2019 BASIC Ten-Liners contest!

[carlsson]

Has BASIC gone out of fashion in countries like Canada, Finland & others where you could expect participation, or perhaps they go as individual anonymous.

[José Pereira]

Thanks to Kaz post(s) at AtariOnline here's some facts (we're with A8 aren't all that bad, I think ) taking from Vitoco, Carlsson and Bunsen:

1. This year a lot of works appeared, and a beautiful summary was made by one of the authors of Atari works, Vitoco:
   
   

   Vitoco:

   83 entries, only 20 of them are for Atari XL / XE, less than for Commodore 64 which are 21, plus 9 for VIC-20. There are 12 entries for Sinclair ZX Spectrum and 6 for Amstrad CPC. There are 3 or less entries for MSX, Apple IIe, Tandy TRS-80, BBC Micro, Mattel Aquarius, Thomson MO6 and Atari 2600.
   
   PUR-80 category has 35 entries, both PUR-120 and EXTREM-256 have 18, and WILD has 12.
   
   There are 43 authors, and the "most" are: Kevin with 8 entries, Matteo "Toolkitman" Trevisan has entries for 3 different platforms. Nobody sent entries for all 4 categories, have two entries for WILD entry.
   
   16 different BASIC flavors were used in total (including different version numbers on some of them).

   
   
   The statistics were also supplemented by one of the co-organizers:
   
   

   Carlsson:

   2015: 56% Atari XL / XE, 31% C64, 8% Amstrad CPC, 5% other formats
   
   2016: 26% Laser VZ-200, 23% Atari XL / XE, 20% C64, 13% MSX, 7% Tandy MC-10, 11% other
   
   2017: 39% Atari XL / XE, 26% C64, 15% Amstrad CPC, 5% Tandy MC-10, 15% other formats
   
   2018: 33% C64, 26% Atari XL / XE, 13% Amstrad CPC, 7% Tandy MC-10, 21% other formats
   
   2019: 25% C64, 24% Atari XL / XE, 14% ZX Spectrum, 11% VIC-20, 7% Amstrad CPC, 19% other channels
2. Interesting statistics, which led by Bunsen, where the authors of the programs come from. Definitely fashion in the US for such cosics:
   
   

   22 entries from USA
   11 entries from Italy
   10 entries from Germany
   5 entries from Chile
   5 entries from France
   4 entries from Hungary
   3 entries from Spain
   3 entries from Switzerland
   3 entries from Sweden
   3 entries from Ukraine
   2 entries from Netherlands
   1 entry from Australia
   1 entry from Belgium
   1 entry from Brazil
   1 entry from UK
   1 entry from Austria
   1 entry from Poland
   1 entry from Columbia
   5 anonymous entries

Edited April 4 by José Pereira

[carlsson]

By the way, the current HSC round which ends on April 20 is entirely devoted to modern Atari homebrew games. The main one is Berks 4, with a bunch of bonus games and the 10Liners as extra bonus games to which extent they're games at all.

 

So far I tried all 18 Atari 8-bit entries publcally available (*) broken down as follows:

 

* 11 games with accumulative scoring of which 3 require paddles (**) and 1 has mostly random scoring (Poke Pig)

* 2 games without accumulative scoring (Bouncy, Lander)

* 1 game which might have scoring, though I didn't finish it (Pixelated Puzzle)

* 1 entries which to most part isn't a game but could be played as one (Minilife)

* 3 entries which definitely are not games (Amen BREAK, Garden, Mini Character Editor)

 

(*) Two more Atari 8-bit entries (Dragon Trainer, Missile) not posted in this thread as far as I could see, and which not have been made available on the main site yet

 

(**) All three use PADDLE(0) but since I only got a Coleco Gemini controller which is a combined joystick and PADDLE(1) controller, I had to modify Bomber, Bounce & Catch and UFO Attack to read the other paddle in order to play them.

[carlsson]

The results have been posted: https://gkanold.wixsite.com/homeputerium/kopie-von-results-2019

 

Results for the Atari crowd:

 

PUR-80

5. Bounce & Catch / 7.50

12. Hubbub / 6.50

14. UFO Attack / 6.10

27. License Plates / 4.50

 

PUR-120

1. Pixelated Puzzle / 9.50

2. Lander / 8.30

3. reactorX / 7.50

7. Bouncy / 5.50

9. Bomber / 4.90

11. Dragon Trainer / 4.60

13. Minilife / 4.30

16. Missile / 3.60

18. Poke Pig / 3.30

 

EXTREM-256

1. Mini Bros / 10.30

2. Floody Bot / 8.50

12. Missile 10 / 5.50

12. Neverending Story / 5.50

 

WILD

3. Mini Character Editor

6. Amen Break

7. Garden

[McKong]

Wrong thread

Edited April 16 by McKong

[carlsson]

Feel pity for the TI-99/4A users, as the built in BASIC only supports one statement per row IIRC.

 

Small addition: I just realized that cartridge based TI Extended BASIC (so still not qualified for PUR-80) does support multiple statements per row if those are separated by :: instead of single colon as on most other computers. The TI people just found this contest so perhaps they'll contribute some entries for 2020, assuming it will be run next year.