Who here wrote their own games?

[Phosphor Dot Fossils]

Did anyone else here crank out their very own original BASIC games back in the day? I used to love doing this. I mean, I also had all the store-bought game-making packages - EA's Adventure Construction Kit, Garry Kitchen's GameMaker by Activision, etc. - but there was somehow something more satisfying about crafting my own code, working out the math in my head, and so on. This is especially funny when one considers that I was flunking math classes left and right at the time, and yet was cooking up all these rather advanced algebraic equations to make my games work.

Probably my most advanced project was Intergalactic Trade Mark II (http://www.thelogbook.com/phosphor/apple/it.htm) (I honestly don't remember there being a Mark I, to be honest...oh well!), which was a kind of space-faring version of Taipan, with some RPG elements as well, including an attempt to do the reputation/accountability thing like Ultima IV. I found this a while back, and I must admit I'm sorely tempted to finish it up and release it as an Apple II "homebrew" one of these days, crude though it is.

So who else fancied themselves a member of the game-making fraternity back in the day? Those really were the days - anyone could make a game, and if it passed muster with your friends, duplicate it and sell it in a Ziploc bag with a home-printed manual. It just isn't like that anymore - well, I say that, and then I look at that copy of Steve Woita's Clickum on my game shelf. But it's not as prevalent as it used to be. I mean, the game-in-a-bag is how Lord British got his start.

[ozyr]

I did a port of an adventure game (if that counts), from the ZX81 (Timex/Sinclair 1000) to the Timex/Sinclair 2068. Added much better graphics (color), sounds, and gameplay. Darn thing is, since it was 20+ year ago, I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the game (I no longer have it - I should go digging for it on the net). This goes under one of those 'D'oh' moments, and I should have at least kept a copy of the code! I remember spending many weeks working on that game, and was damn proud when it worked. I even showed it to the local Sinclair club once.
The game was loosly styled like the original Ultima game (without the unground dungeon scenes though). Fairly cool, if a tad bid out-dated.

[oesiii]

I was never too much into programming, I was always into hardware hacking and software 'borrowing' ;) But I did write some basic games with my cousin in the early 80's on an Atari 800. We only had the cassette drive but we wrote text-based adventure games with sound effects and some music that could be played from the tapes. The only two I remember are a James Bond game and a jet-pilot adventure game.

[Darth Sensei]

I wrote a game on the TRS80 (Black and White) that featured a dancing gremlin like creature where you specified which techniques you wanted and the character would perform them. It had no sound (as my computer didn't have sound) and it wasn't exciting, but a programmer friend of my Dad's saw it and helped me sell it to one of the game making companies. It eventually became "The Dancing Demon."

D

[Flack]

I wrote a game on the TRS80 (Black and White) that featured a dancing gremlin like creature where you specified which techniques you wanted and the character would perform them. It had no sound (as my computer didn't have sound) and it wasn't exciting, but a programmer friend of my Dad's saw it and helped me sell it to one of the game making companies. It eventually became "The Dancing Demon."

D

Get OUT. Do NOT tell me you wrote Dancing Demon.

Are you kidding?

I'm sure I spent several hours playing with that program back in the day!!! I haven't been able to get it working under any emulator to date.

[Darth Sensei]

I wrote a game on the TRS80 (Black and White) that featured a dancing gremlin like creature where you specified which techniques you wanted and the character would perform them. It had no sound (as my computer didn't have sound) and it wasn't exciting, but a programmer friend of my Dad's saw it and helped me sell it to one of the game making companies. It eventually became "The Dancing Demon."

D

Get OUT. Do NOT tell me you wrote Dancing Demon.

Are you kidding?

I'm sure I spent several hours playing with that program back in the day!!! I haven't been able to get it working under any emulator to date.

No, I'm not kidding. However, the version that was released was vastly superior to my "prototype" as I was just a little kid when I wrote it. I taught myself to program BASIC using the manual that came with our computer and then using books I'd get for birthdays and Christmas.

D

[TNTPLUST]

I used to type in games from 99'er magazine for my TI. After I got bored with them I would alter them into my own games. I programmed my own version of LISA called TINA (my version was a bit more friendly! Wink, wink say no more). I also tried to make a WAR GAMES game (who didn't) by gutting some other type in programs (Checkers and Black Jack). There were quite a few others too. If you owned a TI when they pulled out of the home market this was the only way to get games. Ufortunently when I finally upgraded to a C64 I was more intrested in playing with music, modems and playing games on it instead of programming.

