4 ms·

Ask HN: Classic games?

• astrec 18y ago
  Alley Cat - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alley_Cat_ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alley_Cat_(video_game). I still hum the tune from time to time.
  • bd 18y ago
    Ah, Atari, good times :). For me it was Adventure and Mercenary: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercenary_%28computer_game%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercenary_%28computer_game%29
    • astrec 18y ago
      Ah Colossal Cave! - my very first nontrivial program was a version of Hunt the Wumpus. Still a good beginner exercise today, I'd say.
  • superchink 18y ago
    Wow. I never would have thought of that game ever again if I didn't read your comment. Thanks for bringing back those memories!
• pavelludiq 18y ago
  The first time i played with real world code was when i messed with a LOMAC mod, it was just a few lua scripts and a XML file, and they were just configuration files as far as i was concerned. Game designers should make scripting and moding easy, so that it does not look like a cheap hack. It can be a good way to get kids in to programming.
• maneesh 18y ago
  Age of Empires and Age of Kings, without a doubt. Even led me to write a book on game programming.
  • siong1987 18y ago
    A book on game programming. Cool. Show us the link.
    • maneesh 18y ago
      http://www.amazon.com/Game-Programming-Teens-Maneesh-Sethi/dp/1598635182/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1216280404&sr=1-3 http://www.amazon.com/Game-Programming-Teens-Maneesh-Sethi/d... I even had a tv show about teaching game programming back when I was 15 yrs old, on TechTV's call for help: http://www.courseptr.com/gamedev/maneeshsethitechtv.mpg http://www.courseptr.com/gamedev/maneeshsethitechtv.mpg Good times---book was a bestseller and translated into like 5 languages. Good times for a 14 yr-old :)
• mapleoin 18y ago
  Building websites was what led me to become a programmer. Although I was programming BASIC before I knew what the Internet was, I didn't really have the drive to go further than what I was being taught. The passion only started after I found Linux and the hacker culture.
• shabda 18y ago
  http://www.miniclip.com/games/hangaroo/en/ http://www.miniclip.com/games/hangaroo/en/ This was the game which got me hooked to programming as 1. Seeing this game, it looked something cool .. and more importantly something which I can build. (If you played AOE, and thought you could build it .. more power to you.) 2. For some reason, I could just see how I could go about building it. I built it in pure Java, btw .. The source for it is lost, thankfully. (My first program, I didn't undersand arrays, and had code like char varA, varB .. varZ). The next game I built was probably better, and has the code http://code.google.com/p/spaceoddece/ http://code.google.com/p/spaceoddece/ and http://shabda8.tripod.com/java/ http://shabda8.tripod.com/java/ Then I got a job .. left game programming ..moved to database/web development and Python. Hangaroo was how I started programming. Ah Hangaroo
• vorador 18y ago
  Unix - "UNIX is a glorified video game. People don't do serious work on UNIX systems - they send jokes around the world on UUCP-net, and write adventure games and research papers." - Real Programmers don't write Pascal
• brent 18y ago
  Not a game, per se, but demos got me interested in programming. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene for the young.
  • bemmu 18y ago
    Democoding is especially nice, because it's often just a string of effects. Each effect you can add to your set of skills, and like magic they often have very simple secrets behind them. Making fire, water, a seemingly spinning flubber effect, all of them are just a few lines of code if you just know the trick. So rewarding and gratifying to see something cool happen because of something so simple.
  • gommm 18y ago
    Yeah, I got into programming through the tuts from Denthor of Asphyxia. I really found demos to be cool and wanted to do something similar :-)...
• casta 18y ago
  I wanted to learn programming when I was at the high school and I saw the first 3d games on playstation: - Wipeout - Battle Arena Toshinden - Ridge Racers More than ten years have gone, and now I'm an almost happy R&D developer at www.milestone.it . ;)
• tjr 18y ago
  Zork and Planetfall were my biggest inspirations to learn how to program.
• endlessvoid94 18y ago
  Chip's Challenge. I remember finding a level editor for that game and I'm sure I spent a solid two weeks messing with it and subsequently learning VB (this was 5th or 6th grade).
• Darmani 18y ago
  Making game was my primary ambition when I was young. I got my start "programming" by using a drag-and-drop game-making program called Multimedia Fusion, and first understood a good deal of the basics of C-descendants by reading a lengthy tutorial on a game-focused scripting language put out by the same company meant for MMF users.
• gaius 18y ago
  Rick Hanson Trilogy on the BBC Micro.
• swombat 18y ago
  Too many to name, but I did do my "cocoon" stage by spending most of a school year (after school hours) in my room, building a Wolfenstein-3D-like raycasting engine. That was fun. I used this book: http://www.librarything.com/work/202092 http://www.librarything.com/work/202092 And this book: http://www.priceminister.com/offer/buy/501846/Collectif-Pc-Interdit-Livre.html http://www.priceminister.com/offer/buy/501846/Collectif-Pc-I... Mostly.
• hs 18y ago
  KOEI series it led me to edit the save files and change the hex value (i think i used norton commander) for abilities & resources i did the same with civ1, had 65535 gold at 4000bc, stuffs like that are now easily changed with cheat codes / editor not really programming, i know, but that started my interest
• gcheong 18y ago
  First time I saw a personal computer was when a teacher brought in a Commodore PET and it was running lunar lander - the graphics were all text characters if I remember, but I was fascinated and I wanted a computer so I could make games like that.
