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    What's News in the PlayBasic world ? - Find out here.




 Social Media Isn't Working For Us - PlayBasic Blog - (2024-10-03 )

By: Kevin Picone Added: October 3rd, 2024

Category: All

In this video, I dive into the ongoing frustration with our YouTube channel's lack of traffic and the broader challenges of reaching an audience through social media. Despite common advice to focus on strategies like YouTube Shorts, the numbers tell a different story—views remain incredibly low, even on content published years ago. We explore specific examples, including analytics from older videos that have barely gained traction over time. This struggle isn't limited to YouTube; the same issues are present across platforms like Facebook and Twitter, where organic reach is virtually nonexistent. I also touch on the increasing difficulty of getting discovered via Google search, as many of the smaller sites that once linked to us have disappeared. With advertising costs through the roof and no clear solution in sight, it's a frustrating time for content creators, especially those who've been around for years. If you're in the same boat, you're not alone!





 Exciting News! Our Community Forums Have Reopened!

By: Kevin Picone Added: March 14th, 2024

Category: All

We are thrilled to announce that our beloved Community Forums are now officially reopened!

After much anticipation and hard work behind the scenes, we're delighted to invite each and every one of you to join us in the vibrant discussions, sharing of knowledge, and camaraderie that our forums offer.

Whether you're a seasoned programmer, a hobbyist, or just starting your journey into the world of game development with PlayBasic, our forums are the perfect place to connect with like-minded individuals, seek advice, showcase your projects, and so much more.

Here's what you can expect from our revitalized forums:

-- Engaging Discussions: Dive into conversations about PlayBasic programming techniques, game design principles, and industry trends.
-- Knowledge Sharing: Share your insights, tips, and tricks with the community and learn from others' experiences.
-- Project Showcases: Showcase your latest creations, get feedback, and discover inspiration from fellow developers.
-- Help and Support: Need assistance with a coding conundrum or debugging dilemma? Our community is here to help you troubleshoot and find solutions.
-- Announcements and Updates: Stay informed about the latest news, updates, and events related to PlayBasic and our community.

To join the conversation, simply visit our website and navigate to the Community Forums section. Don't have an account yet? Signing up is quick, easy, and free!

Let's reignite the passion for PlayBasic and foster a supportive and vibrant community together. We can't wait to see you all there!

Happy coding and gaming!

Kevin Picone
PlayBasic Developer
https://PlayBasic.com




 PlayBasic Forum Progress - From Sickness to Health - (2024-02-26)

By: Kevin Picone Added: February 26th, 2024

Category: All

    The PlayBasic forums have been offline for longer than expected so what happened ??

    Long Storty short... I got busy... then I got sick....

Summary:

    The video starts with the creator explaining that they've been unwell for the past week. Originally, they planned to upgrade the forums due to changes in PHP versions. Despite encountering some challenges with customizations, they successfully migrated to a new forum software with added features like code highlighting. However, the creator got sick and missed the deadline. The upgraded forums are now live on PlayBasic, with plans to also update underware design. The creator acknowledges the need to consolidate and improve navigation across different platforms but is unsure of the timeline. They express gratitude for understanding and encourage users to stay connected through social media during the transition.





 PlayBasic Forums OFFLINE

By: Kevin Picone Added: February 10th, 2024

Category: All,Website

Just a quick note that the Forums are current offline for maintenance.

The goals are to backup and update/move the forums..

In the meantime you'll get this

PlayBasic Forums






 Operation Watergate II

By: Kevin Picone Added: February 7th, 2023

Category: All,Games,C64,Amiga

New release from Kman1011

Greetings fellow PB gamers

Thought I should start showcasing my work so I will periodically post some screenshot of a few complete games, current work and perhaps a few utilities

First one I thought I would share is one I call operation Watergate. I guess I have a thing for nostalgia because if you look close it does resemble a game created back in the C64 days called Impossible Mission. Another version came out during the Amiga days as well.

I thought of doing an Isometric view of a platform set in an office tower. Object is to obtain 9 electronic keys to shut down each level. However these sentry Robots get in the way and some may come after you.

What's special about this is that each time you play the layout of the rooms change so you are never playing the same game twice !! The rooms are randomly changing for each sector and each game played. They can also be loaded and saved

There are 9 levels, each one is more difficult than the last. (level 9 is impossible)

Check out the gallery page for screen shots !





