Creating Arcade Games on Your TS 2068 Book
2 messages · 2008-01-08 → 2008-01-08 · Yahoo Group era · View archive on archive.org
Participants: Adam Trionfo, Robert "Exile In Paradise" Murphey
Preserved from the Timex/Sinclair 2068 Yahoo Group (2001–2019), which is no longer online. Text reproduced from the archive.org archive; email addresses masked.
Messages
1. Creating Arcade Games on Your TS 2068 Book
Adam Trionfo · Tue, 8 Jan 2008 16:00:
Does anybody know if "Creating Arcade Games on Your Timex Sinclair 2068" by Haywood (no other name given) is about BASIC or machine language? It's not available from anyplace that I can find, but I'd be VERY interested if it was about ML, and only slightly interested if its about BASIC. Does anybody here have this book?
Adam
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2. Re: [ts2068] Creating Arcade Games on Your TS 2068 Book
Robert "Exile In Paradise" Murphey · Tue, 08 Jan 2008 21:13
On Tue, 2008-01-08 at 16:00 -0800, Adam Trionfo wrote:
>
> Does anybody know if "Creating Arcade Games on Your Timex Sinclair
> 2068" by Haywood (no other name given) is about BASIC or machine
> language? It's not available from anyplace that I can find, but I'd be
> VERY interested if it was about ML, and only slightly interested if
> its about BASIC. Does anybody here have this book?
I don't have the book, so I can't speak to the specifics.
However, many programmings book for C64 that wanted nifty
graphics or sound went to PEEK and POKE, or to small blocks
of assembly loaded as DATA elements and POKED as a loop into
a memory block before being called.
This book may be a "hybrid" like that, where you have BASIC
for the core "logic" of the game, and PEEK/POKE to perform
some hardware controls and maybe DATA blocks of ML bytecode
to handle driving specific game features, used as a black
box "library" without the book going to specific about how
those ML sections were coded.
I have a stack of C64 books like this, and they are good for
getting your feet wet in a lot of areas at once... the
BASIC pieces let you deal with building a game executive
and subroutines without a TON of scary (to beginners) assembly
debugging. The ML sections usually include a text that explains
what's going on with the hardware and how its being controlled.
So, you get a view of how to take ownership of the pieces without
having to also wrestle the assembly itself.
If assembly doesn't bother you, then a hybrid book like the
one I am describing wouldn't be much help. For micros, assembly
is where you want to go eventually, to really take ownership and
have the ability to make every byte and clock count.
Just be warned: machine code or assembly will permanently
warp your thinking. Once you get your mind to think in the
same mode a computer does... there's no going back ;)
>
--
Robert "Exile In Paradise" Murphey
aggh! MAKE IT STOP! MAKE
IT STOP!!