Usborne Weird Computer Games Book | Ashens 

I think maybe the art in the back was done beforehand, and then the little skeletons and stuff were done as like... illustrations for the actual content of the boo

> the actual content of the boo I see what you did there.

I agree! I had been planning to download a number of the PDFs as part of some kind of thing where I research the kind of art styles used in books aimed at children. I don't really seem to like the flat outline-less graphics used in their modern titles, though.

@@kbhasi The little robots they use to explain things are rather fun. For a "really difficult topic but we're doing a kid's book" book, check out the "Introduction to Machine Code (for Z80 and 6502 chips)". Amazing stuff.

The front cover looks like Oliver Frey art (Crash and Zzap!64 magazine)

If you put a ; at the end of line 10, it would scroll across the screen filling it from top to bottom 😂😂

ASHENS IS SKILL

There was a Soviet book from the 60s that I had which basically said that in the year 2015 (No idea why they picked that year) we'd be farming on the moon, using atomic powered jetbikes for transport and having monorails sodding everywhere.

Just one more like and you will have 69, nice

I just gave you 69 likes nice

nice

Wouldn’t want to pay your late fees

I actually bought some 'type the code' books that were being retired in my school library that were more in-depth - like a choose your own adventure book, but your choices determined what section of code you typed in. Check out Arcade Explorers if you can find them, they were... interesting.

Luckily my library cleared all its records when I last checked last week, I still had books ! So I joint again. Didn’t get any books, as I got used to downloading them free! How times have changed... you can download these usborne books free from the usborne website !🤯🤯👌

Goat pupils are rectangular, actually.

@@RFC3514 I wouldn't think being in school would change one's fundamental shape...interesting.

It can definitely make you a more rounded individual.

@@RFC3514 I have an image of Violet from Willy Wonka just rolling around a school in my head now.

Floyd

I don't understand the challenge in it... Why not just fly low all the time? And why aren't there any warning signs for the broom-snatcher? I think ground obstacles that forces you to fly higher, then swoop down to gather, then fly up higher again, would be a better challenge than having flying obstacles.

The challenge comes from the fact that you can't select the height (did you think Ashens was flying back up deliberately?). You just press a key to "swoop down" for a second, and then your broom goes back up, to a random height. You have to time the swoop to match the moment when the item you want to catch will be passing under you, but the timing is different depending on the height from which you start. Flying obstacles would force you to choose between timing your swoop to catch an object or time the swoop to dodge the obstacle (and possibly miss the item you need to catch), while still requiring only a single button.

RFC3514 Thanks! I completely missed that part!

I’d love to know more about the game designer of that one in particular, it seems like each game is as designed by a different person since Monster Wrestling had a special credit, as did Tower of Terror, I suppose it’s possible some people designed more than one game

Looks like either the inspiration for Cauldron (C64 and other platforms) or the scaled down "you can type it in" version of it.

You know what this means right? For the common good, you must keep pulling all nighters.

I got lucky. It's only 23:18. Early night still possible.

You don't sleep during all-nighters do you?

It's maths because he's British.

Just the one?

Basic came back to me when I had to get into vba for excel. It made it se much easier to get into because of these fun days with a tape recorder and cassette tape loading a game into my bbc b.

@@RFC3514 Most BASICs in those days made every variable global, something which took some time to adjust to when moving away from it. And while you're right about gosubs being comparable to functions, that was only obvious to me once I had learned how functions work - a task that was made difficult thanks to already being in a gosub mindset. BASIC was the best learning tool there was for youngsters at the time, but nostalgia aside it was a horrible tool and I wouldn't encourage anyone to even consider using it if there's anything else available. Thank goodness there are much better options available these days!

> a task that was made difficult thanks to already being in a gosub mindset. I assume you mean goto. And hey, that prepared you for assembly coding. ;) And, like I said, it depends on how you use the tool. GFA Basic (and, to a lesser degree, STOS / AMOS) were extremely powerful and supported most features / mechanisms found, for example, in C.

