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Show HN: I'm 48 and finally learning how to be a game developer

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Re: Show HN: I'm 48 and finally learning how to be a game developer

#151

Post by prerok »

bananabat wrote: post #144
Osiris wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the very old days, early 1980s, magazines like Byte would include games in the magazine in the form of code you had to manually type in and save. The ones I did were multiple pages of pure HEX. Later, magazines would ship with floppies that had the free software on it.

Wow, this was not a thing where I grew up. I never even saw a real pc until I was in uni. That sounds awesome. Thanks for explaining. EDIT: Still totally fascinated by this. I asked my husband because I remembered that he had a much-beloved Spectrum when he was a kid and sure enough, he had digitized Your Sinclair issues on his iPad and he showed me several examples of games in Basic and hex. Super cool.

If you are interested in the history of games there is an excellent blog here:

https://www.filfre.net/2011/06/the-trash-80-part-3/

Have been following it for years and would recommend reading it all the way through. Maybe even get an idea for the next project :)

Re: Show HN: I'm 48 and finally learning how to be a game developer

#152

Post by robocat »

bananabat wrote: post #84
Teknoman117 wrote: post #53

Congrats! It's absolutely refreshing to dust off an old hobby and do something with it! I'm only 28, but during the pandemic I decided to dust off my old electronics hobbies that fell by the wayside when the mobile app boom started. Middle school and early high school me thought I was going into robotics, but the iPhone came out the year I started high school. When the App Store came out the following year, the smart…

Thanks! I've always been fascinated by electronics and I so envy people in that domain. I bought an Arduino board (sorry if that's totally kiddie to you) and some parts and so far, my son and I have made a little robot that runs very inefficiently on 9-volt batteries. I just want to plug the damn thing in to overcome the power issue.

The Arduino regulator can very likely take 10 Volts - although do check first.

Advantages: fairly cheap, rechargeable, and you can give PowerBanks to kids or whatever when finished or if you upgrade to something better. Maybe get kids to help!

> sorry if that's totally kiddie to you

Things are only kiddie if you think they are (personally I enjoy learning from children).

Worrying too much about what others think will hold you back from having fun! Enjoy the game programming!

Re: Show HN: I'm 48 and finally learning how to be a game developer

#155

Post by vodkapump »

cybernautique wrote: post #146
bananabat wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great and detailed feedback, thanks! - UI has always been my weakest point in the sense that what seems logical to me might be puzzling to others. I've been taking notes on what's confusing to players and will implement improvements on the next go-around - Floating aliens are just...that. I've thought about making it more obvious that they are part of the environment or just removing them altogether - The score HUD n…

For context, this isn't from a player; I steadfastly refuse to run google services on any of my devices, so I'm incapable of downloading your game from the Google Play store. I'll keep an eye out for it, should you ever decide to release the .apk or host it on F-Droid! Your personal story is nothing short of inspiring. A sincere kudos to you and your husband :) Your children are incredibly lucky to have two such prod…

Can you not grab the game with Aurora Store? Or does the game require Google Services?

Re: Show HN: I'm 48 and finally learning how to be a game developer

#157

Post by ako »

Osiris wrote: post #143
bananabat wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question: what is "typing games from magazines?"

Back in the very old days, early 1980s, magazines like Byte would include games in the magazine in the form of code you had to manually type in and save. The ones I did were multiple pages of pure HEX. Later, magazines would ship with floppies that had the free software on it.

Yes, remember friends typing in games from a magazine on a zx81 around 1983. Horribly slow with the membrane keyboard. And then someone would touch the table, the 16Kb memory extension would disconnect and all work would be gone...

Re: Show HN: I'm 48 and finally learning how to be a game developer

#158

Post by redis_mlc »

bananabat wrote: post #144
Osiris wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the very old days, early 1980s, magazines like Byte would include games in the magazine in the form of code you had to manually type in and save. The ones I did were multiple pages of pure HEX. Later, magazines would ship with floppies that had the free software on it.

Wow, this was not a thing where I grew up. I never even saw a real pc until I was in uni. That sounds awesome. Thanks for explaining. EDIT: Still totally fascinated by this. I asked my husband because I remembered that he had a much-beloved Spectrum when he was a kid and sure enough, he had digitized Your Sinclair issues on his iPad and he showed me several examples of games in Basic and hex. Super cool.

Note that half the time, you'd make typos and it wouldn't run. So it sounds nostalgic, but not so much.

However, debugging it helped to learn the language. :)

Dr. Dobbs Journal was probably the king of source code listings in magazine format.

Pre-Internet, there were some remarkable mass-distribution Unix magazines with significant source code for utilities: Unix Review and Unix World. Even today, the back issues would be useful.

I remember lusting over the AT&T 3B Unix machines advertised in those, but never could afford one. So I waited until VAX Unix in uni (the arts dept. had an unused one), then SCO and Linux.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T_UNIX_PC

Re: Show HN: I'm 48 and finally learning how to be a game developer

#159

Post by donquichotte »

bananabat wrote: post #84
Teknoman117 wrote: post #53

Congrats! It's absolutely refreshing to dust off an old hobby and do something with it! I'm only 28, but during the pandemic I decided to dust off my old electronics hobbies that fell by the wayside when the mobile app boom started. Middle school and early high school me thought I was going into robotics, but the iPhone came out the year I started high school. When the App Store came out the following year, the smart…

Thanks! I've always been fascinated by electronics and I so envy people in that domain. I bought an Arduino board (sorry if that's totally kiddie to you) and some parts and so far, my son and I have made a little robot that runs very inefficiently on 9-volt batteries. I just want to plug the damn thing in to overcome the power issue.

> I bought an Arduino board (sorry if that's totally kiddie to you)

Not kiddie at all, AVR microcontrollers have been used commercially for ages and they have some properties that can be nice, e.g. they are fairly simple cores, they operate at 5V and their output pins can sink ~40mA, so you can easily e.g. drive a MOSFET gate.

The Arduino ecosystem is huge and it's great to get things up and running quickly.

Re: Show HN: I'm 48 and finally learning how to be a game developer

#160

Post by sgt »

bananabat wrote: post #128
adamquek wrote: post #112

Congratulations. Age is just a number. In fact, you are probably a lot better at finding the right resources with your experiences in life, socially or professionally.

Thank you, and you're right...I'm perpetually surprised at the actual number of my age.

In hexadecimal you're only 30.
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