Restoring old software

[dulsi]

TheMightyGlider posted https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/heirloom-software-past-adventure on mastadon. It's an interesting read. I have not done a regression test for my work like Open Alchemist. Regression tests on a program with text based output and no randomization is certainly much easier.

Somehow I stumbled on a mention of Oregon Trail recently. The original source was in basic. If you were to restore that game, would you chose a different language?

[freemedia2018]

It's really a question of what you want to accomplish or make possible with it. Getting Oregon Trail to work would be the first goal, possibly using QB64 (compile to C++) or PC-Basic (a true Basica emulator written in Python, although Oregon Trail probably uses a lot of PEEK/POKE values for Apple that you would need to change unless it is a PC version you're restoring.)

From there if you want other people to be able to work on it, you would probably be better off with a language that more people are willing to use.

I loved Basic for 25 years, until I found something that actually made tinkering easier than Basic. First it was Python, but Python has some aspects that made it more tedious at times-- less tedious at others.