 Does ChatGPT understand PlayBasic code ?

By: Kevin Picone Added: January 7th, 2023

Category: All,ChatGPT,AI



Video Transcript:

CODE:
welcome back by PlayBasic coders; so like the rest of the world I've been playing around with this chat gp3 the open AI project and was amazed at some of the things it can do I want to show you something that even though it does not know play basic but it does know basic and it does no programming in general so I write this merge routine for another example is going to going to post at some point at some point and I was using it doing something else and I thought well I wonder if it knows what this does and we'll find out I've already asked this question so I know it actually does know what it is okay this is uh GPT uh just go there and and create an account and you're off after the races so what we'll do is we'll say can you describe what this code does oops here now we haven't changed it's by basic code clearly it doesn't know what playlist is we'll see what it says the code is written in a language called Auto hotkey okay visualize the texturize and fills in random numbers yeah that's what it does places at the end of the rice check if all are included in the merged output holy Joy yeah that's true it's exactly why they're there function is called tests and arguments possible all right uh uh can you rewrite this code uh in C for me this is just how amazing this tool actually is it's assuming we're passing in a couple of uh arrays we're passing the sizes in as well I think the loop will be much the same size lower than this okay that's over the expression a little bit it's made simpler look at that that's the quote I the comment I write sort of arise compare function hmm it's pretty impressive I can do this for a whole bunch of dialects and you can make a you know responses to this uh uh can you uh change the code to merge three arrays and named array one array two and build the array laughs uh when I was initially playing with this I was just asking it dumb questions and um the responses were were both funny and kind of frightening at the end so we're living through checking if Maybe yeah that's a Time Saver you know I don't care Who You Are what language you're using if you can ask it uh arbitrary questions and get a framework of something even though it's not not going to know your language exactly like it has no idea what what flavor of icing is hasn't got a clue but it knows procedural programming so if you can get you know get to answer your question in a language that's kind of similar I was plain basic if you want there's a bunch of Basics um I posted a question off of Facebook actually that someone was asking it's ended prematurely there but we won't repeat it uh what do you know about flavor is it okay so there's my viewers like so it thinks we're someone else and I asked this question a few days ago uh who developed playing basic wow that's a it's a different response well I asked it the other day it said that play basic was developed by the gun creators so now it's saying it's still operator design so it must have improved that I didn't I didn't actually correct it you can do corrections here but there's up down stuff over here I was just amazed at even even a response uh creating Pringles environments they are no longer in business well it's yeah it's probably true really partly I guess um all right let's jump back to flight of icing this code again well this thing does actually just takes two sworder to rise so it makes a right arrays full of random numbers and some values to the end of it into the arrays and then sort them I did that to make sure that when the when it's copying out the data I'm getting all of the values from both arrays in the output that's all that's all I was going to use it for a sorting example but have I've been having too much fun with messing around with this all right so I'll grab this function screw the function by itself all right so can you describe uh what this function does line by line to a h beginner program oh now you'll know what I mean I want to find fascinating about this is that it doesn't know PV syntax so how is it able to read what this is doing and there are bits of code in here where I guess it's kind of guessing get array elements that's a play basic thing it's are these is this anywhere else I still think we should have length if you just go to length and put the array there to give you the length of that that feels more satisfactory and there there it is it's a function declares variable I saw as they hold the realm would say yeah B that's correct so those two variables yeah inside the loop the function compares the other in position a to add to them yeah it's kind of scary um how wouldn't you rewrite this function uh to be faster can we ask it that all right so separated the two things are passed those are the function avoids using a loop variable goes up to C size makes it fast instantly yeah iterates are the elements the input arrays or it's using initial Loop counter um in C yeah that's pretty true what what would happen in um it says that gets your characters can piled down to where each variable becomes a register on the processor so less variables in Loops is better uh that's cool so what else we've got in in here all right what about Steve's engine what if we just took um yeah you couldn't pass all this code there we would have no idea but what if he just took like uh what do we got right what are the chances of it knowing what the helmet that's doing all right so with a subroutine here I'll leave the coins we're doing intersections with spheres I think that's doing you know if you're listening to the comment down below I should have read what the what that does um can you describe what this code so say basic code is doing let's find out that's my question yeah okay it's calculating the minimum and maximum x coordinates for 3D sphere object and two-day screen was that in the comments probably was occasionally has severiables including minimum Z I've never said as a few years ago if you want to editor it looks through all of the objects in the transformed code that performs two nested lobes it wasn't expecting it to understand what this was but it it should given that character since you know is um not this particular cover but the syntax of the card is basic light enough that if I understand it's basic it should be able to figure out what's going on I'm not using anything weird we just got four next Loop since there's some comparisons and um summarize but it has no idea what these rides do I can't possibly know what this is all right so I've got that from here all right so we'll try another function get a code and I just combine colors anyway back to where that wasn't the same code which I combine colors it's not a huge bit of code and [Music] can you subscribe or this basic yeah so routine is doing I don't think I need the quotes but uh can you speak about the colors of reflections of a three rendering