didn't take too long for you to discover the wonder of GOSUB -- simulating it with GOTO and IF is a pain! GOSUB is just a single x86 'call' instruction and RETURN a single 'ret' instruction. So simple; a taste of assembly programming without stack frames. I even reimplemented GOSUB/RETURN as macros with assembly in FreeBASIC that way (you could just push to the stack). And putting all your code in a single scope, no locals/globals/arguments, makes coding more "fun".
I wanted to share a project I’ve been building for decades The Labyrinth of Time’s Edge, a massive handcrafted text adventure written in QBasic. Yes, QBasic in 2025. The game currently spans over 3,600 interconnected rooms, with unique NPCs, branching pathways, cursed villages, haunted castles, and secrets hidden across an ever-growing world. Every room is written by hand. Every description is crafted to spark the imagination. It’s built to run on the barest of systems, and it will always remain free to download and play. Why QBasic? Because simplicity has power. Modern engines demand assets, shaders, and endless pipelines. QBasic lets me focus on what text adventures do best imagination, atmosphere, and story. My philosophy is to expand outward rather than upward: instead of inflating systems, the Labyrinth grows through new areas, new lore, and new journeys, ensuring it always feels alive and endless.
Amazing dedication! QBasic was also my first taste of programming.
I wonder what you'd consider the tradeoffs of QBasic vs something intentionally geared towards IF, like Inform[0]?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inform
I wonder what you'd consider the tradeoffs of QBasic vs something intentionally geared towards IF, like Inform[0]?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inform
Inform6 would set these rooms in hours...
Just create a Room class, which is something done in miliseconds (basically
a room with a 'has light' atrribute), and being creating objects like crazy
until the v8 Z-Machine gets exhausted (very difficult as it has been pumped up to great limits).
Also the game would run on PC's, Linux/BSD machines, DOS, Classic Macs, Amiga, Ataris, Android, IOS, OSX, RiscOS... everywhere from 16 bit and up.
Also the game would run on PC's, Linux/BSD machines, DOS, Classic Macs, Amiga, Ataris, Android, IOS, OSX, RiscOS... everywhere from 16 bit and up.
Yes! According to this post, someone tried to find the max rooms in Inform 7 and stopped at tens of thousands. Took long to compile (not run) and used a lot of memory, but not an issue.
https://intfiction.org/t/i7-realistic-max-number-of-rooms/99...
That's inform7, a different syntax than inform6, but in the end both compile against the same virtual machine.
Still, inform6 OOP syntax with the English library it's like a really dumbed down Python more OOP than Python itself. Literally, as you are playing with objects in-game with literal attributes mapped 1:1 to the syntax. An enterable object in order to be that it must have the 'enterable' attribute defined in the object.
Fantastic.
I shared your post on twostopbits.com. A site dedicated to retro gaming and computing. Would love to have you share your story over there.
I shared your post on twostopbits.com. A site dedicated to retro gaming and computing. Would love to have you share your story over there.
to the readers under about 25, qbasic was our roblox.
How much programming features does Roblox have? I still prefer scripting in text files.
> How much programming features does Roblox have?
You can check out Roblox Studio - https://create.roblox.com/landing
And Luau is the scripting language - https://luau.org
You can check out Roblox Studio - https://create.roblox.com/landing
And Luau is the scripting language - https://luau.org
Thanks, looks like it can do a lot, no wonder kids love it.
I was having a conversation last night about explicit and implicit digital children spaces.
Qbasic was implicitly like under 18. There were a few hobbyist adults but they were rare. Roblox and Minecraft occupy the same space but they are more explicitly youth spaces.
This exploration made me realize that there probably are genuinely people over 40 with no children around who enjoy these modern platforms like Minecraft and Roblox without any questionable intent.
And honestly I think there has to be one other distinction here. Take Reddit. It's gone from implicitly to arguably explicitly a young person's space, but then there are subreddits dedicated to people of specific ages or to issues that teens face, this is yet another level - explicit and exclusive.
With the advent of age verification systems online it makes me wonder if there's going to ever be enforced youth exclusive spaces, which is probably the final corner of the quadrant here
Qbasic was implicitly like under 18. There were a few hobbyist adults but they were rare. Roblox and Minecraft occupy the same space but they are more explicitly youth spaces.
This exploration made me realize that there probably are genuinely people over 40 with no children around who enjoy these modern platforms like Minecraft and Roblox without any questionable intent.
And honestly I think there has to be one other distinction here. Take Reddit. It's gone from implicitly to arguably explicitly a young person's space, but then there are subreddits dedicated to people of specific ages or to issues that teens face, this is yet another level - explicit and exclusive.
With the advent of age verification systems online it makes me wonder if there's going to ever be enforced youth exclusive spaces, which is probably the final corner of the quadrant here
Pico8 and love2d fill the same niche as well.
