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Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2001 13:21:15 -0400
From: John Colagioia <JColagioia@csi.com>
Organization: No Conspiracy Here...
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gilbert184@us.inter.net wrote:

> hi im just learning qbasic and since i used to love IF and text
> adventures i was wondering how about making one to learn a bit? well
> im having some trouble so far.. i dont know how to make doors and such
> so that if you do something THEN the next room would be accessible.. i
> also need help with inventory and items.. and most likely NPC's as
> well. i was thinking of someway to learn these and i couldnt find an
> IF tutorial and i cant even find a qbasic sourcecode of a good IF. i
> was really hoping to find one called Resident Bad which is decent. Can
> anyone help me out? a sourcecode or a website would be really
> helpful.. thanks!

That's...uncivilized!

OK, not really.  What you're going to find (as many before you have found)
is that IF is not a good example to learn programming in languages not
designed to support such work (either through the language itself, or
through extensive libraries).  QBasic is one of those not-entirely
friendly languages.

If you're using QBasic to learn to program in general, you may want to
hold off on IF, or at least keep your "goal" in line with what is most
easily doable.  I'd be remiss if I didn't suggest other languages to begin
your programming education with (LOGO comes immediately to mind,
actually), but I'm a bit partial to versions of BASIC, myself, having
grown up with it.

If you're already a programmer (and, by that I mean the rather liberal
definition of "you can write a decent program that does what you want in
some programming language"), and you really want to write IF, I'd heavily
suggest one of the "IF Authoring Systems" available.

Let's see, though.  Pointers.
    http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXgamesXsource.html (search
for the word "BASIC")
    http://www.textfire.com/raiffaq/ifaq/ (third column, second item from
the top, in your case, which will point
        you to some nice alternative systems)
You may also want to check out the computer books at Alibris
(www.alibris.com), since they occasionally have a gem on programming text
adventures fairly cheap, though the dialect of BASIC you're likely to run
across will be for the Apple ][ or C=64.  I got a copy of "Golden Flutes &
Great Escapes: How to Write Adventure Games" for less than $5, as I
recall.

I hope that helps out, some.


