{"id":59,"date":"2026-08-30T15:16:18","date_gmt":"2026-08-30T15:16:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/robinclapworthy.com\/?p=59"},"modified":"2026-08-30T16:04:52","modified_gmt":"2026-08-30T16:04:52","slug":"i-decided-to-write-an-arcade-game-in-visual-foxpro-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robinclapworthy.com\/?p=59","title":{"rendered":"I Decided to Write an Arcade Game in Visual FoxPro 9"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Visual FoxPro 9 probably isn’t the obvious choice for writing an arcade game in 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, it’s probably a terrible choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which is partly why I wanted to try it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve spent much of my career developing software in Visual FoxPro, including LawnPro, a commercial application I’ve been developing for more than 20 years. I know VFP extremely well as a business application development environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I’d never tried to write a game with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I started with a simple question:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Could I make a spaceship move around the screen?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The answer was yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I added a starfield.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then the ship could fire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there were aliens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then collisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then explosions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then sound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At some point I connected a PS4 controller.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That worked too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This has become something of a recurring theme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Galactic Gladiators is still very much a work in progress, but what started as a small experiment has become one of the most enjoyable programming projects I’ve worked on in years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m going to use this blog to document the development \u2014 including the things that work, the things that don’t, and the increasingly unreasonable things I discover Visual FoxPro can actually do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I genuinely don’t know where this is going.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s rather the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Visual FoxPro 9 probably isn’t the obvious choice for writing an arcade game in 2026. In fact, it’s probably a terrible choice. Which is partly why I wanted to try it. I’ve spent much of my career developing software in Visual FoxPro, including LawnPro, a commercial application I’ve been developing for more than 20 years. … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-galactic-gladiators"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinclapworthy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinclapworthy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinclapworthy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinclapworthy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinclapworthy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/robinclapworthy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63,"href":"https:\/\/robinclapworthy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions\/63"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinclapworthy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinclapworthy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinclapworthy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}