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A Modern Day '101 Basic Computer Games'?
pcraven asks: "Back when I learned how to program, I found a book called 101 Basic Computer Games by David H. Ahl. This book had a lot of simple programs that I could type into the Apple //e. It made programming interesting. I'm not sure I would have started a career in programming without it. Today I haven't found any recent equivalent to this book. I want a bunch of sample computer games that students can program that they will find fun and interesting. Something that a CompSci 101 graduate could type in and run. Does anyone know of a book or web site like this?"
Back in the day, typing in a program from a book was a pretty common way to get a game "installed" and running. I wasnt especially computer literate when I was 10 years old, but I knew how to type stuff into my 99% spectrum-compatible clone that misteriously failed to load games from tapes all the time.
Nowadays, I certainly hope any programmer with half a brain should know damn well how to come up with an implementation of tic tac toe, pacman, or any of the crappy old games I used to play in the 80s. And yes, that definitely includes freshmen.
Nowadays, it seems that there are almost no "fun" programming books, that don't try to go to nasty details, but simply give you something to play with.
It might partially be that modern operating systems don't provide such easy environments to start programming as the BASIC interpreters used to be in every imaginable computer, and modern operating systems are somewhat more complicated to deal with.
Another possibility is that expectations of wannabe programmers are so much higher, that the only option is to write the book to look professional. No idea. I've wondered your question and mine for quite some time now, and don't see a reason. Could write an easy programming book for some of the scripting languages ofcourse, maybe something with simple text-adventures or something..
There are really really simple books ofcourse, but those usually give you simple constructs, and no example code to play with. One nice thing was when I found an old LISP book from the local library, from about the era you describe. Even if it was this kind of "what LISP is about book" it had source code for meta-circular stuff and all. (Have to add that SICP ofcourse does have that too, but SICP is not at all that simple book for a kid to read, but instead more of academic book.)
Anyone any ideas? Is it just that programming languages today are so hard that the people who used to write those nice books with example programs and all have lost their clue about programming?
Software should be free as in speech, but if we also get some free beer, all the better.
I would recommend The Official Blender GameKit for 3d games.
basic is just not that intresting anymore. and really, those books don't provide that much 'new' information into programming once one has understood the games in it(most of them old basic games books don't even explain all the lines or commands). typing long pieces of text to get a sucky game(by todays standards) without even understanding any of it is just boring.
and anyways, programming 101's(local equivalents here) usually include a game or two as practice work(usually something quite simple, like some card game or something).
some new venues for SIMPLE, SHORT, EASY game programming books of modern era could include environments like j2me(java for mobile devices, quite nicely limited) as well.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Try the games on the Tcl'es Wiki.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
when i was a kid we learned apple pogo or whatever it was called and did small programs in basic. Is there any language that is even really comprable today? My console was 320x200 or something lke that .. Now .. its 1024x768. And honestly I dont think any kid is going to be that excited by drawing a box when they have games like half-life to blow up GL-creatures.
.. perhaps pygame
That said, look at libsdl.org and some of the toolkits that go with it
Why not just use the online version that you posted? Just ask your students to program this in Pascal and they will most likely learn a hell of a lot in the process. You could even ask them to write two versions, one in Pascal and one in C or Java, and to make use of each language's strengths in each case, and get them to write some sort of essay describing what they learnt about programming techniques in both cases.
Very educational...
Daniel
Carpe Diem
Witness the plethora of DHTML/Javascript books out there -- that'd cover at least half of the BASIC book programs from the past. Books tend to come with CD's now, so there's no reason you couldn't include the language, a whole environment, hell a whole operating system (can you say knoppix) on that CD.
My theory, however, on the reason you don't see kids programming books anymore is that computers are no longer toys in themselves. When these books were "hot" (actually they never were, so let's say when they were being published) home computers were a relatively new phenomenom and a largely unexplored frontier. Now they're ubiquitous, and the joy of puttering around on the computer isn't really so interesting to most kids as tinkering with something already on the computer.
An updated LOGO type of language with 3d graphics instead of turtles, that might inspire interest again. At least something that can allow kids to create something as eyecatching and appealing as games from 5 years ago. Or just update some of these old saws to modern standards: Imagine rocky's boots on a modern 3d engine. Kids aren't interested because all the educators are still pointing them at computers and saying "this is a COMPUTER billy, can you say COMPUTER?", while the kid's thinking "please, I bet it has less than a gig of RAM and it's not even DDR".
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
While lots of people designing stuff in Flash are wannabe graphics artists, some of them are digging into the ActionScript and are learning some programming skills. There are a few sites out there with countless little flash apps that are nothing more than simple programming exercises and simple little games. Check out Orisinal, although the art is as good as the programming in this case.
