Computer Games I Written.
Background
If you have read other parts of my scrapbook, e.g. Memories, you learned that I got involved with computers in the mid to later 1980s. This began when I went back to school, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, taking some math courses at night. And this eventually lead to my going back to school as a full time student studying mathematics in the Mathematics Department Graduate School.
One class at OSU involved computer programming in the Fortran language.
"Fortran is a general-purpose, compiled imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing. Fortran was originally developed by IBM in the 1950s for scientific and engineering applications, and subsequently came to dominate scientific computing."(Wikipedia)
For some reason, Fortran was easy for me to learn and this eventually lead me to my final job before retiring in 1991.
Fortran was "the language" to run on mainframe computers along with Cobal.
I got involved with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and wrote my first AI program using BASIC language.
"BASIC is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny, Thomas E. Kurtz and Mary Kenneth Keller at Dartmouth College in 1964. They wanted to enable students in non-scientific fields to use computers."(Wikipedia)
An easy to learn and use the BASIC language was QuickBasic. This is the Basic I coded with both during my employment with Columbia Gas System Research Department and later during my retirement beginning in 1991.
Fortunately, shortly after my retirement I obtained an installation disk for Visial Basic.
"The original Visual Basic is a third-generation event-driven programming language from Microsoft known for its Component Object Model programming model first released in 1991 and declared legacy during 2008. Microsoft intended Visual Basic to be relatively easy to learn and use.(Wikipedia)
After joining Boscobel Golf Club, Pendleton, SC, I discovered they were using a very labor intensive "system" to conduct daily golf mini-tournaments. Using Visual Basic I "moved" their system to an AI program that reduced their labor to set up and run the tournaments by almost 90%. I essentially "sold" my AI program to them for my using a golf cart FREE anytime I played at Boscobel. This was a "win-win" as they greatly reduce their labor and I used a golf cart anytime I played which was/is worth about $5,000 a year. My AI program has been running their tournaments for over 15 years (in 2022) with thousands of golfers entering at various times. Most competitions had from 20 - 75 golfers, each of which had to have their records updated when the played.
There are three computer games that I have written since retiring in 1991. Both involve some special code, e.g timing how long a card in Concentration is "flipped over", exposed, to see the card face, will stay flipped. In Star Force, action takes place in one of 10,000 quardants of the galaxy and requires storing hundreds of thousands of data points, e.g. plants and stars in a quardant.
Click on one of the graphics below that explains the game's details and a link to download the game.
Click on any of the face down cards to turn it over. The first one you turn over, and will stay turned over until it is matched. The click on another card someplace on the screen. This card will show the face but only for 1 second and the turn if back down. The key in this game is to try and remember where the non-matched card is located. Detailed instructions are listed when you play the game.
The object of the game is to match all 16 pairs in the shortest amount of time. This will test if you can remember what picutre is under which cards. A really fun game to play. Since the positions of the pairs of faces are radomly assigned each game, several players can play the same game to see who can find all the faces is the shortest amount of time.
On the left is your spaceship's console screen with enemy firing at your spaceship and you returning fire. Below the console screen and the "buttons" that control your spaceship. On the right are the "icons" that make up the game, e.g. various enemy spaceships, plants, etc.
Play is one move after another. It is not continous like normal games.
Your spaceship has three speeds, Impulase, Hyper, and Warp. To cross a galaxy in 20 individual moves.
NOTE: This is NOT a typical computer game,i.e. it is not a "1st person shooter, i.e. continuous action. Rather, you make one move at a time and see how the action progresses. For example, if you just enter a quardant of the galaxy everything is "static", not moving. If you move your starship then, if enemy star ships are present, they will move towards your ship and fire weapons at you.
The "scramble" can be just 2, 4, 8, 16 cells. The example above shows New Orleans with 16 cells scrambled. Two cells scambled should be fairly simple to put back in the their original location whereas 16 cells can, for a few photographs, be extremely difficult to put "back together" again, e.g. the photo of New Orleans above.
Each of the three games above can be downloaded but they can only run on any Windows Operation System device.
Concentration - A test of your short term memory. There are 32 facedown playing cards, four rows of eight cards, that you turn over, one at a time. There are 16 pairs of card faces that you need to match.
Star Force - A simple shoot'em up space game of a future conflict between peaceful civilations, Earth against the Rogue Civilizations, Romulan, and Cardasians. The conflict can take place in one of several galaxies. Each galaxy is 100 X 100 quardants, i.e. 10,000 quardants. Each quardant will have shars, plants and may have a space station or base, where your can resupply store room, fuels, equipment and crew lost in battles.
Photo Puzzles - Simple jigsaw type puzzles that presents a photograph,
which is a 6 X 6 matrix cells, with cells randomly scrambled from their original locations, The challange for you put to it back together in the shortest possible time.
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