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V Planet (vplanet.cjb.net)
The first 100% QuickBasic game Review magazine

Gabbing For Better Games

(7/14/2000) We talk techie with Gabriel Fernandez about the powers of his QB development tool GABasic and how Master Creating can be good for your mojo.

Most of the time, other Basics don't want to have anything to do with QBasic. There's GWBasic, an antiquated version of Basic that's older than QBasic; they don't go very well together. Then there's Turbo Basic, Power Basic, Visual Basic, and a whole other bunch of Basic variants that are probably just as efficient (if not moreso) than QBasic. But being a QB magazine, V Planet is very partial to QBasic and any tool that can help enhance this programming compiler's power.

It is this thirst for power that Gab hopes to quench with his new programming compiler, GABasic. Unlike other forms of Basic, GABasic enhances the power of QuickBasic, allowing you to accomplish certain tasks with more memory at hand and more speed in your step. There's quite a bit of ground to cover, so we sent a journalist to Gab for some one-on-one conversation about GABasic and what it's all about...
 

V Planet: Was QB your first experience with Basic? 

Gab: Yes, QBasic 1.1. That is the version of QBasic that comes with DOS. 

V Planet: What were some of the first QB games you tried, and did they give you a calling to make GABasic

Gab: The first game I had for QB was Galactic. I didn't have Internet at that time, so i ask to my friend to download Qbasic games for me. He downloaded Galactic, and it is a great game! But mainly, I started to make GABasic when I read the Enhanced Creations message that said QB was dead, that it doesn't support pmode. That was my objective, to create a Protected mode compiler that used the Qbasic language.

V Planet: Not to sound dumbfounded, but just for the sake of definition, what's a Basic Pmode compiler?

Gab: A compiler for the QBasic language that works in pmode.

V Planet: Have you tried GABasic on some of your own projects?

Gab: I have only a few projects, and I didn't try GABasic with them because it won't work.

V Planet: What things do developers have to keep in mind when working in GABasic to make sure that the compiler works?

Gab: They don't have to use the TYPE command and SINGLE, DOUBLE varibles. This will be fixed, because im going to rewrite the compiler to make it 99% qbasic compatible.

V Planet: What does this compiler allow game developers to do that otherwise wouldn't be possible? 

Gab: You'll be able to write fast programs, and you can create arrays that use a lot of memory. For example, if you write "DIM sprites(1000000) as LONG" in your code, this will a create an array of 4 megs of RAM.

V Planet: Have you received any comments from people using GABasic?

Gab:  Yes, they always send me a email telling me that the need an OCX file to run the ide. For people who need .OCX files to run the ide, you can download the OCX at http://members.xoom.com/gabsoft/ocx.zip

V Planet: What other QB utilities or libraries have you tried? 

Gab: A lot, I've tried DIRECTQB, FUTURE LIBRARY, ZEPHYR SVGA LIB, and a lot of utilities... (Mainly from the ABC packets).

V Planet: What QB games do you think need help from GABasic's abilities? 

Gab: I think that games that have to use large graphics algorithms could use GABasic, because the mathematical operations in QBasic are very slow. If you compare a FOR block in qb with a FOR block in GABasic, you will note that the GABasic block works a lot faster. 

V Planet: Explain what happened between Gabsoft and Master Creating.

Gab: I have known Merlin since february, i was helping him create a game. Then, he offered to host my project "XMSlib", which  is a library to use XMS in qb. Last month, I asked Merlin for a webmaster, and he told me he would like to be the webmaster of my site. Merlin also offered to move my site that was TRIPOD into the MC server. Soon, 
he is going to redesign my site. 

V Planet: Are there any other tools that you plan to make or hope to see for QB in the future? 

Gab: Mainly I will make a library, it will not be a graphics lib, there are a lot of them. I would like to see the QuickPower IDE finished. I also hope to see the following games finished: IMERION, Annihilation (from Secret Weapon Software), and Dark Ages 2: Engel.
 

Visit Gabsoft's homepage at http://www.master-creating.de/gab to get GABasic and other new and innovative QB tools.

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