Weekly Links #35

It had to happen, I guess. This newsletter is two days late. Though considering how often I publish it one day late, it's all relative. Been going out a lot, you see. Does me a lot of good, seeing friends and exercising.

But anyway. Last week I only found a couple of things worth sharing. One is this article about BASIC on 8-bit microcomputers, which promptly reminded me of Why Johnny Can't Code, except more technical in nature. Having started with Basic on a Speccy myself (like every good programmer I know), no other programming environment ever felt as Zen to me as line-number Basic. Maybe Forth comes close... if you can wrap your head around it. And it still isn't the same.

The other topic for today is music. That's the big hole in my creative skills, which is a problem when players expect any serious game to have some. I make do with Creative Commons material, but it shows. If you're a solitary game developer, ultimately you need to compose your own, and that can be tricky to learn (I never could).

A programmer to the rescue. In a surprise turn of events, Shamus Young, whom I quote so often on this blog, has been learning how to compose music. And he's been kind enough to share with the rest of us, from the perspective of someone who is just now learning the basics. Last week we've had part 1, part 2 and part 3, but the series continues.

This is actually simple enough that I can understand what he's on about, at least in theory. And if you want more formal instruction, or more detail, there's always Music Theory for Beginners

And that's really it for today. Sorry about that.