Converting Code - SuperTrek Wanted & Discussion

KudzuKid

Hi All,
I'm pondering converting one of the many "original" SuperTrek games to True BASIC, but I thought I'd check and see if anyone else has already done it (why reinvent the wheel?!). Most of the listings I see have the dreaded "?" in lieu of "PRINT". I think I'll have a bit of work to do to convert line numbers and perhaps some math & string functions may need work.

I have TB Gold and the Advanced String Library so that may help. Not sure if I'll need some enhanced math as well - I see "SQRT" (square root) in the source listing. Anyhey, just talking out loud here.

To my point: Has anyone else already converted SuperTrek to True BASIC?

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BASICProgrammer

Hello KudzuKid, I'm new to this forum and to True BASIC, which I bought a few weeks ago. It's depressing to me to see how the True BASIC movement/forum has faded away, and now Kurtz is gone, right when I'm getting interested in the thing and the history of True BASIC and its (losing) battle with the Microsoft BASICs ...

I wanted to point you, if you didn't know, to the Utilities & Demos downloads page to this site, where there is a free utility to translate typical (i.e. Microsoft) BASIC code to True BASIC, plus documentation to understand the main issues and do the finishing touches to what the utility puts out (or so it says, I haven't actually tried to download and use it).

Sorry, I don't know at the moment whether your game and others have been converted to True BASIC. I was writing more from the angle of conversion issues:

I think the SuperStarTrek game might have been originally (?) published in David Ahl's BASIC Computer Games (?), which was published in 1973. At the web link http://vintage-basic.net/games.html for that book, there are the main code and instructions in basic files. Interestingly, the code is in what I think was termed "crunch" form, which was enabled by primitive "street" BASIC's limitation of variables to a maximum of one letter and one numeric to follow. That limitation actually made it possible for those BASICs' parsers to unpack packed text code, so code could be traded that way back in the memory-scarce days of the BBS's I think it was.

Anyways, I've been working on a multi-dialect BASIC engine that is now trying to take on at least meaningful subset of True BASIC. I bought the True BASIC to help test and maybe move things along. But I'm also interested in the old "crunch" BASICs support in my engine, and I haven't yet programmed in a "crunch" code unpacker, but I am thinking of it again after reading your post. Thus, if you signal an interest, there's that possibility I might go to work on an uncruncher utility sooner and share the result with you if it succeeds.

Or - you might try the True BASIC converter on crunch code if you have crunch code. Well, now I'm getting curious if the converter can handle "crunch" code and I might download/test it out ...