WEBmikey

For the past year, I've had a great time rediscovering the 8-bit magic of Atari Home Computers and writing this series on Atari BASIC programming. Please check out the final lesson! https://wearethemutants.com/2017/09/18/adventures-in-atari-basic-lesson-eight-multiple-graphics-modes-and-marquee-text/

Hello again! If anyone is reading my Atari BASIC series on We Are The Mutants, the 7th article was posted today. https://wearethemutants.com/2017/07/10/adventures-in-atari-basic-lesson-seven-music-and-mission-briefings/ Includes a quick discussion of sound effects and music, and I changed my old title screen to play Ming's Theme from Flash Gordon.

My current and back issues arrived today (USA) and I'm extremely happy!

Hello again! Lesson Five of my Atari BASIC game programming nostalgia series was posted today on We Are The Mutants. https://wearethemutants.com/2017/05/15/adventures-in-atari-basic-lesson-six-enemies-and-earthquakes/ This article features a small tweak to add a shield feature. Take a look if you've enjoyed the series so far. Thanks!

Thanks again to everyone who checked out my Atari BASIC series on We Are The Mutants. Lesson Five was posted today, so please have a look for a simple discussion about joysticks and collision detection. https://wearethemutants.com/2017/04/10/adventures-in-atari-basic-lesson-five-take-aim-and-fire/ Enjoy!

Just bought the Kindle version, can't wait to read it! Thanks!

I'm really happy you're enjoying the series, thanks so much! I've been looking at the BASIC 10 Line entries and I can't believe how amazing they are. My BASIC skills are only reawakening after so many years, so I'm not ready to enter the contest yet, but I'm looking forward to seeing who wins!

Looks like cool stuff! Those were fun times for sure.

This - is - amazing! I'm so happy that my code inspired someone to take it further, and you really made some great improvements! I like the player animation and the glowing lasers, and the game over sequence with the tower destruction is awesome! I should have thought of that! Thank you so much for sharing! I may have to mention this in a future article of my series!

I think the term developers use today is "leveraged". It's amazing how much could be done just by moving memory, as long as it was the right memory! Great technique.

Hey Bob, I just took a quick look at Space Station Multiplication and I love it! I mastered my 2's table. The station graphics look great and the docking sequence is cool! I'll definitely peruse the code in the near future. Antic and ANALOG were both great magazines. That's wonderful you made it in under the wire! Space Assault's graphics were pretty primitive compared to yours, so I just went with the graph paper method. Thanks for reading my articles! The next article is being edited and hopefully will be available to read soon.

You summed it up perfectly. I would never want to maintain mission-critical software in Atari BASIC, but after my day job is over there's nothing better than the simple joys of PEEKing collision registers.

Thanks so much for reading and the kind words! It feels great to be working with Atari BASIC again.

Thanks! My game is super simple, but that's the appeal to me. Writing these articles (definitely meant for the interested non-programmer, by the way) has inspired me to keep tweaking my old game. Best of luck with your rewrite, I bet it's an awesome game!

I had some fun and captured some game play video of the original Space Assault, and also the current revision that I've been making while writing the article series. Nothing incredible, but wonderful Atari BASIC nostalgia! The next article in the series is coming soon!