Spectrum Game Writers' Pack

Personal Computer Games

Steve Mann

PUBLISHER: Collins Educational Author: P K McBride PRICE: £7.95 This package consists of a cassette and a 104-page book. At a very early stage the reader is introduced to concepts such as controlling the movement of objects from the keyboard and the detection of collisions. McBride then moves on to consider various other types of game: guessing games of the Hangman type, hat and ball games. mazes, unbeatable noughts and crosses - in fact, all the staple fodder so beloved by computer book authors. There's even a section devoted to cheating, in which hidden program lines are used to load the odds in the writer's favour. The accompanying cassette gives a selection of ready-torun games, as well as a collection of routines that may be incorporated in the user's own programs. The book is generally easy to read, with material sensibly split up into small easily digested sections. Although almost everything here is covered - often in considerably more detail - by one or other of the huge selection of books about the Spectrum, the inclusion of the ready-to-run routines and the 'no fuss' writing style make this an attractive package for the computer beginner who is keen to get on with writing games. But I must stress the 'beginner' but - those who want to know how to achieve sophisticated graphics of the Ultimate or Imagine calibre will have to look elsewhere.