Bleh!
An updated LOGO type of language with 3d graphics instead of turtles, that might inspire interest again.
Well, you still have a turtle (but you can change it's graphic), but MSWLogo has 3D support (however, much of the 3d stuff needs some CPU power - your generic old P75 rig won't work very well), and it's GPL to boot.
I can think of several reasons why these books are becoming less common.
1. Machines are much more complicated than they used to be. DirectX isn't the same thing as messing with BASIC on an Apple IIe or QBASIC in MS-DOS (both of which I did).
2. Expectations are higher. Much Higher. Everyone likes to think he or she doesn't need that 4-line "Hello World" program. You don't. What you need is the surrounding pages of discussion, tips, and tricks that tell you how to set up your compiler and the other "little" things that can be a huge barrier.
3. It's harder to get excited about a neat program you wrote that runs in a command console when you can see all sorts of flashy things going on elsewhere...
You know, literally as I typed that last phrase, it occured to me that we (as established programmers) might be looking at this the wrong way. Why not teach a budding "programmer" flash?
You'll learn the same concepts, won't you? It's visual, so you get immediate feedback, and it's also what every idiot with a computer seems to be churning out anyway on the WWW. Obviously a person won't learn how to write a linked list, or the exact syntax of C, but he or she will learn how to break apart a problem, and start thinking about it in the right manner. By the way, I do mean an interactive flash movie, like a "space invaders"-type game or beyond.
What other sorts of graphical programming packages are there, aside from Flash and Director that are accessible?
Michael C. Hollinger
Hypothesizing, back in the day, kids who owned an Apple, or a C=64, were either the children of geeks, or geeks themselves (already, before they got the computer). Thus they would have either had geek books cramed down their throats, or actually wanted them.
Well, it least in significantly higer porputions then kids today.
I faithfully typed in C=64 programs for years never minding that I wasn't learning much from such densely packed, often unreadable code. BASIC wasn't necessarily the problem, rather that memory restrictions and magazine space issues prevented most people from organizing code well. Comments were lost, multiple statements crammed onto the same line, etc.
I agree with whoever said that kids wouldn't be interested in such things today. We have to accept that interests have changed and web page building has replaced classic programming in the minds of novices. The biggest obstacle to a "fun" programming book is the appalling lack of built-in or bundled programming languages with new computers. As much as I enjoy using languages like PHP and Java I think they are much too complicated for the newbie. We should either bring back traditional BASIC with tighter syntax requirements, popularize a version of LOGO with hooks to graphics routines and the ability to build a complete clickable app or popularize some other similar easy to use language for first timers. Only then might we see a renewed interest in learning how to program.
Trivia -- I remember it well, the first few lines of SeaWar asked for the user name, and if the named typed in was "chris" it would jump to the end and say "Game over." What was up wit dat??
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Let's see...
And then you say you're looking for...
I still have my copy of 101 Basic Computer Games which I went out and bought with allowance money when I was twelve. The only game in there which might have been a bit over-the-top for someone that young was Star Trek (for sheer length), but I was already a Trekkie by then, so I typed every last line of code in so I could play it.
I guess my question is, Are you looking for something on the level of 101 Basic Computer Games, or are you looking for something appropriate for college students?
As an aside...
Those of you who are saying that typing in the game doesn't teach you anything, I'd like to offer myself as a counter-example. After I played 2-3 games of Star Trek, the very next thing I did was to go into the code and add a "self-destruct" option to the library computer. I made sure it asked you for all three of the codes, too.
Then, I decided that wasn't good enough. I played with nested for loops and the locate statement to display a 30-second countdown in (approximately) real-time. I made use of my rather limited understanding of graphics to try and show the Enterprise exploding when the counter reached zero (very crude, but it got the idea across). Then, I wanted to let the player change his/her mind, so I learned how to use inkey$ so the player could abort the countdown (at 5 seconds, though, it was too late (Oh, and you needed to know the abort code)).
I still keep Star Trek on my hard drive, although currently it's written in Java. Every time I want to learn a new language, I use Star Trek as a measuring rod: if I can successfully re-implement it in the target language, it means I've got all the fundamentals down. Next up: Python.
It's extremely difficult to live up to your own expectations, when you try to program your ordinary pc - Professional programs have simply gotten to advanced.
Try to program something different instead, I suggest Lego Mindstorms. You can find several fun programming books to help you eg. "Core LEGO MINDSTORMS Programming: Unleash the Power of the Java Platform", "Lego Mindstorms Interfacing" and "Creative Projects with LEGO Mindstorms".