program if laughs you just kind of got what um okay closest to the ray orange and then updates the default car with the closest Reflections color also updates to reflection strength it also has a variables related to the reflection such as the surface point and the normals the reflection of the object that reflection hit fine Returns the opto default color I don't actually know what this function does myself so that seems okay so our ref count must be how many Reflections we we have so the row must be fired out hit something bounce off and then a new race form and we fire off in that direction and we take on some of the color we've just hit I don't know um it's been a while I think that's what's happening with that routine is that we're taking it with every kind of every time we meet the writing hit something or bounces off it we're blending with that color we're keeping it at least at what colors we've hit and then blending them all together at some point in at the end to give us our reflection color Steve um but naturally that does can we just do this can you write a range tracer in basic for four weeks certainly I don't know what variation advice I could actually yeah now is but she I think is like a global okay a few times I've seen the shade using different languages that use expense different things but our type is the same types the same their materials and so it's interesting is choosing to use procedural basic and not object orientation so it's kind of knows that what we've used so far we might try and this this is this is short enough we might try and actually um get this to work I think visually just we died I did notice that with some of these examples um uh can you post the complete code please wow okay so it was maybe it's designed to abort that given it's probably too complicated what if we change tax what if he asked it um to build like a library of math functions you know there's there's a gazillion math function libraries but but um I had the giant loan is helpful getting started running around it okay uh can you write code uh before Computing if a array I might have 3D right uh intersex P spear in basic so should be sure enough that it's um this is a summertime employee basically can do well I think it's basing this off what is just saying check race for your intersection let's go back and check the code because I know it's contextual so it will actually refer back to what you were talking about before the ones I thought were hilarious were I was asking of them uh pop culture references and one of the it's almost I think it's actually giving us a spinning out um is it spitting out Steve's routine back to us no finally discriminate Checkers is negative no intersection no intersection Phone Solutions to give in other words because American when it insects intersects with a sphere there can be two intersection points the one you imagine a brain just being you know um standing in any direction with your arm pointed and that arm pointed out was infinite length right and so if you can sort of point up at the Moon you've got you know a few different possibilities you've got the ray never intersects the Moon or it does hit the Moon and you've got a nearsight in section and a Far Side intersection so because it would just go straight through it check out the positive sticks occurs on the front of the road uh complete the code thank you it's like it's sort of I noticed before with with code is that um it did bug out a bit but still okay I think if you knew what you were trying to do kind of like composer quadratic formulas using a different method hmm no we might be pushing it keeps gonna sewing to opt out nonetheless uh I think it was great it's a pretty impressive tool and I think if we use um I mean not me you everyone we use these things we can actually get um to be more and more productive uh I've actually been using a bit to do to do descriptions of things as you saw before so uh what a very simple one so we're talking about math functions before uh how to compute yeah sorry can you write a function in basic that computes the distance between two to 3D points so in other words Paul yeah just find DX get the square of each square root of H1 that's the end of the function hmm what's cool about that is you could kind of go which is what I find interesting you can kind of go well let's have a let's have it uh can we go back huh that's the same question uh it kind of thinks that it's privately it's kind of similar but I think that would oh no it's gonna add single that would almost work this is a convention that's using uh some Basics by the way some languages where you return something by assigning uh to the name which always found kind of annoying because it means if you ever if you ever change the function name you're going to change the return thing as well it's just like having it after the thing um so that's a 3D version between two between so we're asking it for a 2d version but actually we're going to just ask it for a 2d version good way should should do the same thing it didn't bother unrolling this time foreign how uh oh sorry uh can you write the code to compute a normal uh vector from a three-day victim uh coming right now I call it a function you're a function in basic to compute yeah so I should use syntax but what kind of sim we're familiar with so we we don't know we get the get the points oh regenerate sometimes it sort of times out and gets a bit one message at a time please like a good flight before sending yep okay original response yeah okay it just gets lost sometimes fair enough it's very popular so so you find the length so you divide that into the other sides oh it's interesting it's going to put them all in the array and spin them out yeah the other end very cool um since we're talking about vectors what about uh can you write code to rotate uh to the vertex now without rotate and array artillery vertex uh in basic so what method uses whoa look at that Gary elements that's a play basic thing it the more I talk to it about five Isaac the more it's time to learn foreign I wasn't expecting that picking up more of I guess that is only in my con the context of my conversation but um probably different for other people all right where we got yeah that looks pretty much like a rotation routine to me I'm stunned that's chosen these getaway elements because that's a PV thing that doesn't exist anywhere else at least I don't know if I don't think I exists in other languages I've always wanted to make that the length to make lengths do much the same thing so it would be a shorter and oh I you know oh I'm just like like the Visual Basic uses um I think it's you bound and for upper bound and lower bound or something like that I'll forget him it's been a while I just I actually just to ask it yeah compute number of elements within an array excuse me uh Visual Basic new band hmm oh that's different as well it's good method I guess that would be contemporary Visual Basic rice can be used get