I loved the Apple II that we had at school and it was great, no doubt, however I have to say that this was my real true love starting out. I learned programming, wrote games on it (one based on the old TV show V) and even my own BBS. I also learned how to talk to the modem sending hayes commands back and forth. I made my own controllers for it after a friend showed me one he made with mercury switches. I also played all kinds of games from Infocom stuff to Miner 2049er.
However, I think that one of the under appreciated aspects of this computer was the friends I made as we were all trying to figure out how to do things, like make sprites!! :^)
This computer laid the foundation of my career.
Thanks Commodore!
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Aaaah. The first computer I ever owned. Yes, I worked with an Apple IIe, but I did all my fun programming on the C64.
+Craig Watson was the guy that helped me understand the math behind making sprites. Thanks Man!
Ah, yes. those were the days! we had so many never-finished projects too. remember the back to the future game?
Thank You Craig and Kreg (for the text input processor). It was the basis of “Beyond Sutter’s Island” (1987) and allowed me to finish the game. FACT: I had to load the “4k” Extender for Access to get access to more than 38911 Basic Bytes! Imagine That … 😉 …. -Marc
Yes I do. We were trying to do a real-time text adventure. I am still proud of our text input processor we wrote.
Cool. I did up a Star Trek game. The most fun was doing the theme song. The song played as the Star Trek logo appeared. I used the drawing of each pixel of the logo as the equivalent of an eight note. So, if I wanted a note to last a whole note, 8 pixels of the logo would appear before the next note played.
I think I'll boot up an emulator this evening and LOAD "*",8,1.
If it also emulates the cassette drive load time, I'd start now! 😉
The V game I mentioned in the post above was brought on by a pamphlet I got from Activision in the mail. It showed how they animated Pitfall Harry by really showing two images.Legs together, then apart with arms moving. I thought "That's it? I can do that".
So I made a game based on V where you are on the mothership and trying to escape. To do that you had to run through the corridors (which was like Pit Fall) and the aliens would randomly be in the hallway and randomly shoot high, low, or not at all giving you a chance to jump or duck. Once you get through a few hallways, you get away on a shuttle…which turned into a game sorta like Zaxxon.
I would have the following enemy shuttle see your move right or left, and take your move into consideration as it randomly did a right or left..oh and shoot too. I was trying to make it look like it was making decisions and sometimes not be correct. I had random trees scroll by to show movement too.
That was about as far as I went. It was fun to do and I probably spent way too many man hours than I could afford on it. Bonus points: I had it stored on a red floppy with a black V I put over the face of the disk with a black sharpie.
Will need to see if Wreck-it Ralph follow suit.
It was also fun to be exploring the world of Zork on both Commodore and early PC-XT's to test your skills against the nerds at MIT who developed the game.
Zork! (and All of Them I, ][, and ]I[) Ruled! I was first introduced to “Colossal Cave” on a College Mainframe, and I was hooked instantly… “XYZZY!” 😉