QBasic was my first language even though I learned to code in like 2008, because my friends in IRC were trolling me and told me it's the best language to start with. I learned from Pete's QB Site, which is still up and an amazing resource: petesqbsite.com
I learned two things: QBasic, and don't ask good faith questions to script kiddies in the Partyvan IRC
I learned two things: QBasic, and don't ask good faith questions to script kiddies in the Partyvan IRC
I, also, found that DOSBox wasn't able to run the .exe file.
Have you considered just making the game directly playable online? Sure, this eliminates the "potentially pay me some money" funnel associated with the download link, but it would be a lot more friendly to casual onlookers such as Hacker News.
To make that happen, you'd embed DOSBox on the page itself, with a preloaded disk image containing the .exe (and/or the .bas source plus an interpreter). I have a tutorial/example here, which (six years later) still seems to run fine: https://quuxplusone.github.io/blog/2019/08/11/dragonflight/
Have you considered just making the game directly playable online? Sure, this eliminates the "potentially pay me some money" funnel associated with the download link, but it would be a lot more friendly to casual onlookers such as Hacker News.
To make that happen, you'd embed DOSBox on the page itself, with a preloaded disk image containing the .exe (and/or the .bas source plus an interpreter). I have a tutorial/example here, which (six years later) still seems to run fine: https://quuxplusone.github.io/blog/2019/08/11/dragonflight/
Super cool. Is it specific to QB64 only? I glanced over the source code and see a lot of stuff that doesn't look like it would be compatible with QBASIC / QuickBasic.
Ahh, this brings memories - back in the day GORILLAS.BAS was a perfect game, and also a mind blowing piece of code (for a kid, ofc)!
When I saw a zip file for a Windows application I was worried it would do that Windows thing and unzip its contents not in subdirectory. I was pleasantly surprised it did not!
Unfortunately, when I start the exe file in DOSBox Staging it only clears the screen, shows me a blinking cursor, and then does not seem to do anything beyond that.
Unfortunately, when I start the exe file in DOSBox Staging it only clears the screen, shows me a blinking cursor, and then does not seem to do anything beyond that.
I took a look through the BAS source file - it doesn't appear to be QBASIC source. If it was compiled with QB64 (which it seems to be) then it's not a DOS compatible binary, it'll be a 64-bit PE so unfortunately only runnable on a 64-bit version of Windows.
OP says that they've been at it for decades so my guess would be it started as a QBASIC game but then was later ported over to use QB64 and its modern features.
OP says that they've been at it for decades so my guess would be it started as a QBASIC game but then was later ported over to use QB64 and its modern features.
Strange. The web page mentions it being runnable in DOSBox for non-Windows platforms, but I suppose the author might not have tried that in a while...
I've looked at the EXE file, and it's supposed to print "This program cannot be run in DOS mode." when run under (real or emulated) DOS.
The reason why it fails to do that is that the compiler did not set the memory allocation fields in the header correctly, so the stack is either overwriting random memory or may be somewhere that isn't writable at all!
Apparently nobody tests this stub code anymore, might as well leave it out completely...
(maybe Windows even accepts files that start with the PE header instead of MZ?)
The reason why it fails to do that is that the compiler did not set the memory allocation fields in the header correctly, so the stack is either overwriting random memory or may be somewhere that isn't writable at all!
Apparently nobody tests this stub code anymore, might as well leave it out completely...
(maybe Windows even accepts files that start with the PE header instead of MZ?)
The website lists “light requirements” for this game: 1Ghz processor, 512 MB of RAM
Not what I expect for a game written in QBasic
Not what I expect for a game written in QBasic
I think nowadays most people run DOSbox from a host OS so that is OK. Far less if you run DOS natively or maybe Windows 95 natively.
What's a good modern QBasic environment for Mac? I may have an ancient game or 2 in that myself!
If you want an authentic experience (proper interpreter/IDE), one of easiest ways is to get a copy of Quickbasic 4.5 and run in under DOSBox-X [1].
https://dosbox-x.com
https://dosbox-x.com
UTM with FreeDOS. Works great.
I recently set it up on my Mac, and then on my iPad, so I could get access to the decades worth of Turbo C and Turbo Pascal code I found in my archives.
I recently set it up on my Mac, and then on my iPad, so I could get access to the decades worth of Turbo C and Turbo Pascal code I found in my archives.
This is really awesome! Does it allow players to build their own rooms and connect to the main module? I don't know whether QBasic allow this kind of things, though. But maybe QuiakBasic can?
My best good friend still has a copy of it someplace on a floppy disk because we would run it on the computer that he put together out of spare parts on a piece of plywood. Thankfully he has a family and is too busy to dig it up and send it to me so I'm spared the embarrassment that would come with seeing it.
I'm always happy to see projects like this and OHRRPGCE where people did something useful with the language.