

Ask HN: Classic games? - siong1987

Back in high school, I wanted to learn programming because of all the amazing games back then. How many of you actually learned programming because you wanted to create your own game?<p>I still remember the first game I played and addicted to is this game called SimTower from Maxis. What classic game actually leaded you to become a programmer?
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DaniFong
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
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/>

------
brent
Not a game, per se, but demos got me interested in programming.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene> for the young.

~~~
bemmu
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.

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maneesh
Age of Empires and Age of Kings, without a doubt. Even led me to write a book
on game programming.

~~~
siong1987
A book on game programming. Cool. Show us the link.

~~~
maneesh
[http://www.amazon.com/Game-Programming-Teens-Maneesh-
Sethi/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Game-Programming-Teens-Maneesh-
Sethi/dp/1598635182/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1216280404&sr=1-3)

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>

Good times---book was a bestseller and translated into like 5 languages. Good
times for a 14 yr-old :)

------
bprater
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!

------
endlessvoid94
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).

------
mapleoin
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.

------
jim-greer
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>. 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>

------
swombat
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>

And this book:

[http://www.priceminister.com/offer/buy/501846/Collectif-
Pc-I...](http://www.priceminister.com/offer/buy/501846/Collectif-Pc-Interdit-
Livre.html)

Mostly.

------
jmtame
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.

------
shabda
<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/> and <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

------
pmjordan
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)

------
casta
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
_Zork_ and _Planetfall_ were my biggest inspirations to learn how to program.

------
astrec
Alley Cat - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alley_Cat_>(video_game). I still hum
the tune from time to time.

~~~
bd
Ah, Atari, good times :).

For me it was Adventure and Mercenary:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercenary_%28computer_game%29>

~~~
astrec
Ah Colossal Cave! - my very first nontrivial program was a version of Hunt the
Wumpus. Still a good beginner exercise today, I'd say.

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lpgauth
Not a game, but a visual chat called 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.

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pavelludiq
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.

------
Darmani
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.

------
hs
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

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jaytee_clone
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.

------
gcheong
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.

------
vorador
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

------
cubicle67
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/>

~~~
cubicle67
Related sidetrack: Just came across this [http://www.inform-
fiction.org/examples/Advent/Advent_2_com.h...](http://www.inform-
fiction.org/examples/Advent/Advent_2_com.html) 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.

------
gaius
Rick Hanson Trilogy on the BBC Micro.

------
nostrademons
MUDs.

