o, you wanna be the next Bill Gates. Right? Or the next Zuckerberg? Or at least this “Flappy Bird”-Guy from Hanoi? You know, the creator of this tremendously stupid mobile game. With a coarse-grained yellow flapper and possibly many vertical bars, of which you see only three or four because then you die. He programmed it on a holiday weekend - and rumor has it that he made 50.000 quid. On a good day. With a free-of-charge game.
But maybe you are not materialistic. Maybe you are just curious and want to know how to create games - the hard way. Sure, game engines like Unreal, Unity, Lumberyard, Godot and GDevelop are great and started a new gaming-revolution (that's were all those millions of mobile apps and indie games suddenly came from!) But for all of you who want to know more and who love do get their hands dirty - these point & click construction kits are kinda boring.
No wonder that - except for a few masterpieces - most games look and play the same. I mean, how many apocalyptic worlds full of mutants and tons of customizable guns do we need? Nowadays one man alone can create a "boring" zombie-shooter in a few hours! Now look at the old times: A handful of colors, laughable resolution, meagerly memory - but fresh ideas on a weekly basis. And: They didn't need an army of graphicians, sound designers and 3D artists on three continents to be created. The computer games industry was kickstarted by some youngsters in their bedroom.
But maybe you are not materialistic. Maybe you are just curious and want to know how to create games - the hard way. Sure, game engines like Unreal, Unity, Lumberyard, Godot and GDevelop are great and started a new gaming-revolution (that's were all those millions of mobile apps and indie games suddenly came from!) But for all of you who want to know more and who love do get their hands dirty - these point & click construction kits are kinda boring.
No wonder that - except for a few masterpieces - most games look and play the same. I mean, how many apocalyptic worlds full of mutants and tons of customizable guns do we need? Nowadays one man alone can create a "boring" zombie-shooter in a few hours! Now look at the old times: A handful of colors, laughable resolution, meagerly memory - but fresh ideas on a weekly basis. And: They didn't need an army of graphicians, sound designers and 3D artists on three continents to be created. The computer games industry was kickstarted by some youngsters in their bedroom.
any of these games are not only historically memorable, they are small works of art. Especially when you sat in front of a cathode ray tube in the 80s or 90s that literally blasted these colorful patterns in your visual cortex. But even for the new generations these graphics are one of a kind. They inspire the imagination instead of limiting it with photorealistic imagery from the retort. And sweet baby jesus these games were hard. But since you will be designing your own stuff soon, you can (and should) change that! :) Speaking of hard: We will use an ancient, die hard computer, the C64. Because nobody fully understands modern PCs. NO-BO-DY. Even a chip from 1977 is surrounded by mystery:
While a multitude of people understand the instruction set for the 6502, almost no one, apart from the original designers, understands how the physical chip achieves this instruction set. FAQ, visual 6502
We start small, as you should always do, if you wanna do it right. We will generate a single yellow pixel in the middle of a (virtual) Screen. And we will do this in the hardest way possible besides Zero and One: In Assembler, a language that uses every single transistor in the computer - and only them. So no fancy instructions like "draw circle" here. You have to explain the stupid machine e.ver.y.thing, byte by byte. But that's the reason why you will learn so much about what makes. them. tick.
From the first pixel we'll build up, step by step. And we will recreate some of the genre-defining classics from the 80s. Not fully fledged games, but small versions of them. Frameworks if you will, so you have the routines to build your own magic worlds and make the switches inside your machine dance! You may consider theses tools:
Please be patient, right now this is a one-man-show. I'm constantly adding stuff, this is a evolving site under HEAVY CONSTRUCTION. And I promise you: In the end of this journey you will start to communicate in a way only a few mortals can - with the mightiest tool mankind has ever created. But beware:
From the first pixel we'll build up, step by step. And we will recreate some of the genre-defining classics from the 80s. Not fully fledged games, but small versions of them. Frameworks if you will, so you have the routines to build your own magic worlds and make the switches inside your machine dance! You may consider theses tools:
- C64 Studio, Georg Rottensteiner's marvelous cross develoment system. So you can create a C64 game on a pc! CBM Program Studio is a just as great CrossDev alternative by Arthur Jordison.
- If you prefer BASIC and don't need the whole assembler shabang, you may consider Dancie Reeves' Commodore IDE.
- Jarkko Sonninen's (et al*) VICE, an emulator that transforms your boring pc in a 0,9 MHz-Dreammachine. Yes. Nearly one megahertz.
- DirMaster by "The Wiz" for exploring C64 disk & tape images and to directly see (and copy) BASIC-Listings! Use it with this site where you find most listings ever published: Gamebase64.
- Multipaint (later we want graphics!) by Tero Heikkinen.
- C64-Debugger (from samar.group), if you dare. It's like open-heart surgery, you can even change a game while it's running. Wowzer!
- A similar tool for the ZX Spectrum: The Spectrum Analyser by Mark Craig/Lucid Games.
Please be patient, right now this is a one-man-show. I'm constantly adding stuff, this is a evolving site under HEAVY CONSTRUCTION. And I promise you: In the end of this journey you will start to communicate in a way only a few mortals can - with the mightiest tool mankind has ever created. But beware:
"Computer sind wie Feen in einem Märchen: Sie erfüllen Dir jeden Wunsch. Aber sie sagen dir nicht, was du dir wünschen sollst."
("Computers are like fairys in a fairy tale. They fulfill your every wish. But they won’t tell you what you should wish for.")
Dr. Jochen Krebs, Cray Research Germany, 1984