length method yeah hmm oh I'm actually stunned though that does those things how to how do you compute the number of array yeah elements in live Isaac the prince not supported because we we use the semicolon for comments that's why that changes there actually I've always thought about making it optional so old old Co from old listings worked stay um what does CLS in play basic do you can't possibly know that right well I think CLS is actually in basic even old text Basics have a CLS function the screen is cleared or wow yeah I wasn't expecting that what about uh what does end while do you play this so even though there's brief interactions we're having with it decided to pick up and learn about play basic you know picks commands does y biasing include now showing can't have the answer is it's drawing more from its experience with basic I mean paints a very old one what was the Instagram screen there are many other graph line Graphics related commands of play Basics so you should read the dot rotation for a full set yeah okay yeah uh I doubt it had I wouldn't have had access to it to anything to chew on to to learn on those things um but it's just interesting it's hours of fun you know you could accelerate your own workflow by just having this running in the background and asking it to do revisions of tax I was trying it to do something similar with some some YouTube text and descriptions of things you know give it points you know um uh could you write a summary from these points you know it might have one uh things I did today I I got up and took down for a walk uh write code dog for another walk for uh went shot went shopping Five cups tea six and my YouTube video now surely that's it's ridiculous as I can't possibly make something useful out of that okay it's giving us back back Point forms of what we've already done but it's already helped us rewrite that into a more meaningful form so what if he said um a longer summary maybe you're asking it the wrong question but we kind of getting you know but you see what I mean like it can do can write things uh can write material for you it can also do summaries of things um those code like the overview of users of those routines before incredible all right so it generated this routine here which rotates a bunch of vertices apparently um what if we ask it um can you describe this function to Sun boy uh who's never or somebody who does not understand programming subscribe what is function does to someone who does not want to say a private you're right so there's an interesting one it's working Radiance and then so even something like that we can use that to make help more descriptive posts on the Forum and I've already started to do this a bit of an experiment can you give more detail maybe that's what I was going to be asked before right that's that's better okay I thought I thought this is going to be all this would be all night you know would be perfect but as a starting point at a Time Saver that it's unbelievable like that's that's a perfectly decent um thing to post in the forums and it's fantastic search engine uh Fighter for to get for those keywords because they're not keywords that I wouldn't normally have used we've got rotation coming through a bunch of times Y coordinates transformation you know normally I sort of if I write something like that I would just let the code speak for itself you know maybe if you have a few lines of comments in between things but you're kind of expecting people though to understand what's Happening Here what else what a quake loader wow let's just grab the whole function now I think we're pushing our lock here and need to frame frame so drawing a frame vertices draw a 3D object when I throw drawing a bunch of mesh stuff clipping it to your rough clip a large triangle section we'll grab a section right and we'll just see what it thinks about because I want to know what these structures are I wonder what any of this garbage here is um can you outline what this what this basic function sorry Hawaii basic function he is doing you've got to be cheating and surely that must be that's inferred that from the variable name surely it's saying md2 and and load of course triangle section so the function name is giving it away I would think so otherwise how on Earth could it possibly know what the what that stuff is doing wow it's very cool isn't it imagine normal data draw a frame all right smarty pants oh all right smelly pants um what this function is doing smarty pants there's an object frame from mot model position it does by looping through each word actually object for a performance and calculations on XYZ performing it draws the dot position of screen using the dark thinking man the dot is red and whoa whoa look at that it it's just deduced that this is a red RGB color that's correct but uh how does it know those perspective even handled in here oh they're just hard-coded I think these are just for uh visualizing the thing was writing the function who knows now what's some old stuff it's a group's example for particles okay to a captioning screen doing and doing all the rendering we're doing individual park or entering in this as well I think I although it might be shapes oh yeah that's probably sharp just to be honest I would hope so anyway particle group new group the Light Group spawn it's going to be show shortly I could write Unix cows kill it no that's Dot whoa that says flying dots with I was assuming it was shapes because um you can do batches of rendering each shapes with lines and that much faster than doing individual renders that's the point of them um that's the whole point of that stuff and as we switch to 3D apis you kind of have to do batch rendering you can't do plot By plot anymore it's just not it's not worth doing right but um see what it thinks about this this will be the last one ah oops can you describe describe what what this play basic code is doing it might be too long I did notice that other things didn't like them I throw it too long it makes me wonder if it's getting that thing from the variable names the comments [Music] [Music] hmm each vehicle is property such as position velocity England space groups of particles are drawn screen Pockets within the group yeah that that's basically true uh can you all right good can you convert the code to Visual Basic we might four fouls it might be too too long yes I don't Visual Basic installed in the system to actually find out whether this would give you something that um compiles and runs but uh yeah it's giving out the guys but Bravo that's pretty amazing so I suspect if you wanted to convert me give that code from pretty much anything I reckon grab a bit of seaco you find out there somewhere or have it simplify something for you grab a function or whatever it's amazing I just thought I'd show you that if you haven't seen it already jump over there and mess around with this thing I think you'll enjoy it thanks for watching and we'll see you next time bye  




