RetroChallenge 2021: Greg Dionne's BASIC Compiler Compared to Interpreted BASIC

Well this hasn't been my most productive Retrochallenge. My real job has finally caught up with me and I find myself unable to devote the same amount of time I used to for coding.  Or perhaps it is simply life that has caught up with me and body, so that I no longer have the spare energy to devote to amount of coding I might otherwise like to do.  I can't be sure.

In any case I can report that Les Cavernes basically works as I think it was intended to work.  It's simply not an overly great game. It's a simple little type-in program RPG/Text adventure hybrid that provides a very basic level of game play.  Still, an interesting little bit of type-in history.

My compiled Freecell is working well.  It seems to play a decent little game of solitaire.  And all I had to do was mangle a beautifully designed piece of QBasic code (nicely indented and without line numbers) into a GOTOed piece of nightmarish 8-bit Color Basic code.  Kind of like taking a Porsche and removing the body and putting a rusty Volkswagen Beatle body on to the chassis instead. The original code was from some French bloke.  His site can be found here:

http://jemaf.free.fr/index.php?page=qbasic

He's got a bunch of other programs in Qbasic.  Mostly puzzle games.  I might try converting some of these others to Micro Color Basic.  But it was really Freecell I wanted to try.  I thought it would be a good test for Greg Dionne's Basic compiler because QBasic programs are compiled, and I suspected it would run a little slow under regular interpreted Basic on the MC-10.  Here's the comparison:

Interpreted Basic Freecell:

Compiled Basic Freecell:

My wife Patty has played it a number of times.  She's an experienced card player, so I hope her assessment is a good indication that all the bugs are out.  Still if anyone would like to play, it can be played via the following link. After you select "Play" below select the "Educational" programs item and then choose "FREECELL" from the "Cassette" menu of the Javascript emulator and type EXEC in the main window: