Rise of the Dragon (BASIC)

[ArugulaZ]

Hi! A long, long time ago, I made a conversion of GORF for the Game Boy Advance, using the Dragon BASIC compiler. I'd like to dip back into making games for this great handheld, but there are just a few problems:

1. Dragon BASIC, the version made over twenty years ago, doesn't seem to work on modern computers.
2. Dragon BASIC, the reboot made by a German engineer, is supposed to be more feature-rich, but it's just the source code; you have to compile the whole thing yourself, and I've never had much luck compiling other peoples' programs.

https://github.com/uli/dragonbasic
https://github.com/ludo77/dragonbasic

Does anyone have a working, ready to use, Windows compatible copy of this new version of the compiler? I'd love to use it, but the "all assembly required" approach to distributing software never fails to frustrate and annoy me. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

 

[ArugulaZ]

Okay, I'll be more direct. Please compile this file for me. I've worked on this for hours, and I clearly can't do this myself.

 

[cearp]

If I were you I'd use AI, point it at one of the repos, and it will guide you / do it for you, likely working out any issues along the way.
What are you getting stuck on currently?

(I have not compiled these, I am already inundated with projects and can't actively help!)

 

[ArugulaZ]

Understandable... everybody's got their own lives to lead. I do appreciate that you responded, though.

As for your suggestion, I'm what you might call AI-averse. I don't use it directly, but unfortunately some tools I've used were "vibe-coded," and when you're making games for forty-plus year old systems, you don't have a lot of options for utilities. If I get desperate, I might turn to AI to build this. Computer help is better than no help at all.

I might have to go the Linux route to build this software, because I have had no luck in Windows. I downloaded the software the GitHub requested, tried using the command (simply, make cross-win) in the command prompt, in MSYS2, in multiple directories. I've tried it plain, I've tried it while referencing the file dbc.cpp, and I keep getting garbage responses like "Can't find the directory" or "no rule to make target." Ugh.

The GitHub says, simply, download these dependencies, and then type "make win_cross." That doesn't work, mostly because it's vague. WHERE do I run this? WHAT file do I reference? Just saying "make win_cross" isn't cutting it as instructions, because I've done that, and it goes nowhere.

Post automatically merged: Today at 2:38 AM

Making (glacial) progress with Linux. It's still throwing errors, but they're errors of substance, so it's a start. I have G++ on this machine, but apparently not the correct flavor of it.