I learned to program because early computers all came with some sort of BASIC built-in. My friend had a TRS-80 and I later got a little Sinclair, but it never saved my programs to cassette right. I really started to get serious when my dad brought home an Apple ][+ (and a copy of Wizardry!) in the early '80s that later moved to his office. He got me my own Apple ][e in 1984 and I was hopelessly addicted to AppleSoft BASIC.

I got my first PC (a 12MHz 286) in 1990 and moved on to GW-BASIC and then QBASIC. The place where I worked (I wasn't a programmer... yet) had recently switched to Clipper, so they gave me their old copy of QuickBASIC and I could finally make my own exe files.

Here are a couple of games I wrote in QuickBASIC and my first foray into reusable code, a QuickLibrary. I was calling myself "Homonculous Programming" at this time and constantly bugging Ethan Winer on the CompuServe forums. :)

Please note that these are old, 16-bit DOS programs. They may or may not run correctly on your computer. They will not run at all on a 64-bit OS. I can't help you get them running, but I'll answer questions about the source code.

Connie's Vegas Video Poker

I went to a Las Vegas wedding in 1995 and my then wife got particularly attached to a specific video poker machine. I memorized the payouts and recreated it for her when we got home.
Update: I got bored one day in January 2009 while recovering from surgery and started tweaking stuff. All money is now in whole dollars instead of quarters, sound is off by default, and there are a few other cosmetic, optimization and special changes you can learn more about by digging around in the source. The new cvvpoker.dat file is NOT COMPATIBLE with the old one, so install this in a separate folder if you want to keep your old scores. Just delete the old cvvpoker.dat if you don't care. The previous version is still available here.
48K, updated 2009-01-11

Galactic Conquerors 1.8

A space-combat game in the old "FROM: TO: #SHIPS:" genre. I added my own twists of transport ships and spy satellites. My friend Rick noticed a strange side effect if you entered only computer players: the game would play itself! After he did this I added a couple of options to remove all delays and now you can watch the computer play a 500 turn game in a few minutes!
99K, added 2005-10-07

HomonLib 2.2

My BASIC library. Includes some older versions in binary form if you want to rebuild the games. It also includes Bmake.bas/exe - a QB make utility I wrote and used to build homonlib and other projects.
481K, updated 2007-04-25

License

To the extent possible under law, Ray Marron has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to the works on this page, published from the United States.