For those as confused as I was, the BASIC as written will not run on a C64 (two immediate notes: BASIC 2.0 doesn't have labels, and a variable like STATS would be illegal because it clashes with the status word ST). This only works in their custom IDE which "compiles" (read "adds line numbers, alters names and tokenizes") it.
To be fair, this isn't that different from things we'd do back in the day.
I use to write BBS software in BASIC on the C64, and one of the things we'd do is use a "compiler" that would do some optimizations. What this allowed was being able to write a program too big to actually run, but the optimized version of it could.
I wish I could share more details and be less hand-wavy... but it turns out the 80's were a long time ago and I just haven't given it much thought since then (at least until I saw your comment).
Computer magazines of the era also did that with C64 listings because they were such a pain to type as is. They usually distributed a tool to type your program in first, and then published much more legible and plain text (non-PETSCII) code listings instead.
What a brilliant machine, it easily has the most active scene of any retro computer going at this point. It's a bit of a shame about the BASIC not taking better advantage of the hardware though. OTOH a lot of the brilliant programmers of today's era cut their teeth on the C64 (and Apple IIs) and probably had to resort to assembly code at times thus honing their skills. I had an Apple IIgs and it lacked an advanced BASIC to take full advantage of the video and sound capabilities. In fact home computers with a really good BASIC tuned to the computer's hardware capabilties were very rare.
> In fact home computers with a really good BASIC tuned to the computer's hardware capabilities were very rare.
And either a lot more expensive or later to the market. ROM was cheaper than RAM, but still expensive.
The Apple IIgs was later to the market, so it could have afforded a good basic in ROM, but it was so late that it could afford to load one in RAM, too, and, I guess, needed an Apple II basic in ROM for backwards compatibility.
Sword of Fargoal certainly the game I think of when I think C64 dungeon crawler :)
But apparently it wasn't written just in BASIC for the C64 version. From Wikipedia:
> The following year, with the release of the Commodore 64, McCord was asked to release a version of Sword of Fargoal for that machine as well. McCord was unable to implement the conversion as it was written in BASIC, and the sprite-based graphics required machine language programming. McCord's friend Scott Corsaire (then Carter) and Steve Lepisto wrote all the machine-language code that was needed so that game would perform fast enough to work on the Commodore 64.
What amazes me is that, apparently, most of Sid Meier's Pirates! was written in real C64 BASIC. It boggles the mind. Back when I was a kid I loved my C64 I thought it had the most useless BASIC ever, I envied what I thought was a better version in the Speccy. If only I had known what could be done with this...
No program using sprites and sound could be written in only Commodore 64 BASIC. But large parts of Sword of Fargoal was indeed written in normal Commodore 64 BASIC. I remember (from some time in the mid-to-late 1980’s) being surprised when I managed to crash the game and getting a BASIC error message.
I know what you're saying and I agree, though technically you could program sprites and sound in C64 BASIC (well, if you consider PEEK and POKE "BASIC", heh...). In practice, you wouldn't have adequate performance. But still, the VIC-20 and PET versions were written entirely in BASIC! It's just the C64 version that wasn't.
A period, multiplatform alternative: Usborne's Write Your Own Fantasy Games by Les Howarth and Cheryl Evans from 1984 https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxv0SsvibDMTel93SThEYkJkZHc . (Generously provided by Usborne https://usborne.com/gb/books/computer-and-coding-books )
Cool! Though your Google Drive link asks for permissions, you can use this instead: https://usborne.com/row/books/computer-and-coding-books
The review of the book isn't so good, though I'd still own it as a charming period artifact: https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/2024/01/19/write-your-own-fant...
Dungeon Crawlers for the C64 always make me think of the Sword of Fargoal! https://www.lemon64.com/game/sword-of-fargoal
Thanks for this: that review though doesn’t say anything negative about the program AFAICT?
There’s also a GitHub project for the C64 listing(s) at https://github.com/HAnthonyHoyt/c64-dungeon-of-doom .
For those as confused as I was, the BASIC as written will not run on a C64 (two immediate notes: BASIC 2.0 doesn't have labels, and a variable like STATS would be illegal because it clashes with the status word ST). This only works in their custom IDE which "compiles" (read "adds line numbers, alters names and tokenizes") it.
To be fair, this isn't that different from things we'd do back in the day.
I use to write BBS software in BASIC on the C64, and one of the things we'd do is use a "compiler" that would do some optimizations. What this allowed was being able to write a program too big to actually run, but the optimized version of it could.
I wish I could share more details and be less hand-wavy... but it turns out the 80's were a long time ago and I just haven't given it much thought since then (at least until I saw your comment).
Computer magazines of the era also did that with C64 listings because they were such a pain to type as is. They usually distributed a tool to type your program in first, and then published much more legible and plain text (non-PETSCII) code listings instead.
RGC Basic: https://retrogamecoders.com/rgc-basic/
"Commodore BASIC–style interpreter written in C, but with modern conveniences."
Yeah seeing GOSUB and no line numbers was an instant warning light.
I had briefly thought that C64 could use variables with GOTO/GOSUB. Sinclair BASIC could do that for example.
What a brilliant machine, it easily has the most active scene of any retro computer going at this point. It's a bit of a shame about the BASIC not taking better advantage of the hardware though. OTOH a lot of the brilliant programmers of today's era cut their teeth on the C64 (and Apple IIs) and probably had to resort to assembly code at times thus honing their skills. I had an Apple IIgs and it lacked an advanced BASIC to take full advantage of the video and sound capabilities. In fact home computers with a really good BASIC tuned to the computer's hardware capabilties were very rare.
> In fact home computers with a really good BASIC tuned to the computer's hardware capabilities were very rare.
And either a lot more expensive or later to the market. ROM was cheaper than RAM, but still expensive.
The Apple IIgs was later to the market, so it could have afforded a good basic in ROM, but it was so late that it could afford to load one in RAM, too, and, I guess, needed an Apple II basic in ROM for backwards compatibility.
IIRC, the 1983 dungeon crawler Sword of Fargoal was written in real Commodore 64 BASIC.
Sword of Fargoal certainly the game I think of when I think C64 dungeon crawler :)
But apparently it wasn't written just in BASIC for the C64 version. From Wikipedia:
> The following year, with the release of the Commodore 64, McCord was asked to release a version of Sword of Fargoal for that machine as well. McCord was unable to implement the conversion as it was written in BASIC, and the sprite-based graphics required machine language programming. McCord's friend Scott Corsaire (then Carter) and Steve Lepisto wrote all the machine-language code that was needed so that game would perform fast enough to work on the Commodore 64.
What amazes me is that, apparently, most of Sid Meier's Pirates! was written in real C64 BASIC. It boggles the mind. Back when I was a kid I loved my C64 I thought it had the most useless BASIC ever, I envied what I thought was a better version in the Speccy. If only I had known what could be done with this...
No program using sprites and sound could be written in only Commodore 64 BASIC. But large parts of Sword of Fargoal was indeed written in normal Commodore 64 BASIC. I remember (from some time in the mid-to-late 1980’s) being surprised when I managed to crash the game and getting a BASIC error message.
I know what you're saying and I agree, though technically you could program sprites and sound in C64 BASIC (well, if you consider PEEK and POKE "BASIC", heh...). In practice, you wouldn't have adequate performance. But still, the VIC-20 and PET versions were written entirely in BASIC! It's just the C64 version that wasn't.
Look at a VIC-20 screenshot, pretty impressive: https://www.mobygames.com/game/14475/sword-of-fargoal/screen...
Yes, I'm aware of the tricks done to make graphics out of the computer's character set. Still impressive in my book!