Posts Tagged ‘1990s’

• By Rich

  Tags

  1990s, AMOS, darkbasic, Retro

  Posted in

  Game Development

  5 comments

  Welcome to the DarkForge – An archive of all my old DarkBASIC code

  17th Sep 2014

  5

  

  Back in 1999 I started using a language called DarkBASIC. As its name implies it was a version of the BASIC language sitting on top of DirectX and pimped out with lots of great 2D and 3D features. Coding in DarkBASIC looked something like this:

  make object sphere a,50
  texture object a,1
  scale object a,x,y,z
  position object a,6*a,20,-15
  point object a,20,30,20
  

  As you can see, it’s easy to read and understand. And honestly, it was great fun! I was utterly hooked.

  At the time nothing much really existed on the PC for easy game making. Sure, there were some “click and drag” style tools. But if you wanted to code in anything other than C++ your options were limited to say the least. And if you wanted to use a language that was specifically for making games, your options were even smaller.

  The big two of the day were DarkBASIC, created by Dark Basic Software (who later renamed to The Game Creators), and Blitz Basic, created by Blitz Research. Both companies are still going today, but back then the competition between them and their users was fierce! To be fair, Blitz had the upper hand both in the elegance of its language and performance, having been born from the equally powerful Blitz Basic on the Amiga. Where as DarkBASIC was more like AMOS from the Amiga, both in its syntax, ease of use and style of marketing. This was no mistake as the founders of Dark Basic Software worked at Europress and were instrumental in the publishing of AMOS. As a result, DarkBASIC utterly thrived.

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