LiveCode Forums

Hi

On 04/03/2014 I bought a PDF book from Scott McDonald entitled “Coding Nine LiveCode Games”.

This PDF remained unread on my HD until I retired. In this Corona (Covid-19) period I have conceived the plan to continue with my hobby, programming in LiveCode.
Now I came across the above pdf again and it seemed like a good idea to start with it again.

I discovered in the pdf on page ii “the Where To Get The Code
chapter at the end ”and on page 79 I found the internet address to get this code.
http://livecodegamedeveloper.com/coding ... ource.html.
Unfortunately, that internet address is no longer active.
I found Scott McDonald Personal Computer Services with
Headquarters: PO Box 139, Newtown, New South Wales, 2042, Australia
and
Website: teacherspersonalmarkbook.com

However, the website only shows a beautiful (sub) tropical beach with an azure blue sea.

My question is: Can someone tell me if it is possible to get the corresponding software in some way?

Thanks in advance

Joop Sleijster

I get a 404 for that url, it looks like the site is now unavailable. Scott used to be on the mailing list but I don't recall seeing him in a while. You could try asking there though.

I just wrote John at the address I used when we last corresponded a couple years ago. I included a link to this discussion. If I learn anything useful I'll share it here.

Thanks for the responses jacque and FourthWorld.
Joop

Hi, just want to say thanks for getting me hooked up to get the files from Scott that went along with the book I had previously purchased. Enjoying going thru his code for the games and seeing what errors I had made inputting from the book. So far seems like everything works in 9.6.2 RC even though these games were coded in version 6. Thanks again. Mike

Any idea where one can still get that book or the pdf file?

Thanks in advance

This Wayback machine link seems to bring up the index of his pages as they were, the few links I clicked took me to the relevant content.

Note that the content is not the book or pdf but the source for the topics on his site.

I am rarely on here, and sent an email reply to Richard which may have gone astray? (Didn't hear back.)

Anyways, the livecode source is in the public domain and the eBook is now licensed under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

You can get them from:

http://zone.livecodehosting.com/downloa ... s-2020.pdf
http://zone.livecodehosting.com/downloa ... Source.zip

Basically you can do what you like with the source, and with the book do whatever is allowed by CC BY 4.0.

If people want to host them elsewhere that's fine too.

Cheers!

Very nice and gracious Scott !

smpcs wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 16, 2021 10:15 pm

Anyways, the livecode source is in the public domain and the eBook is now licensed under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
You can get them from:
http://zone.livecodehosting.com/downloa ... s-2020.pdf
http://zone.livecodehosting.com/downloa ... Source.zip
Basically you can do what you like with the source, and with the book do whatever is allowed by CC BY 4.0.
If people want to host them elsewhere that's fine too.

Hi Scott,

I noticed that you added 2020 to the title
and a Creative Commons License.
Could I translate this book too?

Al

Could I translate this book too?

Yes, you can.

smpcs wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 16, 2021 10:15 pm

I am rarely on here, and sent an email reply to Richard which may have gone astray? (Didn't hear back.)

Anyways, the livecode source is in the public domain and the eBook is now licensed under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

You can get them from:

http://zone.livecodehosting.com/downloa ... s-2020.pdf
http://zone.livecodehosting.com/downloa ... Source.zip

Basically you can do what you like with the source, and with the book do whatever is allowed by CC BY 4.0.

If people want to host them elsewhere that's fine too.

Cheers!

Great share, thanks for making this FOSS, the LC Community needs more of this!

The Tetris clone could use some tweaks (maybe add the theme music with , oh...I dunno...the LCB FluidSynth wrapper I've been working on maybe?) but it's practically a finished game!

The Spider Hunt stack is a very cool Wolfenstein-like thing. The only problem was that you had roll-your-own ceiling and floor functions that can now be deleted as they're now built-in the LC Engine. This really takes me back to my Mac512KE days, playing around with an XCMD that was around that did raycasting pseudo-3D mazes in glorious 1-bit non-color, LOL. The world-map format is very similar to how that XCMD worked, AFAICR:
I think this all really nicely shows off that LiveCode can be viable as a game-engine, at least for classic 2D arcade/puzzle style games. 19 FPS on a bare-bones Wolfenstein-thing using only LC graphics objects obviously isn't going to cut it (except for maybe the nostalgia factor). The FPS probably could benefit from recent additions to LC, like the SVG pre-compiled "image data" additions or perhaps translating to LCB Canvas drawing would probably make a big difference. You mentioned Franklin3D external, which I believe no longer exists, but if there were certain libraries in place, that could be tapped into with an LiveCode Builder Wrapper (LCB SDL,OpenGL,Metal?), LC could be a so much more viable game-engine.

smpcs wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 16, 2021 10:15 pm

You can get them from:

http://zone.livecodehosting.com/downloa ... s-2020.pdf
http://zone.livecodehosting.com/downloa ... Source.zip

Basically you can do what you like with the source, and with the book do whatever is allowed by CC BY 4.0.
If people want to host them elsewhere that's fine too.
Cheers!

Just seen this - really very nice share, thank you.

I wonder if there is a way to code these without a 'gameloop'... recursively calling gameloop probably eats a lot of processing time/resources and that's not playing to LC's strengths judging by frame rates... Even on 'simple' pong, frame rate (visual updates rather than procedural updates) is slow and you can make it slower just by moving the mouse (this is more obvious when recursively calling gameloop every tick instead of every 2 ticks).

Lots of food for thought and very nicely illustrated examples... thank you!

stam wrote: ↑

Thu May 06, 2021 7:54 pm

I wonder if there is a way to code these without a 'gameloop'... recursively calling gameloop probably eats a lot of processing time/resources and that's not playing to LC's strengths judging by frame rates... Even on 'simple' pong, frame rate (visual updates rather than procedural updates) is slow and you can make it slower just by moving the mouse (this is more obvious when recursively calling gameloop every tick instead of every 2 ticks).

I can't speak for pong, but switching the gameloop from ticks to milliseconds in "Spider Hunt" resulted in a significant increase of frame rates. Especially with the rate limiter removed. I was able to achieve 100-300 fps on an older 4th gen Intel mobile processor running in low-power mode. The frame rates were even better when saved as a Windows standalone.

I'm really blown away by Scott's implementation of ray-casting, but I'm kicking myself for not knowing trigonometry or geometry well enough to be able to implement modern gaming features like strafing. I think I could manage hit-scanning, but getting enemy movement working in a 3d space is well beyond my knowledge level.

I do theorize that wall patterns with semi-accurate perspective distortion could be achieved in Scott's ray-casting engine by pre-rendering each pattern between -89 and 89 degrees. The engine would apply perspective patterns (i.e., a poly distorted to a perspective of 36 degrees would have "brickwall_36degrees.png" as it's pattern), and light shading if rendering speed allows for it. With modern games gobbling up gigabytes I don't see a ray-casting game using a few hundred megabytes for patterns as being all that bad (provided the theory works). LiveCode doesn't appear to have a native image distortion command to generate those patterns, but ImageMagick's perspective distortion commands are a work-around I was considering.

Now that I've witnessed Scott's ray-casting engine running at acceptable speeds, I can't help but think that a 2.5D first-person game is entirely possible in LiveCode. There are still some technical hurdles, but I'm sure the right person will come along with the knowledge necessary to clear them. I hope to see it!