Troy Press

I was surprised that there was no easy way to play David Ahl’s classic book, BASIC Computer Games, in your browser. You can now play them here: Play BASIC Computer Games in Your Browser BASIC Computer Games sold over a million copies as microcomputer users in the 1970s and early 1980s typed its programs into their Commodore PETs, Apple IIs, and TRS-80s (among many other machines). I smashed up Ahl’s listings with Joshua Bell’s Applesoft BASIC emulator to make it easy for you to select any of these programs and […]

My most popular tweet ever was in response to a comment on this tweet: Saw the perennial question of “why not use the Eagles to take the Ring to Mordor?” and there are lots of fine explanations, but my favorite has always been that b/c the Eagles are so powerful, they would’ve been corrupted by the Ring, eaten Frodo, and become Dark Bird Gods. — Austin Gilkeson (@osutein) January 4, 2021 According to Tolkien’s unpublished history of postal code notation in the Shire, this has 4 digits too many. — […]

You’re GMing an RPG game tonight, and you haven’t done any prep. Normally I use the Lazy DM checklist or the 7-3-1 technique or hexcrawl prep, but when I’m crushed for time I use what I call Monty Hall Prep: I read up on 3 different monsters, either from the Monster Manual, the bestiary of the system I’m playing, or these days from Keith Ammann’s book or blog. I write down 3 “doors” (locations) to choose from, foreshadowing but typically not naming which monster is “behind” each door. In play, […]

Martin Malý has adapted Version 2 of Li Chen Wang’s Palo Alto Tiny BASIC to run on his ASM80 browser-based assembler and emulator. I’ve uploaded the source code, with his permission, to GitHub. Background Palo Alto Tiny BASIC emerged out of the Tiny BASIC movement started by People’s Computer Company and taken up by the Homebrew Computer Club. Fellow members Steve Wozniak and Tom Pittman would develop their own BASICs (Integer BASIC and 6800 Tiny BASIC respectively). Wang analyzed the Altair BASIC code and contributed edits to Tiny BASIC Extended. […]

I started another new Wikipedia article, this one on DOPE. The example programs below aren’t in the Wikipedia article, as they are just speculation. Paradigms procedural Designed by John G. Kemeny Developer Sidney Marshall First appeared 1962; 58 years ago Implementation language Assembly Platform LGP-30 Influenced by DARSIMCO, DART, Dartmouth ALGOL 30, Fortran Influenced Dartmouth BASIC DOPE, short for Dartmouth Oversimplified Programming Experiment, was a simple programming language designed by John Kemény in 1962 to offer students a transition from flow-charting to programming the LGP-30. Lessons learned from implementing DOPE were subsequently applied to the invention and development of BASIC.[1] Description Each statement was […]

I stumbled across the line number article on Wikipedia, and let’s just say it lacked a historical perspective on where line numbers in programming languages came from and how they were used. I ended up writing a history section (adapting some from other Wikipedia articles). I have fond memories of reading my dad’s FORTRAN IV programming manual when I was a kid and later learning about JOSS in History of Programming Languages. (And you have no idea how hard it was for me to not type the name of every […]

I learned how to program using TRS-80 Level I BASIC, a 4K implementation adapted from Palo Alto Tiny BASIC. I later used other Tiny BASIC implementations on the PC-1, Astrocade, and Apple II, not realizing how their origin stories converged. (The Apple II’s 4K implementation, Integer BASIC, was written by Woz, who knew many of the Tiny BASIC implements from the Homebrew Computer Club.) I’ve been expanding the Tiny BASIC Wikipedia article this summer to reflect its rich history. Here’s what I contributed to the article. Tiny BASIC is a family […]

The BASIC Programming cartridge for the Atari Video Computer System has the distinction of being the worst commercial BASIC interpreter of all time. The limited available RAM meant that programs could be at most 11 lines long and no more than 64 bytes total. Anyone who bought this cartridge, expecting to be able to type in the BASIC programs from 101 BASIC Computer Games or the computer magazines of the day, would have been profoundly disappointed. I do love the above illustration from the manual, which gives BASIC programming the […]

Our family friends the Hansels were the first to get a videogame system, the Atari VCS. I remember playing Combat, Breakout, and later Space Invaders. My dad was jealous, but he ended up getting us the Bally Astrocade. This turned out to be a great system, and its BASIC was far better than the Atari’s (the Atari BASIC Programming cartridge limited programs to 64 characters!). The Wikipedia article on the Astrocade didn’t have many details about its BASIC, so I added a section on the language. To that point, I’d […]

So I discovered Dungeon World originally through Sly Flourish’s blog, and he is open about adapting techniques from other systems in his 5e games. He recently blogged about zones in combat, lifted from Fate Condensed: Zone-based Combat in D&D. Prior to the COVID-19 lockdown, I had a lot of miniatures and terrain maps that would come out for battle.  In switching to online play for 5e, I found maps (and icons for opponents) to become a huge time sink. Because battles can look phenomenal in Roll 20, there’s an expectation that […]

I synthesized nine Wikipedia articles into a new article dedicated to BASIC interpreters: A BASIC interpreter enables users to enter and run BASIC programs and was, for the first part of the microcomputer era, the default application that computers would launch. Users were expected to use the BASIC interpreter to enter in programs (often from printed listings) or to load programs from storage (often cassette tapes). Why do I think a new article is warranted, rather than just referring to the BASIC and Interpreter articles? As I write in the article: BASIC interpreters are of […]