 Support PlayBasic development

By: Kevin Picone Added: January 2nd, 2023

Category: All,Retail,Donate,Upgrade,Update

PlayBasic Blog   Donations Are Here  (2023-01-02)

Are you a fan of PlayBasic? Do you rely on this software for your daily needs? If so, consider supporting its ongoing development by making a donation.

Every donation, no matter how small, can make a big difference in helping to fund the continued development of PlayBasic. From bug fixes and new features to performance improvements, your support can help ensure that this software stays up-to-date and continues to meet the needs of its users.

There are many ways you can donate to support PlayBasic. You can make a one-time contribution, or you can opt for a recurring donation to provide ongoing support. You can also consider setting up a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for the development of the software.

No matter how you choose to contribute, your support can make a real difference in the future of PlayBasic. So if you value this software and want to see it continue to thrive, please consider making a donation today. Together, we can help ensure that PlayBasic remains a valuable tool for years to come.

  To support future development you can make a donation here

 
 




 PlayBasic.com gets an update !

By: Kevin Picone Added: September 25th, 2022

Category: All,Website,Upgrade

    Some months ago I casually posted a thread on the PlayBasic forums titled "Lets Talk About The PlayBasic WebSite", I was looking to collate as many community ideas / fix shortcoming and faults with the existing site as possible.

    A lot has cool things came up during the discussions (which will appear in future upgrades) but for this revision the focus has been on including the PlayBasic documentation to the website, updating the contact pages, replacing the gallery, photo light boxes, the source code syntax highlighted views and ultimately creating a single compatible template from what was a random cross section of the custom pages.

    The changes might seem subtle to the passing PlayBasic coder, but have gone a long way to improving sites usefulness. When taking this project on; my initial gut reaction was to just uproot everything and replace it all. Which I tried; but soon run into the reality of such an approach, so pivoted to making this upgrade about bring the documentation online and dragging the old code based into a more unified form that could render the site from the template.. Which It now does.

    So for now I hope you like the changes (KISS = Keep It Simple Stupid) and ultimately find them more useful, I know just bringing the documentation online opened a world of new possibilities for the site. But that's for another day, for now let's just enjoy this small milestone before looking too far off into the future. As always if you have any drama's with the site send me a message on here, the forums or your favorite social media platform.





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