Post by 40wattstudio in SCRAPSHIP (Still going!)

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27 FEB 2021:

I might make some minor adjustments later one, but I pretty much finished the new opening animation for Scrapship. For such a short "scene" it's actually quite complicated:

The planet background is a high-resolution .jpeg image rendered in Unreal Engine 4.

The spaceship (with cockpit transparency) are a sequence of .png renders using Blender.

The "dropping down" part of the scene was done by scaling down the image programmatically.

What's crazy is that most games made with Qbasic or QB64 look like this:

It's very exciting to push this old programming language to its limits!

I also learned how to scale and move the background objects, even at different resolutions. I don't have a preview for this yet, but let's just say that it ultimately allows for some very cool background effects.

Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your weekend!

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evilsn3 years ago(+1)

that's quite impressive... but who still uses QBASIC?!

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40wattstudio3 years ago(+1)

Surprisingly, quite a few! There is a new "version" called QB64 that has some extra commands and features that actually make Qbasic gamedev more practical. In particular, the _PUTIMAGE command lets you drop in graphics instead of having to create graphics with LINE and CIRCLE statements. There is a BASIC Game Jam currently in progress as well.

Now all that being said, yes, Qbasic is perhaps still a bit primitive for modern-day Gamedev -- I've certainly seem some of its limitations. But for those like me that grew up with Qbasic and already have a good understanding of it, it sometimes makes more sense to stick with what you already know than to start from scratch with something else.

Thanks for the comment!

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evilsn3 years ago(+1)

Quite interesting. I haven't used QBASIC since my middle school/junior high days so I probably won't be delving into this anytime soon or else I'd have to go dust off my old BASIC guidebooks from back in the double-aughts and the nineties... I don't even know where I keep them, or if I kept them.

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40wattstudio3 years ago(+1)

I know how that is. I only got back into Qbasic because I found an old harddrive with all my old programs still intact. Trying to find a way to play them again led me to QB64.

If you ever do decide to check it out again, this Qbasic series by School Freeware is perfect for getting back up to speed (it had been 20 years since I last used Qbasic). It covers a lot of the old commands and concepts plus a lot of the new ones.

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