Writing a Game From Scratch - Introduction | Legion

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2021-05-22 17:00:08

This is a series where we’ll write a game from scratch on an 8-bit computer, that you will be able to play online, or with physical hardware. It will go from absolute first principles, explaining how computers work, to a working game written in assembly language. If you already know some parts, you’ll be able to skip ahead, but if you have no idea how to write a program, let alone a game, I’ll set out to explain each step of the way.

This is not a course on Unity, or any of the other modern high level game engines that work on PCs. We’re going to write our own (simple) game engine from first principles. That may sound daunting, but we’ll build up step by step until we have a game that has a main menu, levels, a ‘win’ screen and a Game Over screen. To make our lives easier, we’re going to recreate a classic game from the 80’s - Manic Miner - rather than writing our version of Breath of the Wild. Expect pixel graphics and platforms, not camera effects and landscapes.

Written in 1983 by Matthew Smith, a bedroom coder from Liverpool who was just seventeen at the time, Manic Miner was a groundbreaking platformer. It was the best selling game on the Commodore 64 in 1984, won awards and was ported to many computers of the time. By modern standards, it is of course basic - but it has all the elements we need to have in a game and is a good challenge for a first project.