Cube Game Question

[SMcNeill]

(And if you look close, I see no logic against negative bets.  Cube is a game you win by losing at!)

[bplus]

I haven't seen the QB64 port, but I just tested the original source, downloaded from here, IIRC: http://www.vintage-basic.net/games.html.  It compiles under PE and ran fine in two test runs.

@JRace but if you didn't type, from where did you download source?
The link you gave looks same or same material anyway as Charlies. They don't have .bas source just a photo copy of code from a page from a book or magazine.

I do have More Basic Computer Games with .bas source code but not the first version.

To all, looks like you should have taken me up on my bet ha, ha!

You know yesterday I wrote this game off as stupid waste of time, whether you are playing from a 2D map with only 3 faces of cube ( 9 + 6 + 4 = 19) potential places to occupy and potential nightmare to track legal moves or from a wireframe 3D cube model with full x,y,z ( 9 * 3 = 27 ) potential places to occupy and piece of cake to check legal moves.

It is pure luck, no skill, whether or not you make it from one corner to opposite! The only potential skill worked is 3D imagining to make moves. Like the card game War it is pretty much mindless unless you need work on understanding greater and lesser values of number.

But today I see there is still skill development in practicing programming to get a game such as this or War going in Basic or any PL. So there's that to all this!

Anyway I think this game needs to be restarted from scratch and done entirely in QB64 without resource to that old piece of coding. Today I find myself ready to take it on because this program needs a 2D visual representation of moving around in a very tiny 3D world and that takes some skill or practice of them. PLUS I am anxious to avoid the tedious work of repairing my String Math Functions though I have located and fixed a screwy decimal problem, I am afraid of running into the problem that caused me to code that crazy ship!

@SMcNeill did you start your game from scratch or just translated the old into easier to understand new?
I haven't studied yet... I am anxious to do this thing with visuals "You are here" maps. I'd also like to turn this thing into a 3D Minesweeper or 3D Space Game to travel a "mined maze in space" to rescue an outpost far far away.

[JRace]

I haven't seen the QB64 port, but I just tested the original source, downloaded from here, IIRC: http://www.vintage-basic.net/games.html.  It compiles under PE and ran fine in two test runs.

@JRace but if you didn't type, from where did you download source?
The link you gave looks same or same material anyway as Charlies. They don't have .bas source just a photo copy of code from a page from a book or magazine.

Click on the filename, cube.bas, to get the source.

[SMcNeill]

@SMcNeill did you start your game from scratch or just translated the old into easier to understand new?

I just translated the old, with some minor changes which I felt enhanced readability, such as changing some variable names from Z, ZZ, whatever to Money, Bet, ect. I redid that mess of logic which was used with the RND numbers. Why the original poster never simply added one to get a range from 1 to 3, rather than a range of 0 to 2 and replace 0 with 3, is beyond me! Line numbers were stripped out, and a few essential GoTos were redirected to more readable labels.

But, that's honestly the exact same code -- just translated up to a more modern and precise form of coding style.

[bplus]

I haven't seen the QB64 port, but I just tested the original source, downloaded from here, IIRC: http://www.vintage-basic.net/games.html.  It compiles under PE and ran fine in two test runs.

@JRace but if you didn't type, from where did you download source?
The link you gave looks same or same material anyway as Charlies. They don't have .bas source just a photo copy of code from a page from a book or magazine.

Click on the filename, cube.bas, to get the source.

OK weird I just get blurry photo copies of the code as published in the book??? I feel cheated, maybe I need a secret password ;-))
Anyway I book marked your BASIC Computer Games link.

update: OHHHHHHHHHHH !!! click the middle field with Cube.bas that gets the code up for a copy and paste. Dah!
Ah now I have access to the golden oldies!

[bplus]

@SMcNeill did you start your game from scratch or just translated the old into easier to understand new?

I just translated the old, with some minor changes which I felt enhanced readability, such as changing some variable names from Z, ZZ, whatever to Money, Bet, ect. I redid that mess of logic which was used with the RND numbers. Why the original poster never simply added one to get a range from 1 to 3, rather than a range of 0 to 2 and replace 0 with 3, is beyond me! Line numbers were stripped out, and a few essential GoTos were redirected to more readable labels.

But, that's honestly the exact same code -- just translated up to a more modern and precise form of coding style.

