Old Games I Coded

I started programming in Qbasic in 1994, but quickly moved on to (Borland Turbo) C when Qbasic couldn’t give me the power and control I wanted. I got a lot of tips and shared resources from classmates at the time, who were also programming in languages like Pascal, and some of the basics (Pointers!) of C from my older brother. The first fairly complete game prototypes I ever completed were tile-based overhead exploration games, written in QBasic. I had to also develop basic graphics editors in QBasic to be able to draw some of the game’s graphic assets. And some of the low level graphics routines were programmed in in-line assembly, especially some of the screen rendering stuff.

As my coding and design skills progressed, I wrote a few game prototypes, based on classics like Scorched Earth and Zone 66. I recently came across the games as I was cleaning out some directories, so I decided to put them up on the internet in all their glory (or not). I wish I still had copies of, or screenshots of, the first overhead adventure games but I think they are lost to posterity.

There are three games here, although only two of them ever got anywhere near to being completed. Skywar is a 360 degree scrolling overhead fighter game, inspired by games like Zone66. Tanken8 was a side view tank fighting game, one of the ones where you have an arsenal of weapons, and you pick an angle and velocity to shoot at, and was basically completed. The third game, just called Plane, was an attempt at a 2nd 360 degree scroller using normal 320×200 non-buffering graphics.

You can access descriptions and screenshots by clicking on the screenshots below.

Skywar

Tanken – side view tank war game.

Plane – 360 degree scrolling aerial game.