Sunday, 5 July 2015

BASIC games in Python - 1982 would be proud (Part 3)

Ok, this is it - the one and only part 3, the final chapter.  We looked at pygame in part 1,  we deciphered the BASIC code in part 2,and now we're gonna produce a python version of this simple little 1K ZX81 game. Why, oh why am I doing this?! If you've sat through the previous 2 parts, then that's a question you're probably asking... Is it purely to learn about converting old 1980's programs to python?  Well, in a way yes - its...

Saturday, 4 July 2015

BASIC games in Python - 1982 returns (Part 2)

Welcome to part 2... We're going to break down an old 1k ZX81 game written in BASIC in 1982.  This code is a scan I made from the first-ever book I bought...  "34 Amazing Games for the 1K ZX81" by Alastair Gourlay.  It taught me a load of techniques that would have taken a long time to pick up on my own, such as reading keys and drawing characters moving on screen. In the books foreword, written by Tim Hartnell (a name well known...

BASIC games in Python - 1982 returns (Part 1)

One thing I always enjoyed back in the 80's, and what made computing just so much fun was the ability to write my own software - in particular - Games. It was not just a lot of fun writing the games themselves, it was the exploration of what the computer was capable of doing through code.  Home computing was all new - the wild west of computer gaming. It was about invention, discovery and mastering the machine and its programming language. Nothing...