Snail Graphics An Introductory Programming Package This is a simple "turtle graphics"-like drawing package. Simple program commands move a snail (usually invisible) around the screen based on relative or absolute coordinates. As the snail moves it generates a tone and leaves behind a colored slime trail. While the snail graphics package does not directly relate to robotics, it is a fun way to start kids on programming (eventually needed for robots).

Documentation

• Guide - overview of programming style and simple example
• Commands - reference guide to available snail functions
• Windows 3.1 Editing - excruciatingly detailed instructions on how run an editor

Source Files

• Full Download - self-extracting file includes documentation, source, and all samples (33 KB)
• Zip File - zip archive including all of the above, but for the paranoid or Mac user (17 KB)
• Library - source code for all the snail drawing functions (in Basic)
• Run File - simple batch file appends library and source, then runs program

Examples

• Star - a simple five pointed star illustrating relative turn commands
• Spangle - draws multiple randomly colored stars at random locations
• Star of David - how to draw a six pointed star as two interlocked triangles
• Spiral - pretty and shows the power of simple looping
• Grow - draws 4 random stalks up from the bottom; looks like seaweed
• Wander - a demonstration of a random walk to draw a maze-like diagram
• Square - draws two nested squares using a relative orientation subroutine
• Diamond - a simple program demonstrating the automatic centering wrapper
• Flower - draws a flower with constrained random colored petals
• Name - a example of writing a name using snail commands
• House - a long in-line example showing looping and the homing command
• Face - fancy program showing multiple subroutines and coordinate twisting
• Starter - simple (and boring) program illustrating some basic commands
• Dasher - tutorial on drawing dashed lines as described in the Guide

Send us some of you favorites!

According to Microsoft's official policy, Quick Basic 1.1 is part of its operating systems. If you own a machine with either DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, or Windows 2000 (and who doesn't?) then you are legally entitled to use Quick Basic. It usually is not loaded onto the system, but can be found on the Windows CD (or on the "Product Recovery CD" for factory installed systems) in the subdirectory \other\oldmsdos. Copy the files qbasic.exe and qbasic.hlp to whatever directory you have copied the snail graphics files to (e.g. C:\snail). Note that there is a problem with the Windows 2000 CD. If you can not find QBasic on your CD, you can download it directly from Microsoft as a self-extracting executable (836 KB) with a bunch of other stuff, or from a third party site as a more compact zip archive (287 KB).

Quick Basic also once existed for Macintosh computers (pre-PPC), but is now hard to find. As a substitute, you might want to look at the student edition from True Basic ($20), FutureBasic (demo), or Chipmunk Basic (freeware). Note that the "Run File" MS-DOS batch file will not be directly usable on a Mac. Of course snail graphics is simple enough that it should also run just fine under most DOS emulators (with the DOS version of qbasic.exe). However we have not actually tried any of this, so send us some mail with your experiences and we will update the page.

Contact the folks at Johuco (thefolks@johuco.com) if you have any questions.

Return to Johuco's home page

Last updated 7/24/00