Not bad for 1 hour!Project — ZX Spectrum Games Code ClubOver the next few months, I decided to put together a book with other such type-ins but format it as a learning guide to building small but simple video games.
I decided that 20 was the magic number and the hard part was structuring the order of the games and which games would suit for the concepts I wanted to convey.
Also the stealth-learning approach I wanted for the book was achieved by introducing the book as an activity book, where the activity is making simple games with the option to implement some improvements to the games.
I also needed to incorporate some standard gamedev topics such as collision detection, game loops etc.
It took several months and lots of work — but I managed to get my 20 games and the book draft all together and finalised — some of it is a blur, as I was juggling other work and releasing my mobile games in tandem.
But I still enjoyed it!A lot of ZX Spectrum fans signed up for the book and that made it all worthwhile and kept me going when the finish-line was still far out of sight.
For the love of BASIC!!Well in the end the book was released and people bought it and used it, and had lots of fun with it!.STEM events bought and used it too — that made me feel very proud, but not just for my own efforts.
I was proud of the giants that had invented and created and gave us all BASIC!80s computers are responsible for sparking and creating the games industry as we know it today — many of the veterans will tell you of their first experiences of coding and computers — and most, if not all, will say ……“It all started with BASIC!”Nowadays, UI and UX is all about simplicity and python is applauded for its ease-of-use and English language commands etc.
but before all of those came BASIC!.Okay, we all know that GOTO is ‘baaaaadd’ in the dev world — but it’s okay once in a while…right?If you grew up in the 80s or early 90s and you have some experience with coding, why not fire up the emulator, or better still, the actual machine that you grew up with, and re-introduce yourself to BASIC.
Hell, even if you’re not a coder — that’s a better reason to try BASIC!.