This time it’s about Learning to program games in C on the Raspberry Pi. Most of the books I’ve seen are about programming in Python, but C combined with SDL2 gives you an edge. I already know that I can get 150 frames per second in Asteroids on a Raspberry Pi 4B.

The three games for the book are

1. Asteroids. Fully developed
2. MatchThree. About 1/2 developed.
3. Empire type game. Map generator plus large scrolling hexagon map with fog-of-war shrouding and computer AI opponents. This will be based on the existing Empire code.

The third game is one I originally wrote thirty-three years ago (Dark Empire) in Z80 assembler for the Zx Spectrum. I then converted all 5000 lines of code into CBM-64 6502 assembly in one month working seven all-nighters, with the last three on three successive days. That one wasn’t in hexagons but squares and of course there was no mouse.

On the morning after the last all-nighter I drove across Manchester to deliver the tape master copy to a railway station to be sent to the publisher in London and when I got home, I slept for 24 hours solid. I doubt I could do an all-nighter now, but 33 years ago …