SteveSmith wrote: ↑Wed Aug 16, 2023 2:39 pm
Would it be fair to say that the Speccy was more user-friendly and accessible? I was into writing Basic programs pretty much from day-1 on my Speccy, but for the breif time I had a C64, I don't remember even thinking about it. Did the C64 come with a manual that described programming to the same degree as the Speccy?
This is something Rich Pelley asked me about, but which didn't make it into his final article. What he was asking is: "why did we in Speccy-land have a Crap Games Competition for as long as we have done, but the other computers didn't?"
The C64CGC ran four times between 1999 and 2004, and the games... really weren't "crap" in the sense that we'd know from CSSCGC past and present. The entries were well beyond type-in quality and would most likely have appeared on a Commodore equivalent of 16/48 or Outlet if they'd been made back in the day. And after a brief attempt at programming Commodore's "big three" while not being able to write entries for my own CSSCGC, I had a good idea why.
Commodore BASIC v2.0 wasn't up to scratch when it came to writing
games, with its character-based screen and - on the VIC-20 and C64 at least - the necessity to POKE, POKE, POKE, POKE and POKE again if you wanted to do anything with colour - what would pass as a "magazine type-in" would only ever resemble a ZX81 game with extra colour, sound, and... most likely, no UDGs (I found out how hard it was to do that on the VIC-20 and C64, and it's more like redefining individual characters in the character set). All right, so there were sprites... but having never tried to program a sprite on a C64 I couldn't say if they're usable in BASIC or not.
I am unaware of any such thing as listings-only magazines for the Commodore computers, i.e. their equivalent of Sinclair Programs, or if there were any regular listing sections in the Commodore magazines of 1982-84. This was peak "I want to program myself" time, and the only Commodore listings I know of were either in INPUT or Popular Computing Weekly (where most of them were VIC-20 listings in the early issues). Printing huge strings of control characters wasn't exactly conducive to compact, easy-to-read listings, and where even the ZX81 could PRINT AT 18,25; the C64 would require 44 characters (home, 18 × down, 25 × right) to achieve the same positioning, and the VIC-20 would be out of screen to the right. If you're the owner of an unexpanded VIC-20, that's annoyingly wasteful with only 3.5K at your disposal!
So anyone who had a Commodore computer in "the listings days", who wanted to make
games rather than just the kind of niche text-based utilities that BASIC v2.0 was suited to, and who couldn't assume that everyone owned a Simon's BASIC cartridge, was going to have to dive headlong into 6502 machine code and GIT GUD very quickly. And those who did GIT GUD weren't going to be satisfied making crap magazine type-in quality games, they were going to go for the jugular on the commercial market, especially when the C64 was new, its users were just finding their feet, and anyone who could squirt out the C64 equivalent of Manic Miner before the end of 1983 would be well rewarded.
The PET, VIC-20 and C64 all came with a programming manual, and it does explain the basics of all the keywords, but doesn't go into the same kind of rigorous detail that the ZX81 and Spectrum manuals did. The VIC-20 was even marketed (in 'MURICA at least) as "The Friendly Computer" and the manual was written in a way that was considered "friendly" with lots of pictures of the key caps that you need to press in order, as if walking a small child through the process.
Then, there was My Savior (no U, he's 'MURICAN) for these machines, Raeto Collin West - author of "Programming the VIC" and "Programming the C64". These books, written in a far more dry and matter-of-fact way, trounced even the standard of the Sinclair manuals, fully explaining the BASIC of both machines, with the memory maps, registers and all manner of internal gubbins explained in autistic detail. It even had a full lowdown on 6502 machine code included as part of the package - something for which we'd need to pay Toni Baker a visit (and a few quid for her marvellous books). The problem with these two vast and authoritative tomes? The date! "Programming the VIC" was released in 1985, by which time barely anyone had a VIC-20, and "Programming the C64" followed in 1986, by which time 'MURICANS were also using their Bread Bins solely as games machines, if they hadn't upgraded (or sidestepped?) to a NES instead.
Then there's the small matter of expense. I believe there was no CPCCGC because by the time the CPC was launched, no matter how good the BASIC programming manual was (and
it really was), most of its users would only ever
run"game - no second quote required, though
|tape might be - and the programming manual would stay on the shelf, unread, unused. The C64, being as expensive as it was, was less accessible to Joe Average until it came down in price, by which time it'd be used 99.9% as a games machine, as the CPC was.
"Would it be fair to say that the Speccy..." (and the ZX81, less so the ZX80) "...was more user-friendly and accessible?"
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