[HN Gopher] Computer Spacegames (1982) [pdf]
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Computer Spacegames (1982) [pdf]
Author : zeepzeep
Score : 86 points
Date : 2020-04-01 07:20 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (drive.google.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (drive.google.com)
| elvyscruz wrote:
| Great book, Thank you..
| fit2rule wrote:
| I had an Oric-1 in those days and cut my teeth porting the games
| in this book to the Oric. The cassette tape with my work is long
| since perished, but I do still have the drawings from those books
| burned in my brain, like a searing brand. ;)
|
| If I recall, the same artist also illustrated a kids "Spy" book,
| which was also another favourite .. although in hindsight, a bit
| spookier now than it should be.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| I had this exact book; remember typing some of these in on my
| Spectrum!
| mysterydip wrote:
| Look at all the art in that book. It makes programming look so
| exciting and fun!
| avmich wrote:
| Here is an extremely influential game, from 1985:
|
| 00.IPA 01.PA 02.IP7 03.- 04.Fx<0 05.12 06.IPV 07./-/ 08./ 09.P2
| 10.BP 11.36 12.IP4 13.IPA 14./ 15.F[?] 16.IP7 17.x 18.XY 19.S/P
| 20.P9 21.P8 22.P2 23./ 24.IPD 25.IP8 26.- 27.Fx>=0 28.00 29.PD
| 30.IP5 31.+ 32./ 33.IP6 34.x 35.P8 36.IP0 37.IP8 38.IP9 39.Fsin
| 40.x 41.IPV 42./-/ 43.PP 44.89 45.+ 46.P0 47.PP 48.93 49.9 50.0
| 51.x 52.Fp 53./ 54.IPA 55./ 56.IPS 57.+ 58.PS 59.Fcos 60.Fx<0
| 61.61 62.Fx>=0 63.63 64.S/P 65.IPV 66.IP8 67.IP9 68.Fcos 69.x
| 70.IP7 71.IPA 72./ 73.Fx2 74.IP4 75.x 76.- 77.IP0 78.PP 79.89
| 80.+ 81.PV 82.PP 83.93 84.2 85./ 86.IPA 87.+ 88.V/O 89.IP0 90.x
| 91.IPA 92./ 93.+ 94.IP2 95.x 96.V/O
|
| And a story which tells what it's about:
|
| https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/silicon-revolution/ho...
| app4soft wrote:
| What calc needed for this game?
| avmich wrote:
| The article explains the details; basically, B3-34 family -
| like B3-34, MK-54, MK-56, MK-61, MK-52 will all work.
|
| There are some emulators. A good hardware one is here:
| https://github.com/sergev/mk-61 .
| themodelplumber wrote:
| This book and others also found here, for those who prefer
| reading without PDF download:
|
| https://archive.org/details/Computer_Space_Games
|
| https://archive.org/details/folkscanomy_computer?and%5B%5D=l...
|
| If using a smaller screen, be sure to try out the full screen,
| single page, and zoom controls.
| mrspeaker wrote:
| I also loved these books as a kid. A while ago I started making a
| game - BASIC Instincts - that was going to be about type-in
| listings and modifying your world with code
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwBiJR_rj_w)
|
| I got the interpreter working and started creating the world...
| then the game Else Heart.Break() came out and took the wind out
| of my sails - it did what I was planning to do, only much better.
| Though it might be time to revisit it now!
| schoenobates wrote:
| During the 80's there was a great weekly magazine series
| published the UK called Input Magazine. It's browsable via
| archive.org -
|
| https://archive.org/details/inputmagazine
| tsumnia wrote:
| I've actually been collecting the Usbourne books for the past
| couple years! For my research on providing typing exercises to CS
| students, I like to use the books as a physical prop to point out
| how "this was how they used to do it" [1]. This is actually one
| of the issues in modern CS learning resources - it's too easy for
| novices to simply copy and paste the code, so they never really
| refine the mistakes made from simple syntax errors. By forcing
| students to retype code, you are making them more comfortable
| with the keyboard and they don't have to worry about juggling
| technical literacy with problem-solving skills.
|
| [1]
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338659877_Typing_Ex...
| musicale wrote:
| > NB these programs don't work on modern computers.
