RhetoricVille

I’ve been a hobbiest computer programmer almost since the day we got our first PC in 1984. Not quite since that day, though, because the computer (a Zenith with two 5.25 floppy drives and a green-screen monitor) did not come with any programming software, unless you count DOS batch files as programs. In those days, there was no web, and very few computer stores. I was lucky to have a shareware word processing program — in theory all I needed since we bought the computer for me to write my dissertation on. I wanted to write programs, though. I saw an ad in some magazine for “Utah Basic,” a relatively inexpensive Basic language interpreter. My wife mail ordered it for my birthday. When I looked at the manual, I couldn’t figure out what it was talking about. The directions were intended for someone who already knew how to program. Luckily, I came across a large-format book called “100 Basic Game Programs” or some such, which was much more at my level. The first time I wrote a program (using a plain old text editor) and got it to run, I was hooked. I’ve been writing programs ever since, in a variety of languages. I even made a little money at it years ago, writing custom software for a local business. But mostly I just do it for fun.

This spring, I’ve been creating computer games, using a nice, very affordable (free or $20 for full registration) program called Game Maker, developed by a computer science professor named Mark Overmars. Supposedly, you can drag and drop your way to a game, but the program has a built in scripting language, similar to C, which extends the functionality a great deal. I’ve had a lot of fun with it. Below are screen shots from a couple of my early games. Mostly these were learning exercises. I have several in various stages of development, and in different genres. Lately I’ve been working on a word game. I haven’t made any games available on the web yet, but will at some point.

“Brick Blitz” is a Breakout clone, but with unlimited levels. However, the ball gets too fast to handle after 9 or 10 levels. My top score is 6,000. My older daughter score over 11,000. (This is not my favorite kind of game to play! But it is an easy sort to program, so a good one to start with.)

“Cape Crimson” is more ambitious. It’s basically “Space Invaders” with pirate ships, but has a resource management angle. You have to watch your powder supply, which means not firing with a full charge when you don’t need to. Otherwise, you will run out of powder and the pirates will sack the town you are defending.

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