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LANDER1B.ZIP
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readme.txt
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1996-12-27
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5KB
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88 lines
Hello world,
Well this is it!! My very first game!! Oh boy! Oh boy!
To those of you just starting out in game programming... All of this code
is FREE!!! Please take it, play with it, improve it, and most of all LEARN
as much as you can from it. Even if you learn what NOT to do. Lander is
not the ideal game design. It is not fast, nor is it on the cutting edge,
in fact Lander is written at a amateur's level as far as game programming
is concerned. I wrote Lander while learning game programming so it was
written by a amateur GAME programmer. I've been writing code for over 10
years, however, I haven't been writing game code for very long. So how can
you learn from code written by a amateur game programmer? Simple, it was
written using all the basics of game design, and if you haven't learned the
basics of game programming then you CAN learn from this code. Lander
utilizes the following techniques:
Mode 13h. 320 by 200 with 256 colors.
Bit Blitting.
Text Blitting.
Double Buffering.
PCX file routines.
Color palette programming.
Interrupt Hooking and Interrupt Service Routines.
The Bit Blitting routines, as well as some of the PCX code was adapted from
the book "Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus" by Andre LaMothe. If you
are just starting out then I HIGHLY recommend Gurus as well as "Teach
Yourself Game Programming in 21 Days". Some say the books aren't that
great, however, I have learned more from "Tricks of the Game Programming
Gurus" and "Teach Yourself Game Programming in 21 Days" than I have from
any other source. Anywhere! They are great for the beginner.
I wrote Lander while learning game design and game programming. Lander is
written in C and assembler and is commented A LOT! I comment my code as
well as I can, it helps when I have to leave the code for a while then come
back later. Lander is not an original idea I know, however, I didn't write
it to get rich or to come out with a killer new game. Lander was written
for one reason, to help me learn game programming and to apply what I have
learned about game development. Most of the code is straight forward and
should be easy to follow. If you have any question on why I did something
just send me an e-mail.
I wrote and compiled Lander using Visual C++ 1.5 using the large memory
model and it seems to run on most systems, Windows 95 did complain once or
twice but that's about it. I built it in debug mode due to a bug when
built in release mode. I'll fix that when I can. You'll notice that the
game was written from 6-95 to 10-96, it didn't take that long to write,
it's just that I kept getting side tracked then coming back. There's about
2947 lines of code in all. Lander still isn't really finished, it doesn't
get harder as the levels progress and there's no sound, but it's free and
simple to play with.
If you have any suggestions or ideas on the overall design then let me
know. I'd like to learn faster bit blitting techniques other that just
doing word writes instead of byte writes and other then sprite compiling.
I could use some input on overall program design, like ratios of getting
user input, to updating the screen, to how many times the main loop runs.
Many of my questions lie in the realm of the design of the overall game.
I'd like to learn more about where I should put the code to update the
sprites, get user input, move things around, and so on. I'm just not sure
exactly when or how often I should do these things. I'm working with
DirectX 3 now and overall game design would apply just the same with
DirectX as it would with Lander. It does matter how you look, move, and
blit, however, it also matters when and how often you do it.
I would like to thank Mark Fickley. I think he's the heart of most of my
obsessions, he plants the seed of a new idea or hobby then sits back and
enjoys watching me burn the candle at both ends mastering it. Then of
course I can tell him how to do it. <just kidding Mark> Thanks for every-
thing.
Thanks to Andre for writing Gurus and 21 Days, Hey Andre drop me a line
and say hi.
I'm working on converting Lander to C++, if you want the code just e-mail
me. Send me an e-mail telling me what you think, it'll only take a second.
Let me know if you like the code, what you think, if you learn from it.
OH yeah, and drop me a line and let me know what country you're in, I'd love
to know how far Lander has traveled. (no pun intended)
Thanks,
Joe Lambert
joe.lambert@mail.mei.com