@@RFC3514 Yeah I meant goto, but to some extent gosub - gosubs are still missing some of the fundamentals of functions, namely passing parameters and returning values (without messily juggling global variables), so they're still a poor preparation for using proper functions later on. I strongly feel that I only understood how BASIC mapped onto "proper" languages like C once I had learned those languages from scratch. I don't buy into the idea that BASIC prepares you for other languages, I believe that the opposite is true - once you've learned a "proper" language only then does all that weirdness you were doing in BASIC begin to make any real sense.

In most of these early systems, yes, you have to use global variables manually, to pass data into subroutines. Most (probably all) these CPUs supported a stack, but I don't think any BASIC gave access to it even explicitly (via push/pop), and certainly not implicitly (by passing parameters). Later BASICs did add support for local variables (and passing parameters).

Still own my Funnybones books!

I only recognise that from Caddicarus' videos honestly, apparently I watched less TV than I remember. (Given we literally only still have the basic freeview channels now.)

I made my own DVD with all the episodes of Funnybones on it, cause no other bugger was gonna do it :D

🤚🏼

@@mandygreen6718 Highfive? sure *highfives* :D

The first day I had my computer I typed something like this (but much longer) in, then turned the computer off without saving it!

I just recall taking out a book showing a timeline of inventions and recall a page about how toilets were invented!

10 Goto 20

YOU GOT THAT TOO?

Mine was an ad for insomnia treatment sounds... Probably because I'm watching at 4:40 am...

I got an Ad for COD: Vangard, and just said "That's not Tower of Terror, that's something worse"

You make any PC games?

They were awesome, I still have some of them and my brother has the other. We got a ZX Spectrum in 1983 and argued incessantly about whose turn it was!

You can probably do it still nowadays? XP

It's 9:40 pm

​@@ppidk2267 You're right it's not like people live in different time zones or anything you know yeah 9:40 pm what were they thinking huh boy I tell ya some people don't know how to tell the time anymore jeez louise some people nowadays huh

@@SpicyMilk what's a"time zone"

Legit what I have just done, about to go to bed, Ashens posts a video

@@nicholas2198 that's how it be sometimes

No that's too intense for a children's book. Best to just have them commit suicide instead.

It's actually a metaphor for life as a rock star. The people you eat are groupies, while trying to not overdose on heroin.

Actually Usborne do the same thing over here. My wife tried it for about 6 months, you have to buy your stock from them and there is little room for profit if any. My wife was down about £600 over all. Very tough business.

Were they always MLM based? Did they used to be legit? I can remember using proper non fiction books from them when i was little

Ah, okay. So it looks like Usborne Publishing is the legitimate business, but they have a sister company known as Usborne Books at Home (or Books and More in the USA) which is the MLM scam. Kinda sad that they're letting their good name be dragged through the ever-growing slime growing in that industry.

@@SmaMan Same thing with The Body Shop, which is an MLM here and better-known for being one in the US. Strange, because their products are OK and they follow through on the emphasis on ethics in almost every other sense... except literally operating a scam

@@isabellamorris7902 Really? I thought the body shop was legit, they've got shops and stuff. Normally it's just middle-aged women on Facebook

Ah,that makes reading sound much more enjoyable. I don't know what to say, I'm a 90s kid so by the time I was messing with computers it was more fun to search through random websites and see what you could find.

And even that could take all day...

Before the 90s we had these things called "shops" where you could buy games (they employed local people, too). That's not really the point, though; you didn't type in games just so you could _play_ them, it was a way to learn _programming._

Fun times. Computing is boring now.

@Hanniffy Dinn - Nothing prevents you from spending as long as you want typing whatever code you wish into whichever system (or emulator) you choose.

Was it interesting to get a game to work?

The best part is when you fix them.

Angela Neal with a what?

Programming is 20% programming 80% debugging.

@@rzeka Vic-20 probably.

Johnny John computer fetus

Then the coders did what? Don't leave us hanging.

@@RFC3514 good catch, thanks, edited

I just googled and while there is a book based on an island, the cover art of "The Mystery of Silver Mountain" is ringing more bells as I seem to remember it having a blue cover. Hah. Nostalgia overload.

