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a website by Francis Li

QBDRAW is a drawing tool for Basic programmers who want to include graphics in their applications. It was written in Microsoft QuickBasic for MS-DOS while I was in middle school and was the first significant interactive computing application that I designed and implemented.

In addition to being an avid computer game player, I wanted to create my own computer games. However, there were no tools available at the time for creating graphics that could be used in Basic programs. Thus, I proceeded to design and implement QBDRAW as a solution.

QBDRAW is a graphical direct manipulation drawing tool. Using the mouse as input, it supports freeform drawing as well as customizable drawing tools for primitive shapes, "airbrush" effects, and zooming. A primitive windowing system was implemented to support dialogs, radio buttons, command buttons and scroll bars.

Download:

• QBDRAW
  This is an MS-DOS program, but should work in a full-screen MS-DOS command prompt in Windows 98/NT/2000. Extract the zip file to a temporary directory and execute Qbdraw18.exe.

Figure 1. QBDRAW interface showing a dialog box and a drawing in progress

Figure 2. Finished drawing in full-screen mode

Figure 3. Conceptual drawing for an unfinished computer game