It's the ideal combination - You get to play with lego and build cool robots, and you practice your programming skills at the same time
A lot of the adolescent code-diddling scene has moved to php and cgi scripts.
One thing that I've noticed, since I started using Gnu systems, is that it's like the good-old-days again -- just like the nostalgia of reading these old kid's programming books. Using the shell, and great languages like python and perl, has the same flavour, and freedoms that I enjoyed on my Atari 800 (and each subsequent box).
Maybe it's the availability of many, small, free programs -- which is a contrast to the windows pay-for-every-crappy-utility world. Maybe it's the large number of similar historied geeks that have created this free world, or maybe it's just my imagination. For big kids, anyway, the HOWTOs and other online gold are the next generation of our great past.
mx
The biggest reason you don't see these kind of books these days is because of the languages being used to teachcomputer science and even just plain programming. Even BASIC has evolved into something for grown ups, something people geting paid use to write apps- VisualBasic, REALBasic, and other similar tools.
Which isn't to say that old-school BASICs don't exist anymore, they do. They are plentiful and free. There is no reason that a kid today, or in 10 or 20 years from now couldn't pick up one of those books, start typing and have a good time learning. There are BASIC implementaitons natively for Mac OS, Windows or Linux that emulate classic BASICs like AppleSoft's or Microsoft's GWBASIC/BASICA. There is also the opton of emulating an Apple ][, Commodore, etc.
But perhaps you want something flashier, something more modern.
One system I'd reccomend is Squeak Smalltalk. Unfortunately, one of the things Squeak really lacks is documentation, especially in book-form. This has a lot to do with the way most folks learn Smalltalk (by doing, rather than reading) as well as aspects of the community and other factors. If you download Squeak (see here) and run it, there are a bunch of demos there to be played with, as well as some tutorials. They make for a great start for someone with a little (or even no) programming experience or formal computer science knowledge.
One of the neat features for Squeak (that you get when you download the version with all the libraries) is an implementation of Alice, which is a scriptable 3D environment for world-building and games. A lot of fun to move that bunny around, especially if you're a kid who likes to see a direct correlation between what you type and what goes on on the screen.
In addition to this, Squeak also comes with a scripting environment called eToys. It
For an example of how to use the Squeak eToys scripting system to make a more traditional application, see this Rolodex tutorial. or, for something a little more fun, check this out. introducing yourself to Squeak makes for a great starting point for experienced folks and newbies alike. Of course, there is also tutle graphics, which even I've used in more "grown up" applications, for modelling dynamic system.
Best yet- Squeak is totally Free. It is free down to its core, the system being open in a way that C, C++ and Java have no analogous structure. Smalltalk has been open since the beginning in almost every way you can think of. Even commercial implemtations, you still have the power to see pretty much all of the source, and changing if you so desire. In addition to being open source and free, Squeak Smalltalk runs on more than 20 platforms, including Linux, Mac OS X & Classic, Windows and pretty much every Unix one could imagine. Unlike what people sometimes experience with Java, it truly is write-once, run-everywhere, with your entire app being encapsulated in just two files- the virtual machine and the image. Even if your target platform doesn't have a VM installed already, it's just a matter having it zipped up in your installer or archive- just one extra file, often less than even a MB.
I meant to say a little, but that is a lot to chew in one mouthful!
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
If you've had a CS class you should be able to pick up any of the "learn to program video games in 21 days" books at B&N and make some simple games.
Lasers Controlled Games!
My high school now offers 'Flash MX Action Scripts' as a part of the Math Department. In my mind, the catch is that anyone who knows what the scripts are don't need Mr. P to tell them its a thinly veiled code for 'We're gonna make us some video games!' and thusly know how to do it, eliminating the need for a class.
Even back in the day, "101 BASIC Computer Games" got boring pretty fast.
I typed in STARTREK.BAS into my TRS-80 Model I, but soon afterward I found a superior version that had Galaxy Maps and even a cool animated ASCII-art talking alien. The canonical version of the program was pretty much spagetti code anyway, so it's not like it taught you that much.
If you look back at the COMPUTE, etc magazines, almost none of it was teaching kids how to do BASIC programming -- instead it was all machine-specific assembler encoded into DATA statements. Of course, none of these mags ever made half-an-attempt to actually teach you generic 6502 ASM, it was all about secret POKE statements and so on.
BASIC programming books were never really about setting up your compiler or learning about linked lists. They were really designed to let you people learn that computer programming was even possible.
I could see a book devoted to "101 JavaScript Games" that would be just as fascinating to kids.
