Chapter 1: Meet QF Code

Everything you need to start is already open in front of you: a browser. No installer, no account, no setup. That's not an accident. It's the whole point.

Opening QF Code

Go to the QF Code IDE and you'll see two main areas: the editor on one side, where you write code, and the output panel on the other, where your program talks back to you. A Run button sits above the editor. Press it, and whatever you've written executes top to bottom, printing its results into the output panel as it goes.

That's the entire loop you'll use for this whole book: write, run, read the output, change something, run again. You don't need to understand every button on the toolbar right now. Save, Open, Find, and the rest are there when you need them, and we'll pick each one up exactly when a chapter gives you a reason to reach for it.

Your First Line

Type this into the editor:

writeln("Hello, adventurer.")

Press Run. The output panel should show:

Hello, adventurer.

That's a complete, real QF Code program. One line. Nothing missing. You don't need a main() function, you don't need to import anything, you don't need to tell the computer where your program starts. It starts at the first line and runs until it runs out of lines.

Write and Writeln

QF Code gives you two ways to print something: write and writeln. They look similar, but they behave differently in a way that will trip you up once if nobody warns you, so let's get it out of the way now.

write("A")
write("B")
writeln("C")

You might expect this to print ABC on one line. It doesn't. It prints:

AB
C

write keeps adding to the same line. writeln always starts a fresh line of its own, even if there's text waiting from an open write. Think of write as talking without taking a breath, and writeln as always clearing its throat and starting a new sentence. For most of this book, writeln is what you'll reach for. write earns its keep in a handful of specific places, and you'll know one when you see it.

Comments

A line starting with // is a comment. The computer skips it entirely. It's a note to yourself, or to whoever reads your code next.

// This program greets the player.
writeln("Hello, adventurer.")

One thing worth knowing early: // is also QF Code's division operator, for whole-number division. The language can tell the difference based on where the // shows up, but you can save yourself any confusion by sticking to one habit, put // at the start of a line when you mean comment, and only use it between two numbers when you mean division.

Starting the Adventure

Everything in this book builds toward one project: a small text adventure. You're going to write it a few lines at a time, chapter by chapter, and by the end you'll have a complete little game that didn't exist before you built it.

It starts here, with three lines:

// The Hollow Cottage
// Chapter 1

writeln("You are standing outside a locked cottage.")

Run it. That single line of output is the whole game so far. It isn't much. By chapter 14, this same file will have rooms, an inventory, a locked door you can actually open, and sound effects when you win or lose. Every single piece of that will get added because the story needs it, not because it was next on a list.

Make It Yours. Before you move on, change the cottage. Make it a cave, a spaceship, a treehouse, whatever you want the reader of your game to see first. This is your program now, not a copy of mine.

// The Hollow Cottage
// Chapter 1

writeln("You are standing outside a locked cottage.")