• pmjordan 18y ago
  For me it's Chris Sawyer's Transport Tycoon (Deluxe), without a doubt. That game was and to this day is (in the form of OpenTTD) like a highly addictive drug for me. If I start playing, I'm compelled to optimise my transport network for many hours. I got it when I was 11, and incidentally, was the first computer game I bought with my own money. Oddly enough, when I introduced my girlfriend to the game, she instantly showed the same obsession with it. At university, when most other people were out drinking, we'd occasionally start playing Friday evening and play for most of the weekend. Although I didn't start programming based on it (I started programming because soldering increasing networks of an increasing number of logic gates became tedious and expensive) I did start learning graphics programming because of it. I dream of creating a worthy successor to it one day. (I'm too scared to start, considering what playing it does to me)
• nostrademons 18y ago
  MUDs.
• jim-greer 18y ago
  I got started on my Apple ][+ mostly by typing in games from magazines and then modifying them. Softalk was the best - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softalk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softalk. They had a Rogue style overhead view ASCII art dungeon crawler - I added my own weapons and monsters and stuff. Typing something in was a great way to learn how it worked. The Shootorials section of Kongregate is our attempt to recreate that for Flash games - http://www.kongregate.com/labs http://www.kongregate.com/labs
• DaniFong 18y ago
  I started playing SimCity and Lemmings when I was just a sprite (my mother was as obsessed as I was at two), which put my best foot forward in systems thinking. Then I was on to SimEarth, the Island of Dr. Brain, the Incredible Machine, Railroad Tycoon, Theme Park and Civilization. I played Nethack: it was exciting because the graphics were simple enough (heh) that it seemed like I could do it on my own. Then there was a 'game maker' video game that I forget, and the I played Cyberstorm but my first experience really doing coding was in making levels in Warcraft 2 and Starcraft with heavy use of the trigger system. Then I got 3D Studio Max, and learned MaxScript as my first serious programming language, but my machine was so underpowered I didn't end up making many scenes, just models. (I learned a lot about NURBS, though!) The games that really had the most effect on me were Alpha Centauri and Sacrifice. Alpha Centauri was amazing from a game standpoint, but what really hooked me was the science, philosophy: in essence, literary merit. Every technological advance was at least plausible, but included a wonderful quote from one of the main characters, or a famous philosopher or scientist from our past. It was this game that really immersed me in our intellectual history, and held me fast to science. Sacrifice was a beautiful game. There was a big map making contest run, and I poured myself into it. I couldn't legally compete (I was 12) but Shiny let me anyway, despite the objections of some of the other competitors. Of the 21 finalist maps, 4 of my maps were there :-) I got fourth place, and I won a nice sound system which I gave to my brother. It was the first creative endeavor where I competed and won against those much older than me, and it was a lot of fun to make things and win something. And people played my maps for a looong time :-)
  • anthonyrubin 18y ago
    Lemmings was always one of my favorite games and I was sad to see them jump on the polygon bandwagon and basically kill the series. A very impressive implementation of the original: http://www.elizium.nu/scripts/lemmings/ http://www.elizium.nu/scripts/lemmings/
• jmtame 18y ago
  I'm now 21, but I got started on computers mostly from the gaming, I started playing The Adventures of Ducktales when I was 8 or so. I also played Codename Iceman, Ultima, King's Quest, and a lot of older games. I got further hooked by Westwood Chat and their games, like C&C and Red Alert. By the time I was 9 or 10 I started doing HTML on an Angelfire. I thought IRC was pretty cool, so instead of pulling the wings off butterflies, I went around randomly k-lining people when I was about 11 years old ;) I made a terrible sysop/server admin. Eventually got into programming with a friend in middle school with a Borland C++ compiler. I got caught in middle school trying to get into the grading system and changing admin passwords (I actually didn't get caught, a friend ratted me out who got caught). I took a break from the stupid connotation of "hacker" (the 'Zero Cool' sense that is) and resorted back to online game hacks and web coding. Started looking towards entrepreneurship at about the time I was leaving high school, when I started doing contract work.
• bprater 18y ago
  When I was 5, my dad bought a TRS-80 Model III. He bought several programming books and I'd pick out a program and he'd type it in for me. I made the connection that typing in programs equaled fun. Eventually, he found a book for me that had very simple programs and I start with my first print/loop program -- and I was hooked immediately. The programming became more entertaining than the game! I could control the computer. I loved it. And have continued to love the "game" ever since!
• lpgauth 18y ago
  Not a game, but a visual chat called The Palace (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Palace_ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Palace_(computer_program)). I started doing VB programs to "hack" other people avatars and some other stuff... We kinda killed it when we found a bunch of way to overflow the server but that's another story.
• jaytee_clone 18y ago
  I actually got into programming in high school, when I needed tools for my math class, e.g. simplifying radicals, finding roots, etc. Well, I wanted to program games too, but they just seemed too far fetch at the time, and I had no idea where to start.
• cubicle67 18y ago
  text adventure games The first big programme I ever wrote was a text adventure, and the book that got me started down that track was "Exploring Adventures on the Vic 20" by Peter Gerrard. I can't find any references to it (in its Vic 20 form) online, but I did find this: http://retro.icequake.net/exploring_adventures_on_the_c64/ http://retro.icequake.net/exploring_adventures_on_the_c64/
  • cubicle67 18y ago
    Related sidetrack: Just came across this http://www.inform-fiction.org/examples/Advent/Advent_2_com.html http://www.inform-fiction.org/examples/Advent/Advent_2_com.h... which is the source to advent (a port of the original Adventure). I'm posting it here because it's a fantastic example of a dsl. This is some of the cleanest code I've ever read.