Making 8-bit Arcade Games in C (8bitworkshop)

Android phone and linux desktop user.Great book. Very well done. Reads great on my android kindle app but it does not open on kindle cloud in firefox or on a kindle - something about the format. So if you have linux (amazon no longer has a kindle app) and you want a portable copy, order the pdf through the author's website instead.

I have read a lot of books and myself written many web tutorials on similar subject matter trying to demystify old arcade games and their hardware, and I am blown away how well this book is written. This book presents topics in a very accessible way that is downright impressive. I truly believe an arcade hobbyist with just minor programming experience in a high level language like java, javascript, perl, python etc, could pick up this book and understand it.I bought this book for the information on the game architectures as I develop hacks for old games and already only after 50 pages I've learned a bunch that I did not know. I have not used the online compiler yet but I look forward to checking that out. Great book!

The book is well written, just as his last was. The IDE on the other hand is a chore to use. The Atari 2600 Emulation worked fantastic, whereas any of the emulations that involve C run terribly slow and force me to reload the page whenever I make slight changes to the code. I tried in both Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Firefox. In Firefox the window does not need to be reloaded but instead, fails to provide error notifications and will not run any code. Even the examples will not run. I had none of these problems when running the Atari Emulator.

I recently got a breadboard and some 8bit processors, naturally i landed on this book while learning what to expect. This book does a good job getting into the how and why's of the platform before diving into any code. Making 8-bit Arcade Games in C Touches on some assembly before abstracting upwards; It's great book overall, if you want to know what goes on deep inside a computer, or if you want to know how to take advantage of limited memory while coding for ancient hardware... This is a good book to have, the author does a great job explaining concepts that would otherwise be difficult to understand.

It’s an interesting read. I actually didn’t finish because I enrolled in a course on Udemy Learn Assembly by Making Games for the Atari 2600 by Gustavo Pezzi and pikuma.com. The online course uses the same emulator as this book, along with a couple other cool tools. I just didn’t feel like I was gaining anything applicable by reading the book. I was thinking of trying one of the other books by this Author as they do have decent ratings, and it is written in a fun way.

I had fun with this book. But I really think it is because I am in the target audience. I know some assembler but I am not an expert. I work in a language similar to C.But most importantly, I have always wanted to know more about the internals of early 80s video games. This book provides that insight and makes it easy to experiment.The online tools allow you to write your own code and experiment directly with the web-based emulator or download roms for running emulator locally.

As a recent Game Design Graduate this book was an awesome refresher on computer architecture, and organization. This book goes into depth the intricate processes of machine code and applies it to making awesome arcade games. Discussing topics in this book has helped me in interviews, and it is a VERY accessible book to read. I love learning about retro arcade games, and feel it has improved my technical skills and understanding of programming as a whole. Great book!

Solid book. It covers some of the arcade history prior to going into the technical concepts behind the hardware and software.

El contenido del libro es increíble, si eres fanático de los videojuegos, este libro te enseña a programar los inicios de los videojuegos en un lenguaje de programación estándar: CSin embargo, el material del libro es muy pobre, parecen simples impresiones, no hay calidad en la impresión, me iría por la versión electrónica.

Pretty entertaining if you like retro development. Explains how C language works under the hood. I recommend this book and all others of the series.

This is a very well written book, easily readable and entertaining. It does what it says on the cover - shows how to use the C language to program 8 bit arcade games. It goes one important step further. It shows how to do that on classic Arcade hardware platforms, like the ones used for Asteroids, Defender and other 80s cabinets.An emulator is provided online for these hardware platforms (so the book says - not yet checked), so you can experiment with writing your own game based on the defender hardware, for example.There are a lot of very useful games programming techniques in here as well:* fixed point numbers* lookup tables for trig functions* double buffering* racing the beam - avoiding screen flicker* Interrupts* Driving classic external chips like the AY-3-8910 sound chip and the Atari POKEY chipAnd the book aims at a classics Z80 processor target, using the SDCC compiler. Plenty of advice is given around writing C code while will efficiently map to Z80 instructions.Great book. I've really enjoyed reading it.I wrote 8 bit games on the ZX Spectrum in the 1980s - for example the RAF Red Arrows flight simulator (co-wrote, at least) - and which this book and dev tools had been available then.

A fun and interesting book, following the modern wave of retro-development.I'd give it two stars if not for two things:1. there is a somewhat annoying amount of errata2. there are no exercises in the book, which would make the study much more effective.All in all though, I'm very happy of it.

very good, but it does not open on my 2018 kindle paper white