Javascript is almost just like the old BASIC environments -- very little setup needed, you can see the results immediately, and very simple things go a long way to impress people. (think of the Google page yesterday that had the fade-in text) Furthermore, Javascript/HTML runs everywhere, so kids can show off their work - no need for Scheme or whatever.
I recently tried out Ceebot which is the 3D equivalent of LOGO which we used to use on the Apple IIe's, and demonstrates in a fairly simple and graphical way, the concepts of programming C++. Though I already know how to program, it is actually fun for me to play it for the logic challenges. One such challenge is programming your bot to navigate around mines while picking up check points. Or maybe you'll have to shoot other robots before they reach a certain distance, and so on. Definitely worth checking out in light of the fact that such books that you are talking about are probably a rarity. http://www.ceebot.com/
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
One other thing to consider... back when we were all learning how to program we did it because we had to. The internet wasn't around to give kids one click access to all the Flash games they wanted to play. With more consumers than producers only the die-hard enthusiast bothers learning how to program now.
I bought that book when I was a kid, too. It was one of the best I ever got. I have to agree: books like this one were extremely important to my career in software development. You can't find many like them any more.
What we need is a book with a bunch of C programs and a cd witha a djgpp, cygwin, or mingw setup to install the minimum software necessary for simple text-mode program development in a DOS/Windows environment.
Kind of like bringing Ahl's book to the modern age. Maybe someone could license his material, convert it into C, and publish it.
Hey, thanks for jogging my memory, I've been looking for my favorite cartoon for many years, and this was where it was published.
I was trying to find this book just last month, but I couldn't remember the title, or author. All I remembered was that the cover was red.
Once I saw the cover, I remembered that I use to read the sequel: More Basic Games
Quake 3 basic
The "article" is asking for books that reproduce the simple learning environment from the late 70s/early 80s. Complaining that one of these environments has:
a limited set of fonts, all ugly as sin, and tiny widgets
seems off-topic, as our original BASIC environment:
- had ONE font,
- was text-based, so it could not even strive to be "ugly"
- had NO widgets. You were required to build everything from scratch.
I work with programmers who are not even a decade younger than me, but they did not start with computers until college. They have never built a program that was not on a "platform" that provided the GUI and access to all hardware such as memory. They have never had to PEEK and POKE, so have no clue about how memory really works. They will write (and debug) 60 lines of VB rather than one line of OS commands, because they have never worked at a CLI. I wrote a 3 line batch file that replaced a 400 line program they were having difficulty getting to work.
I am not saying that using IDEs is bad. We can do so much more working within a platform than we imagined in the early 80s, but the knowledge required before becoming productive is much higher.
We had a discussion about this a few months ago, but it is off my Info page so I could not find the posts. (I really wish I could find some of them, but the Info page only shows the latest 24 posts, and search is not very useful for limiting to one user.) Programmers today did not progress from CLI to OOP. They start with the current GUI and have little understanding of what the computer does.
In the late 80s/early 90s, people were learning about programming in college because it was the "good" career path. But they were "studying", not "hacking".
In the mid-90s, many people entered the IT world using HTML as the "programming" language. Then they copy/pasted JavaScript. Some of them took the time to learn how to write their own. A few of those branched into other languages, and they may have more of the hacker attitude because they were forced to figure out how things worked. But they still learned assuming the platform was there.
Today, BASIC is long gone, and HTML is not enough to get started. Colleges are teaching Java to the studying students, but Java really protects programmers from memory allocation. The scripting languages are great for administrators, but do not push you to learn more traditional programming.
I think the computer revolution has stalled because there is no easy entry point. One great programmer can outproduce a hundred regular programmers. Becoming a great programmer requires understanding how software relates to the hardware. Are there any great programmers who started with computers after 1990? Is it even possible to learn enough on today's platforms?
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
Visit www.tcl.tk (a Wiki for the language Tcl/Tk, which is multi-platform and has excellent GUI tools), look in the "Games" category. That's basically a mix of how-to, game ideas, and partial or full implementations thereof.
Any CSI101 should be able to take them and run with it. In fact, any high schooler into computers can.
(Frankly, I think Tcl is vagually lisp-like, which is why it works so well for games, and Tk as a graphics handler is very OO, so it's a neat mix.)
A.
for java see:
http://www.robocode.net/
this assumes you have java set up properly on
your system and allows you to program the action
of 2D tank-like robots which can move, fire, and
use radar - I don't know if other graphics are
possible, but you can go nuts trying to find
and program optimal fighting tactics
Runtime Revolution from:
http://www.runrev.com/index_uk.html
this has a free evaluation edition but costs
$100-up for a licensed commercial edition - it
can do pretty amazing stuff - its sort of like a
cross-platform Visual Basic - it has its own
scripting language - the scripts can be compiled
to stand-alone executables for windows,linux,unix
- it does pretty general GUI
programming and sprite graphics - you sort of have
to download it, do the tutorials, and play with it
to see what it is and believe it - if you join
the mailing list, expect 70-100 postings/day.
