High-quality demos wanted

[guest]

I'm constantly on the lookout for demo programs that show off the capabilities of BBC BASIC (primarily BBCSDL, the cross-platform version). These are valuable for promotion (for example I can post screenshots or videos to Facebook and Twitter) and if small enough I will consider distributing them as example programs with the next release.

The requirements for such programs are necessarily pretty tough because I want them to be impressive and stress the capabilities of BBC BASIC. They should run on every edition (Windows, Linux, Mac OS, Raspberry Pi, Android, iOS) and ideally should evoke the reaction 'wow, I never realised BBC BASIC could do that'!

If anybody has what they consider might be a suitable candidate I would be very interested to hear from them. Alternatively if you fancy attempting to write such a program I would encourage you to do so, and to be as ambitious as possible!

Richard.

[michael]

I am certain I could create a simple demo of a 3D overlay in a 2D style presentation. Perhaps creating a turret that pivots its cannon would be cool. The idea is that textures could be treated as sprites in that world. So for an animated sprite, it could simply be just triangles with textures that cycle towards and away depending on what the status is. If you feel that would be acceptable for me to create that and post the code here, I can start on it.
Regards,
Michael

[guest]

If you feel that would be acceptable for me to create that and post the code here, I can start on it.

Of course you can write and publish what you like, but from what I've seen of your work I don't think you have the experience in BBC BASIC to write the kind of demo I am looking for. You shouldn't feel bad about that because very few people do; to exploit BBC BASIC to the full you need to understand it (and its libraries) very thoroughly. Sorry.

Richard.

[p_m21987]

I've recently been working on a copy of Sonic the Hedgehog, written in C and using the Allegro library for graphics (blitting and rotating sprites). It looks like this: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1R9r_i ... UNkgcXMkfT

Maybe I could port my demo to BBC BASIC, and use equivalent SDL functions for plotting the sprites and the scenery graphics. What do you think?

[guest]

Maybe I could port my demo to BBC BASIC, and use equivalent SDL functions for plotting the sprites and the scenery graphics. What do you think?

That would be brilliant, but would you really want to repeat work that you'd already done in another language (and with the frustration of the speed of an interpreter)? If it was me I think I'd find it soul-destroying! Another possibility would be for you to release the C source and then somebody else could do the conversion, but maybe that doesn't appeal.

Richard.

[p_m21987]

It's true that it would be a lot of work, and I don't have very much experience with BBCSDL/BB4W. I would agree to release the source code, but I have to admit that it's quite messy - I only have about 2 and a half years real programming experience, and I started this project about 6 months ago. My demo is also quite unfinished.

What I'm thinking is would be good is,

* I'll take about two weeks to properly finish my demo
* then I could tidy up the code a bit - add more comments and remove unused code
* and then I'd write a short text file with information about the game code, how it's meant to work, and how it's structured, that could help someone find their way around it

And then post it here. What do you think?

Regards,
Patrick

[guest]

And then post it here. What do you think?

Go for it. What's not to like?

Richard.

[Kjell]

and I started this project about 6 months ago. My demo is also quite unfinished.

I will not exclude your expected "2 weeks" to be 5 years either (by experience)
(It is an advantage knowing 10 programming languages first ... that takes time)