[Captain Wrong]

Believe it or not, at 10 years old I was writing a database program with tape backup for my CoCo. Needless to say, it was a bit beyond my range. I think I got about 60% done and gave up.

No games though.

[digitalpress]

I've done a few over the years. These are my two favorites.

Early Withdrawal (1989, Commodore 64) - this text-based adventure puts you in the role of a bank robber who runs the gang of four men. The task is simple. Get in, get the money, get out. Try surviving this challenge, saving your partners is tough but are you willing to take risks with their lives to save your own? Of course you are. Floppy disk.

Space Galleon (1986, TI-99/4A) - guide your trash collecting space trawler through tight space highways and treacherous open space garbage dumps. Enemy ships and civilians who simply cannot drive will attempt to ram you out of their way, and crazy interstellar avenues have crazy dead ends. Collect as much trash as possible and clean up outer space. The future (of sanitation) depends on you!

I describe these games as follows:

Early Withdrawal is like Zork but much bloodier, funnier, but with a far more limited sentence parser. It does recognize just about every swear word there is, however.

Space Galleon is like Spy Hunter but much slower, with cheap deaths and no way to defend yourself. Buy hey, where else are you gonna get to drive a garbage truck in space?

[Captain Wrong]

I've done a few over the years. These are my two favorites.

Early Withdrawal (1989, Commodore 64)

The church aproved birth control game?

Seriously, I remembered I was working on another game. I'm pretty sure it was CoCo again or Atari 400. It was to be a music quiz game with the big attraction being it played music clips from the tape drive. Basically it was an excersize I came up with because I'd stumbled on how to play audio from the tape through the TV speaker using program control.

Not much of a fun game but there it is.

[TheSmirk]

Early Withdrawal is like Zork but much bloodier, funnier, but with a far more limited sentence parser. It does recognize just about every swear word there is, however.


That sounds fun! Do you have a copy around anywhere? ROM? :D The swear word thing is very funny since every time you'd play those text based games and got stuck or bored, you know the "blue-material" was coming out in force!

> %&@@!$$ Yourself
I do not understand that command

LOL

[YoshiM]

I definitely made my share of games:

Ghost Hunter (TI-99/4A): obviously taken from Ghost Busters. The game had two stages. The first one you had to drive to the scene of the ghostly disturbance while dodging slime balls the ghosts chucked at your car. The second stage you had to maneuver the Ghost Grappler and zap the ghost low enough in order to trap it.

Pyramid Panic (TI-99/4A): my first attempt at a text adventure, you were trapped inside of a pyramid and had to find your way out. I included trivia questions but they had nothing to do with Egypt. I had to trim the game down because it took up too much memory and I wrote each room using PRINT statements instead of creating a database and calling the rooms from that.

Star Trek: Galactic Maze (TI99/4A): a hack of a maze game in some Games for TI99/4A book. The Starship Enterprise had become trapped inside a gigantic maze in space. Every so often the ship would be attacked by Klingons and the only way to stop them was to activate the experimental "replusor field".

Junkworks (CoCo): kinda like Klax-you had to move your bin back and forth to collect a variety of junk and you had to stack them up according to their type. Never worked right so I abandoned the project.

Time bomb (CoCo): a bomb threat was made at a 3 floor hotel and you had to go in and disarm it. Many things like cupboards, dressers and such could be opened/used and yes you could TAKE LEAK in the restroom.

Marvel Super Hero Character Generator (CoCo): not a game per se but a utility to create heroes for the Marvel Super Hero RPG. Didn't own a printer so it didn't print but it made creation faster.

Hanglider (Apple IIe): not so much a game than a graphics demo, this was a project for my Computer class in high school. Blocky dude with a hang glider was running towards a ledge. If you hit the Space Bar at the wrong time he'd fall to his doom (with appropriate animation). If you hit it right he'd jump off and fly into the sunset. My classmates had fun killing the poor guy.

[le geek]

I wrote a space shuttle game for the C64 named, oddly enough, shuttle.

It's multiload and has several mini games. And it could be a lot LOT better!

But if you feel lucky I have it available as a disk image!

http://www.abscape.org/legeek/f_c64.htm

Cheers,
Ben

[Dridor]

I could make a mean text adventure game back in the day, all in BASIC, this was when I was maybe in 7th grade... then I eventually moved on up to programming in C, where I made "Die By the Sword", which was basically a bunch of If Else's nested in one another. but it was pretty neat, i somehow managed to get in a working inventory, and you could save and load your own game files. oh and everything was in color, which I considered a massive improvement over Zork, which had come out only 17 years earlier.