@@PostingCringeOnMain There was Island of Secrets and Mystery of Silver Mountain. I have BASIC (tee-hee) videos and playthroughs of both. Great stuff. Mystery of Silver Mountain gets into "You DIE! You DIE! You DIE!" levels sometimes.

@@WhatHoSnorkers Do you procede in the the direction you believe to be north, at any point?

I HAVE been to a Dark Room show, BTW. The Saturday show at Play Expo Glasgow 2019. Unfortunately, I was not a Darren.

@@MathewHaswell I only became away of the Dark Room because I watched Octav1us Kitten's video about it on Friday night. I've been playing a lot of them lately. It looks like a hilarious and true rendition of the genre!

Yet you have a Mac Icon. X_x

Use to love doing all this stuff. Took computer course at school and made my own hangman game. :p

Dubuya Jay Might just mean he prefers to use Apple computers? XD I remember old macs back 20 years ago and playing them Disney Storybook games on them.

No, these games were never "cool" or "informative". Just really, really simple programming exercises that fit in a single page. Basically an introduction to programming appropriate for young children or people with a short attention span.

Hanniffy Dinn Hey look. It's the generation that shit the bed, then blames Millennial's for not being as shit as them.

Hanniffy Dinn so... I was born in '94 fuckwad. I'm 25. I just don't enjoy these kinds of things because I find them difficult to learn. Sorry if I have a learning disability that I was diagnosed with when I was 12.

RFC3514 not short enough! I have difficulty learning these kinds of thing, math is a close second to some of the most confusing things I've encountered.

Barshans. rollyeyeemoji

shens. I what do I bldy know. Anyway - Brilliant discussion.

Still plenty of open source games around. And there were plenty of closed source games back then. The only real difference is copy protection got renamed to "DRM" and some of it is now internet-based.

I had the Usborne combined supernatural book as a kid. It was wonderful. I remember the weird powers one, where the Soviets where torturing plants and rabbits or something. I went to buy it on Amazon. They are EXPENSIVE. I bought mine as a kid from a fete for a quid!

@@WhatHoSnorkers There were three basic books in the Usborne Supernatural World series 1) Vampires, werewolves and demons, 2) Haunted Houses and spectres, 3)Mysterious Powers & Strange Forces. There was also a 'bumper eition' named: Usborne Guide to the Supernatural World, which had all of the 3 books 1-3 all in one big book. I dunno where they went but I used to love them.

@@davedogge2280 They were great... pricy as anything now (Like £45 for the bumper edition). I remember in the Mysterious Powers book they torture plants, have Kirlian Photographs, do ESP experiments with rabbits and everything. Usborne were the best. Their book on Spycraft ended up being discussed in the Old Bailey. I also loved their book on detectives, with Weedy Weekie (alias the Flat Man) who so should have been played by Billy Drago.

The usborne horror book was great, it has a black skull on white page, you could stare at then see a ghostly skull on your bedroom wall! Great times !

@@hanniffydinn6019 I remember doing that! It was brilliant. Then again, every Usborne book was brilliant.

Doot doot!

It birthed a popular genre of the present day. The "Roguelike".

Funny, I never played anything like it later. Today I play World of Tanks Blitz on a tablet, something I dreamed about (I literally did dream about tanks and hand held computers which did not exist) 35 years ago as a teenager. I'm living my dreams I had as a kid today.

I was playing Roguelike games such as Moria and Angband on a Commodore 64 by 1995. We played the original Rogue game in the 80's as kids with my Dad or our Uncle. I really loved Angband, I'd love to play it as an app.

@@MsCherade9 pretty sure there's an android app for it

The original Diablo was a roguelike that had the turn-based bit removed

George Stobbart had other ideas.

IS IS had different ideas. ;)

Paul Potter nice only ever had the first issue. Real shame my spectrum bit the dust a few years ago.

Don't insult Tower of Terror. Compared to Darkest Dungeon, Tower of Terror is a complex and realistic simulation.

That'll teach you to get drunk at the photography club Christmas party.

> Turn on light. > Get out of bed. > Put on Gown. > Open Pocket. > Take Analgesic.