Creating Political & Military Simulation Games on Your Micro

ZX Computing

David Harwood

HARWOOD'S HYPOTHESIS This month we have only four books appearing on this page. This could be due to the fact that publishers aren't letting us reviewers get our hands on the books and then beating them into pulp, or more likely it is because the computer book market is starting to falter. Will it eventually collapse? The problem lies at the hands of two parties. The publishing industry and the computer owner. The former because they knew too early what a good thing was and rushed out and produced books to do this and that on all types of computer, completely flooding the market, which then slackens as everyone who wants one. has got one. Another reason for the fall in the market is that all readers who wanted a book with lists of arcade games have by now got them. Then to produce a book on the Spectrum with lists of games after games is just pointless. Who would buy a new book when there have been thousands on the market for ages already? That is why generally the books this month are starting to move away from the idea that people just want to program their machine to play space invaders. POLITICAL AND MILITARY SIMULATION GAMES Interface £7.95 Remaining with the non-arcade idea, the next book is Creating Political and Military Simulation Games on Your Micro. Bit of a mouthful, eh? The book is written by Mike Rose and published by interface. The book is split into two sections. The first explains how to turn the initial idea into a computer program, and the second contains ten programs, illustrating the first section. Although the title only mentions political and military games, the book covers military, political and economic games. Perhaps there wasn't enough room on the front page to fit the whole title in! Military games come in two types. True military, which is the 'wargaming' as above, and then the strategic military. This is the type used in the book. The reader is taken through step by step, starting with the planning of the game, and progressing till a complete model of the game is present. All aspects of the game are mentioned in the book and examples for each different group are given at each stage. This simplifies the idea, as it is much easier to learn something with three examples instead of one. By the end of the first section one should have a complete flow chart showing the structure of the game. My first niggle comes at this point. In the introduction, we are told that the book 'requires only a relatively elementary knowledge of computing only enough to put logical flowcharts into BASIC'. Why then is it necessary to flowchart the structure of a YES/NO question? This should appear pretty obvious to anyone with the slightest of programming knowledge. Another chapter which is also not very useful is the debugging and trouble shooter. The only thing this would be helpful for is NOT committing suicide. It says NOT to jump out of the window if an error occurs! The remainder of the book consists of ten programs, from a naval battle in Elizabethan Times to being a Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street (much the same I suppose?). These programs are well written and quite interesting to play, but nothing spectacular. I did like Nuclear Crisis, where the aim is to persuade the other countries to give you land. In general the book is ideal for anyone with a knowledge of BASIC, and who wants more out of their computer than space-invaders. I did feel that at times the book expects you to know a lot more than at other times. But still, an interesting book, though perhaps slightly overpriced at £7.95.