Good! because I am starting from scratch at that other forum to demo how to go from idea to QB64 code; DO NOT goto Morristown and collect old code to port! Learn to code QB64 from your ideas is what I am preaching ;-)) but yes for ideas Morristown is fantastic, it's where I met ELIZA <3 from SmallBASIC library copy.

Thanks guys for helping me understand what Cube was suppose to do. I am gunna skip the wagering part because this game is stupid based on pure luck, no skill that I can see. Just a little coding challenge but...

Now throw in some minesweeper clues and we've got something way more interesting to me! a potential bplus mod!

[mnrvovrfc]

From what it looks like, the other two users of the "boards" in that same topic are struggling, compared to you, to come up with programming ideas or to justify using QB64 any longer.

The credit for the new "Cube" game should be all for that user "marjagonzalves". My cohort had nothing to do with it. "roquedrivel" just shrugged when I asked about it.

The other user rejected Csound when he was advised about it, but proved he knows next to nothing about programming so he could realize his dreams with music production. I would be dead in his place, seriously.

That's why I said they were struggling.

[bplus]

From what it looks like, the other two users of the "boards" in that same topic are struggling, compared to you, to come up with programming ideas or to justify using QB64 any longer.

The credit for the new "Cube" game should be all for that user "marjagonzalves". My cohort had nothing to do with it. "roquedrivel" just shrugged when I asked about it.

The other user rejected Csound when he was advised about it, but proved he knows next to nothing about programming so he could realize his dreams with music production. I would be dead in his place, seriously.

That's why I said they were struggling.

Sorry "marjagonzalves" mentions roquedrivel and e mentions you all the time I assumed y'all were cohorts.

"marjagonzalves" might have a nice port from Morristown but I couldn't tell because I could not get past the input format e decided to use. That's what directly lead me to seek help at Discord and here, I was still trying to figure out if the game was a 2D map of 3 cube faces or a full x, y, z coordinate system for a little 3D "wire" cube. We decided the error checking for a 3D wire frame was the easier one to check for legal moves and went with that.

Steve is right! I get a headache from attempting to understand Morristown code or even bad GW Basic code that is buggy but hard to pin down where so badly organized it is by novice coders. For real beauty coding without IF blocks or even ELSE, ELIZA is Masterpiece from Morristown.

[SMcNeill]

@bplus Here's an idea for you -- turn this into a text player game.

Concept is about the same, with you starting on the 3rd floor corner of the mall.  Terrorists storm the building and set it on fire, and plant bombs at important crossroads on their way out.  You need to get from the 3rd floor corner down to the 1st floor opposite corner, without setting off an IED and going BOOM!!


The mall is set up in a simple grid design:

Code: (Select All)

 ________________________
|           |           |
|           |           |
|           |           |
|           |           |
|           |           |
 ________________________
|           |           |
|           |           |
|           |           |
|           |           |
|           |           |
 ________________________

The above little ASCII map showcases the movement possible on each floor of the mall.   

There's a central crossroads which leads to the main courtyard.  On the 1st floor, that's a fountain for folks to enjoy.  On the 2nd floor the central area is a food court.  On the 3rd floor, the central area is a game room and children's play area.

Each of the outer paths are a square walkway which can be used to travel from one to point to another while avoiding the central area.  It's mainly used for leisurely browsing or by the elderly who like to walk laps around the mall to get their exercise in for the day.

The image above is only 1 floor, but all 3 floors of the mall are built upon the same generic grid design.   Stairs up/down are located at each of the intersections which allows on to traverse between floors.

The terrorists have planted bombs at 5 of these total intersections.   Your goal is to navigate from (3, 3, 3) to get to the exit at (1, 1, 1), without bouncing into one of those bombs.

It's basically CUBE, but turned into a text-based style game.  <Go North/South/East/West/Up/Down> depending on your current intersection/location, and try to avoid those bombs!

[bplus]

Man if that guy had a proper download of Cube.bas I could have skipped a day of making my own version. The download worked perfectly fine!
   

But OK after day of hell I have a version almost working just got to hide the mines now that it's debugged.

@SMcNeill your scenario is interesting and we could shape the malls differently in future mods, I got the maps working fairly early on but then one goofy thing after another, eh the way of coding... frick'n forty more LOC.