
  Trek Programs for QBasic
  ========================

SST0.BAS - a fairly straight QBasic conversion of the 1978 version of the
Super Star Trek program that was published in Creative Computing/David Ahl's
BASIC Computer Games. Was already MS BASIC, main thing done was to separate
the keywords. Also incorporated the instructions. Requires uppercase inputs.
The source I started with was superstartrek.bas and superstartrekins.bas
dated 2009 from the bcg.tar.gz file downloaded from the Vintage Basic Games
website: http://www.vintage-basic.net/games.html

ST1.BAS - a QBasic conversion of the Ron Williams' Intellec MDS version of
Super Star Trek. The starting file was ST.BAS, filedate 9/29/1995, produced
by an encoded program named STREK.BAS which when ran produced STREK.ZIP which
contained ST.BAS. My mods to make it work for QBasic were minor, changed the
FR and FS functions to FNR and FNS to work with QBasic, straightened out the
title box and added RANDOMIZE(TIMER), a few other fixes. Requires uppercase
inputs. This version of Trek, despite the name, is totally different code as
the versions published by David Ahl. The concept is similar but it uses a
10x10 sector grid and navigation uses clock directions. The NAV, SRS and LRS
commands are similar but almost everything else is different.

STARTREK.BAS, STINSTR.TXT - another one I found in my MYDOS folder..
the attribution is STARTREK ADAPTED BY L.E. COCHRAN 2/29/76. This version
has a file date of 11/26/2000, I don't know who converted it to QBasic.
The original is here: http://www.dunnington.info/public/startrek/startrek.bas 
This version of Trek is quite small but it plays similar to the original
STTR1 with numeric input, just without the extra stuff.

These programs require the actual QBasic.exe to work as-is. It's still
around and still runs fine under DosBox and DosEmu/FreeDos. They do not
compile with FreeBasic fbc -lang qb or work with QB64, mainly because
they use the old-style DEF FNx(x)=formula function form. Also beware when
converting to more modern BASICs, sometimes the code jumps out of FOR/NEXT
loops, which is fine for counter/jump based interpreters but can cause
issues with stack-based interpreters like BBC Basic. It's not hard to
change these to equivalent counter/IF/GOTO loops.

-------------------------------------------------------
Terry Newton (wtn90125@yahoo.com)

