All BASIC Game Jam

[mnrvovrfc]

"  I have been meaning to check out FreeBASIC, and finally started reading about it, and it's kind of complicated to set up & install.
How has your experience been using it?
"
? Is so difficult to use FreeBasic?
I had downloaded it some years ago, but I had no so many opportunities to use it because I had been not able to configure it in QB mode.
The extensions are so many, but I dunno the maintenance of them  is regular.
I suppose that FreeBasic has a more difficult  curve of apprentiness than QB64.
Under this point of view FreeBasic is more stranger to QuickBasic than QB64 (IMHO)

I believe it's not even worth it if you like importing audio files especially MP3 and OGG and image files other than BMP. If you like using "_SNDRAW" and related commands in QB64, you'll be disappointed. Not even "SOUND" is supported, forget about "PLAY", must use third-party libraries even for a beep. Freebasic is for guys only, but QB64 could be for women also! (Guys want to see, girls want to hear, you know, stuff that one could learn in church...)

Yeah Freebasic has "real" pointers while QB64 has the "_MEM" gang but who cares? I keep choosing BASIC only to run away from pointers most of the time. If I wanted to come up with a program that has pointers then I don't mind doing a little bit of some C/C++ to add to functionality in a QB64 program. The "Draw String" graphics command in Freebasic is interesting but it doesn't mean it supports fonts in TTF files. You'll have to make them yourself from bitmaps. It allows a lot of control though, and is portable when and if either programming system could run successfully eg. on FreeBSD or Haiku.

Freebasic could generate much smaller executable files than QB64 but it's not an advantage neither at this point, away from 64-bit Windows.

Freebasic project focuses a lot on portability and that's why it excludes fonts and fancy audio and image libraries. The "lang" mode other than the default one isn't worth using any longer, the "qb" mode is for people who hate using "OPTION _EXPLICIT", who hate OOP forced upon them (cannot use "SHARED" inside a SUB/FUNCTION enough said), who hate "RETURN" doing something else from expected etc. Don't misunderstand me, I don't like "-lang fb" mode and being M$VB-like but the devs of Freebasic had to set a target.