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Welcome to AnbessaPool!

Anbessapool.org is the home of The Great BASIC Text Adventure Programming Contest

Getting started

Rules:

1. There are no cash prizes

2. All entries must include source code and be written entirely in BASIC*. (No Machine Language Allowed/No cross linking)

3. Only text based output is permitted, no graphics are allowed. (CURSES type character addressing is OK)

4. Winners will be selected by popular vote. Any member of the associated FB group or contest participants may cast votes.

5. Entry output may be in any language*

6. Each Team/Programmer may submit more than one entry. Entries will be judged individually.

7. All programs will be archived and placed into the public domain at the end of each contest so that others may learn from and enjoy them. A public GNU, BSD or MIT type license should be included with each entry.

8. Each contest will run for 3 months:

  weeks   1-3: Registration
  weeks   4-9: Contest Period
  weeks 10-12: Judging of Entries
  day      90: Winners Declared

Caveats:

• All BASICs are welcome but using a BASIC that is incompatible with many platforms may have a negative impact

on your ability to collect votes. It is up to each programmer to write code that the rest of us can evaluate and run.

• All languages are welcome but outputting data in languages other than English may have a negative impact on

your ability to collect votes. As with the previous caveat, it is up to each programmer to write code that the rest of us can evaluate and score.

Registration:

Registrations for contest runs will be accepted for the first 3 weeks of the contest period. To register as either a team or individual, you can send an email to registration-test@anbessapool.org. All registration emails are processed automatically in the order that they are received and must conform to a specific file format [1]. Upon successful processing, contestants will receive a confirmation email containing a link that they can use to upload their entries.

How to Submit Entries

Each successful registration is confirmed by an email with a link for an upload page assigned to each team/registrant. KEEP THIS EMAIL. Submissions will be directory archives in either tar.gz or ZIP format and in addition to source code, must contain the following files listed here [2]. All source code and data that a user would need to run the program must be included in the archive submission. For security reasons, no executable files (.EXE or others) will be allowed. Users must be able to inspect a program's source code in addition to running it.

Alternatively, a contestant may submit an entry archive by including it as an attachment to an email sent to tgbtac-submit@anbessapool.org. Submissions by email will only be accepted from the email addresses associated with the registration process.

Voting for Entries

Coming soon.

Downloads:

You can find compatible open-source licenses at opensource.org[3]

How to Write Your Own Text Adventure Games (Contributed by Carlos J Vazquez II from USBorne Publications)[4]

For those interested in programming in a legacy compatible DOS environment, you can download FreeDOS here.[5]

It turns out that Microsoft open sourced GWBASIC which can be run inside the FreeDOS environment [6]. You can find GWBASIC/GWBASICA related downloads here: [7]

You can find the GWBASIC programming manual here. [8]

Here's an article about programming in FreeDos [9] and GWBASIC [10]. Article here. [11]

For those who are interested in an alternate BASIC interpreter available for FreeDOS, you can find informaton on BywaterBASIC here.[12]

The Microsoft QuickBASIC manual for QuickBASIC programmers (Contributed by Carlos J Vazquez II) available here.[13]

An Apple ][ emulator for Windows. (Contributed by Carlos J Vazquez II) available here. [14]

A QuickBASIC 64 clone for Windows/Linux/Mac (Contributed by Carlos J Vazquez II) available here [15]

An Atari 8 bit emulator available for many platforms found here. [16]

WinVICE a Commodore 64 emulator (Contributed by Carlos J Vazquez II) available here. [17]

Commodore 64 books archive (Contributed by Carlos J Vazquez II) found here. [18]

Plus/4 emulator (Contributed by Mary Ainsworth) found here [19]

An online Commodore 64 BASIC emulator that runs in a browser found here. [20]

An online Atari 800 emulator that runs in a browser found here. [21]

Another Atari 8 bit emulator for Windows (Contributed by Eric Carr) found here. [22]

An Atari 8 bit emulator for the Mac (Contributed by Eric Carr) found here. [23]

Dedications:

This contest is dedicated to the late Steven Jacquot my first computer science teacher who inspired the path that would eventually become my career. It is also dedicated to Kelton Flinn founder of Kesmai who showed an 11 year old kid how fun computers could be, Thomas Wright my High School Computer Science teacher whose encouragement was both appreciated and invaluable, Walter and Barbara Pilkey who gave me my first computer job as a HS student and lastly to the late great Rey Barry who has a very supportive member of my hometown's computing community (among other endeavors), founder of the Free Software Hall of Fame and a good friend to myself, my father and grandfather. We are all products of the communities that nurture us, and I am no exception...