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Space Escape!

Modern GW-BASIC action for 2011 and beyond. Race across the universe in an epic chase through mines and asteroids while dodging enemy missiles!

–screen shot not available–

Your custom-built VelociRaker is the smallest, fastest ship in the known universe. That isn’t bragging or marketing hype, it has to be fact because your life currently depends on it!

The BitPulser cruisers will be exiting their warp wormholes soon and although they can’t match you for flight speed, their missiles can get awfully close. You’re about to take the most dangerous path possible in order to outwit your pursuers through the Wail Gulf, a mess of mines, asteroids, and deadly high-momentum fragments culminating in a narrow canyon through which no other ship could possibly fit but yours!

It’s unlikely that you’ll live but this will be the most daring, the most infamous, the fastest chase in history. Dust off your 286 because it’s time to make your Space Escape!

Downloads

Tips and Strategy

Credits and Technical Notes

The Podigan by Murray

Seeing as you seem to like such things, and I started on GW-BASIC too, I thought I’d send you one or two of my funny old GW-Basic games that I made. I think I was about 12 years old, and I think it was about 1990… It’s basically all just …

10 IF input “Get dagger”, GOTO 1050

… madness.

HogHead Island

Way back in middle school I drew cartoon people with giant noggins that I dubbed “hogheads”. During one of my obsession periods with board games I created one called HogHead Island whereby you were shipwrecked on an island and needed to find the way off … I think. Anyway, I later adapted this to GW-BASIC in my first attempt at using multiple modules. It’s pretty terrible but there’s some technical aspects that made me proud such as the graphical title screen which was painstakingly planned out on graph paper and then implemented using DRAW commands.

I plan to modify the source a bit to make it less annoying to play (entering a random number each time a module is loaded is the worst), but until then you can download my original files to check out.

Lanturn

The night is dark and long, but is it long enough to do what you have to?

This project was started in March 2011 and never completed. The premise was that you are alone at night with a lantern running out of fuel. You can raise it by pressing the space bar to turn away attacking wolves but each time you do the fuel dwindles and will run out if not used economically.

Board Games by Donald Foster

I wrote several dozen board games in GW BASIC on my Tandy 2000, a very unique computer. I first started off learning BASIC on the TRS-80 Model I in high school around 1982. I had only learned a few statements and commands when I quit school that year. But it was enough to get me interested in learning programming.

I stated writing a Yahtzee game on the TRS-80 Model III, but about half way into writing Yahtzee, the TRS-80 Model 4 came out. I abandoned my Yahtzee game on the Model III and retyped it for the Model 4. I did not have enough money to purchase the High Resolution Graphics Package for the Model 4. In fact, I didn’t even have enough money to purchase the Model 4 computer. I went to Radio Shack and used theirs for a long time. I brought my diskettes in and worked on my game from opening to closing time. I had to use the ASCII characters for my graphics. The Model 4 costed about $2,400 at that time. Then they released the Model 4P, the portable version of the 4 for $1,900. I purchased it around 1984 and wrote about a dozen board games on it. I wanted the Tandy 2000 for a long time, but was able to purchase it ‘til about 1987 when it had been turned into a used store computer at the Computer Center in Salisbury Md. I purchased it with a new warranty. It came with the High Resolution Color Graphic board and a 10 Meg external HD. All of my games I wrote was stored on the HD. I made a printout of most of my games before I came home one day and found a gash in my HD. Someone have damaged it. It was crashed. I purchased another Tandy 2000 system used from a Radio Shack in Ocean City Md around 1990 and stored both computers in my attic for many years. I pulled them out a couple years ago and they don’t work. I am planning on fixing them and retype all of my games back in that I have listings for. I miss my games and want to play them again. Only a few close friends and family members ever seen my games. I have scanned the listings to my games and willing to upload and share my games. They were written 20 to 25 years ago.

P.S. - I converted Don’s original PDF scans to PNG images using GIMP. I haven’t tried all of these so if you’re having issues, I can email you the original files.