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BASIC Computer Games compatibility

go-basic uses the original public-domain programs from coding-horror/basic-computer-games as an external acceptance suite. The input is pinned at commit 5301155192d91d74d337899cecc59dbda59c4c17, so compatibility results are repeatable and cannot drift with the upstream default branch.

Audited inventory

The pinned repository contains 96 games, 105 main-tree BASIC sources, and 210 paths when mirrored alternate-language copies are included. Byte comparison reduces those paths to 112 distinct sources: all 105 main-tree variants plus 7 byte-different alternates. Every distinct source remains independently tested.

The repository keeps corresponding fixtures in test/scripts/. Besides the 112 corpus fixtures, that directory contains four small local programs used for general CLI and numeric-output tests.

Acceptance tiers

Pinned smoke tier

make corpus-smoke

This command:

  1. downloads only original .bas sources from the pinned archive;
  2. verifies a commit marker before reusing the ignored local cache;
  3. discovers main sources and only byte-different alternates;
  4. parses and executes every variant with deterministic randomness, no sleeping, a statement limit, and a wall-clock limit; and
  5. reports status, last BASIC line, duration, and any error per variant.

An accepted smoke result reaches normal completion, an expected input boundary, or the configured statement bound. Parse failures, unexpected runtime failures, panics, and timeouts fail the tier.

Deterministic gameplay tier

make corpus-playable

This black-box suite builds the real CLI and runs all corpus fixtures one by one. Inputs, random seeds, statement limits, and expected termination are controlled for repeatability. Assertions cover exact transcripts where stable and complete gameplay milestones where a full transcript would obscure the behavior under test. This tier exercises the product executable rather than a test-only interpreter path.

Interpreting bounded runs

Some original programs intentionally repeat forever or rely on Control-C. Their deterministic scenario verifies meaningful behavior before stopping at a statement limit. Other programs have no quit command and intentionally end at a well-defined next-input boundary. These are accepted only when their expected transcript or gameplay milestones have already been observed.

The byte-different alternate Life for Two source jumps to a missing line 800 after completing and declaring a draw. The main source exits normally; the alternate is accepted only after the complete draw behavior, then bounded before that upstream defect. It is tracked in go-basic#67 and basic-computer-games#957.

CI contract

Pull requests and pushes to main run the race-enabled unit and CLI suite, coverage threshold, formatting, vet, lint, fuzzing, release builds, vulnerability scan, and pinned smoke tier. A release tag repeats the quality, fuzz, corpus, and vulnerability gates before publishing artifacts.

Passing the corpus is strong evidence for the supported language surface, but it is not a claim that every Microsoft BASIC dialect or hardware-specific feature is implemented. Supported behavior is documented in the language reference and enforced by the product and compatibility tests.