|
| BBC BASIC runs on most modern computers, notably the Raspberry
| Pi running RISC OS (which includes BBC BASIC)
|
| or Linux/BSD/Windows running Brandy BASIC and derivatives
|
| or Linux/Windows/macOS/Android running the free BBC BASIC for
| SDL 2.0: http://www.bbcbasic.co.uk/bbcsdl/
|
| or in a web browser: https://bbc.godbolt.org
| ococococ wrote:
| I agree with you completely. I am self taught. I started as a
| child from books like this and also the help files in qbasic.
|
| Ever since those days any time I'm learning a new framework or
| language I turn auto complete off. If I find good code
| snippets, I retype them and usually refactor them completely.
|
| Although it takes me a bit longer to ramp up, i feel this has
| lead to me being a very good engineer and has given me a deeper
| understanding of many techniques and has helped me commit many
| things to memory. At this point adapting to new languages and
| being productive in them only takes me a few months.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| I sure would have loved this as a kid! It's even more fun and
| colorful than Creative Computing (although it's not a monthly
| publication). I really used to look forward to every issue of CC
| each month.
| CocoaGeek wrote:
| This looks super familiar, I think I used the french edition back
| in '83!
|
| Thanks for sharing, brings back lots of good memories!
| aswanson wrote:
| I remember the commodore blue book christmas. I went through that
| book in a weekend. I could never get the sprite/gaming stuff
| working as they were laid out in the book, though. Very
| frustrating as an 11 year old.
| codeulike wrote:
| These Usbourne books were great, and they really got me started.
| They've released most of them for free now, see the bottom of
| this page:
|
| https://usborne.com/browse-books/features/computer-and-codin...
|
| e.g. Introduction co Computer Programming
|
| https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxv0SsvibDMTUXdYTnRaTy1LLVE...
| adhoc32 wrote:
| And kids, this is how I learned to program.
| kar1181 wrote:
| And just look at how much simpler it is compared to modern kids
| programming materials. The code is denser but there's less of
| it, and far far less bootstrapping.
|
| I think that is the killer right now, the amount of barriers to
| moving pixels on the screen is very high relative to how it was
| for us on the 8bits.
| jansan wrote:
| Another killer is that kids expect much more from a computer
| nowadays. Being able to move around a block on the screen was
| something that you could impress your nerd friends with, but
| today, what can you possibly program in a few lines of code
| to impress kids?
| Marazan wrote:
| https://mobile.twitter.com/search?q=%23tweetcart&src=typed_
| q...
| Moru wrote:
| Actually kids can be pretty impressed if they did the
| program themselves. They think it's all magic until they
| try it on their own, also makes them more understanding for
| others work and bugs. Less acidic when it comes to judging
| others work on the play-store.
| greggman3 wrote:
| I don't know if it's actually simpler than Scratch.
|
| On the other hand if you want something like this for kids
| now there's Pico-8.
|
| https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php
|
| Even has a discount for teachers. Only one copy needed for
| the entire class in school
|
| https://www.lexaloffle.com/info.php?page=schools
| Moru wrote:
| TIC-80 is pretty nice too.
| astrobe_ wrote:
| The kids of today would probably much more interested in
| doing something fun with their smartphones than doing
| something on a fatass PC.
|
| A smartphone is actually much more interesting than a
| computer, when you look at it (camera, microphone, gyroscope,
| GPS, Bluetooth...).
| vidarh wrote:
| I'm playing with DragonRuby now [1]. It lacks a lot (but is
| coming along very rapidly). It's aimed at adults wanting to
| build real games, but what appealed to me was exactly that
| the barrier to get started is extremely low compared to most
| game engines out there. I particularly dislike the IDE-based
| ones that expects you to learn a custom environment and build
| a lot of the game visually.
|
| [1] https://dragonruby.itch.io/
| Moru wrote:
| I love GLBasic. It's a basic with types (sort of classes).
| Also has 3D grafics but I mostly used it for 2D. It's on
| steam now and can export to several platforms other than
| windows. It has been around for quite a while, there is
| little to no bootstrapping needed and it's fast. You can
| also write inline C if you need more speed. I haven't had
| the chance to try android export yet but I have seen some
| people from the community put up things there recently so
| it does work.
|
| [1] http://www.glbasic.com/
| wzdd wrote:
| One of my favourite programming books for its anyone-can-get-
| into-programming optimism and for including the timeless advice
| "Remember, when you are trying to work out a game, not to include
| anything which your computer won't be able to do" (p38).
|
| It's also amazing that this short volume supports (at least) 8
| dialects of BASIC. Much respect to the authors for writing
| mostly-portable code and then tweaking and testing it 8 times.
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(page generated 2020-04-02 23:00 UTC)