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FEATURE

Making Mancala

Porting an Ancient BASIC Game to Xojo

Issue: 23.2 (March/April 2025)
Author: Marc Zeedar
Author Bio: Marc taught himself programming in high school when he bought his first computer but had no money for software. He's had fun learning ever since.
Article Description: No description available.
Article Length (in bytes): 38,619
Starting Page Number: 12
Article Number: 23202
Resource File(s):

project 23202.zip Updated: 2025-03-02 13:14:50

Related Web Link(s):

http://www.xdevmag.com/browse/21.1/21105/
http://www.xdevmag.com/browse/23.1/23102/

Excerpt of article text...

When I first got into computers in the 1980s, there really wasn't an easy way to share software. It's hard to imagine today in this internet-connected world, but back then there was no central network, and even using a BBS (Bulletin Board System) required a phone line, modem, and more equipment than most folks had. Not to forget that phone calls actually cost money per minute back then!

Even if you could meet fellow geeks in person—a challenge in itself—you couldn't share data on disks because those were scarcely standard: there were different sizes, formats, and some computers used cassettes or other data storage devices. Every computer system was proprietary, too, so you had to find someone with the same setup, or the software wouldn't be compatible.

The most universal way of sharing software, believe it or not, was via printed magazines. Most computer periodicals in those days would include pages of code, usually in BASIC, which you could type into your own computer and run. That's actually a core reason why xDev includes so much code. I still love that concept and think reading code is the best way to learn, though thankfully you don't have to manually type everything in these days.

I've often thought about trying to port some of those old games and code to Xojo, and I have occasionally, such as Eliza two years ago (http://www.xdevmag.com/browse/21.1/21105/). Today, I thought I'd try a simple game.

Mancala

Mancala is an ancient African game that I played as a kid (I grew up in Senegal, West Africa, where it's part of the culture). It's a strategy game that has many variations and goes by hundreds of different names (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mancala). I even have my own carved wooden game board (see Figure ?).

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