I have some real fond memories of typing in games for the Commodore64 all those years ago, and even earlier for the ZX81 (which never loaded correctly from tape either!). Strangely, that experience taught me BASIC and gave me a head start when it came to learning C.
Why aren't there any type-in books these days?
For starters, Windows doesn't include any programming languages or compilers, so already most people with computers out there are restricted to just using applications.
Also, magazines always seem to include CDs these days. Back in the day, getting a cassette or floppy disk just pushed the magazine price up.
Linux is great... almost like a return to the good-old-days of computer programming. The system is open and comes with it's own compiler.
There are not many games for Linux at this point, so this is where I see type-ins being the best. A lot of people want to learn to program in it, and a young kid has to start somewhere in learning to program in C.
Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing a C programming book with little games in C (such as your tic-tac-toe and whatever) to be run from Linux. Maybe starting out simple and leading to projects where graphics and even containing small Open GL games in it... explaining what's going on in the listing as you go through it.
THAT would be interesting these days.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Well ... I think flash is a bad programming language ... it encourages the goto frame mentality ... which leads to spaghetti codes with all the usual problems ...
I've thought for some time that Python would be a great language for introducing someone to programming, and that a book like this, but with Python code instead of BASIC, might get another generation interested in programming. Granted, there are a number of features of Python that might be stumbling blocks to someone who goes on to learn a more traditional language-- significant whitespace, semi-weakly typed, etc. However, it's much closer to C than, say, BASIC, and I somehow learned to program by sorting through the rats' nests of GOTO statements that littered the programs in this book.
Which actually raises a question-- why is (or was) BASIC considered to be such a great language for beginners? I remember when I first learned Pascal (the first function-oriented language I learned) it was like a breath of fresh air. The language pretty much forced you to structure your code that was (more or less) elegant, and I found it made much more sense than the spaghetti code I had grown up with. Had I started out with such a language instead of BASIC I doubt the learning curve would have been as steep. Another question: do kids even learn BASIC these days? What language do they typically start out on?
I am Sartre of the Borg. Existence is futile.
The library used to have it back in the 1980's but since the 1990's must have retired it.
I am not even sure if the company that published it is still in business.
A close as I can find it are these web sites:
http://www.atariarchives.org/basicgames/
http://www.atariarchives.org/morebasicgames/
They are for the DEC BASIC language, but I am sure they can be easily converted to whatever BASIC you are using.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I assumed it was an link to the out of print book. Not the Atari Archives copy of the book. My mistake.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
An updated LOGO type of language with 3d graphics instead of turtles, that might inspire interest again
Try Processing
It's still alpha, and it needs Java, but it's pretty nice...
how long until
You should post the source to Star Trek on your Web site. I know I would like to see it, and possibly use your approach to learn a new programming language.
Although I'll admit that I learned programming from 101 Basic Computer Games, I'm not sure it teaches the right principles of Computer Science. Even today, I have to fight the urge to bang out some code and really sit down and think and design.
When I work with Java, I sometimes pine for the unstructured days where you can call yet-another-global named something cryptic like Y24 to tack on another minor change onto this function. But that was THEN, this is_now().
Just think if you had to go down to the store and buy the latest PS2 game, in book form.
"Hey man how's it going"
"Yeah I'm still typing in the new Tony Hawk game."
"Oh Really I'm on page 5023 how about you."
"2051"
"Sucks for you!!!"
01100010 01101001 01110100 01100101 00100000 01101101 01100101
You know, there are great games out there that teach programming, there are ones that teach Java (Robocode), critical problem solving (Mindrover) and (Roboforge), and you can find games that use their own, c++ - like languages (Colobot), and you can even find games that allow you to compete by writing assemly-like code: (Robocom) .
The book is C++ from Scratch by Jesse Liberty. ISBN 0-7897-2079-5
It has it's faults, the primary one being that the code in the book is for VC++ 6. On the disk they supply the Bloodshed Dev-C++ compiler and code for that compiler (that does not seem to compile).
Apparently the book is out of print.
Yeah, you're right. It's not like anybody ever used a GOTO in BASIC...
LOGO with 3d graphics = POVRAY (http://www.povray.org) It's a Raytracer renders a scean from text source files; Actualy a very nice package. (got some GUI front ends too moray)