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[J. R. Hill]

What was the first game you programmed?

Mine was MilkQuest, a textual RPG in which all battles were played through tic-tac-toe.  The story revolved around recovering the world's supply of milk from [secret!!].  Major hallmark was AI with different ways of being beat.  Approximate filesize of 200kb.

No remaining copies of the game exist.

[Hempuli‽]

My first game was PacStar, a game made with GM where you were a spaceship and had to move around in a labyrinth and shoot pacmen. The main problems with the game were that I didn't know how to make solid walls so you could pass through them easily, and also I didn't know how to limit your shooting pace, so the bullets were a nice stream.

I guess that game has disappeared due to me working on it at my friend, but my other early games are safe and good on my computer. :>

[st33d]

Mine was a beat em up on the Spectrum 48k. You controlled a three character high rabbit. Other rabbits would slide towards you endlessly. When you killed one another appeared. The only way you could get on to the next screen was to step forward when the other rabbit walked forward - bypassing the collision. And for some reason I thought this was acceptable game play. I was about 10 I guess. I gave up programming not many years later.

Then when I took it up again when I was 30, the first game I made was this:

http://www.robotacid.com/PBeta/architectris/index.html

[easynam]

I made some really crappy games in TGF when i was like 7 or something but they all sucked. I dont remember any names though.

[sergiocornaga]

I think my first game was an incredibly basic text adventure about going to a fortune teller. Lost forever in computer crash.

[Eraser]

The first game I actually completed was a sidescrolling bird hunting game.. many thousands of incomplete things were created and destroyed before that.

[hatu]

My first two games were Worm Running and Worm Quiz made in QBASIC. I think I came up with a cool ASCII worm design.

Worm running wasn't actually even a game, just a ASCII animation that moved one frame when you pressed a key.

Worm Quiz was some kind of a small quiz game with three options to choose from.

[s0]

My first game was called ASCIItillery (yeah, I know  ). It was a text-based battleships-like game for two players with some resource management thrown in. It was written in 2005, no less.

Players could select one of several "cannons" and take turns firing at each other. Each player was positioned on a random space on an imaginary 8x8 grid. Firing used up resources (consequently misspelled as "ressources" throughout the game) as did spying on the enemy's base (to find out his location). Players could build factories to generate more resources each turn.

The game was actually kinda fun, but it would probably have been better off as a board game and despite its simplicity it was buggy as all hell, there were a number of ways to crash it. 

I still have a copy on my computer. I could upload it if there's any interest.

[Captain_404]

Cows in Space

Basically, you're this cow with wings, see? And you're in space? There's a bunch of random crap that flies at you and you have to dodge it. Except you don't have to dodge it because back then I didn't even know how to program collision detection.

[J. R. Hill]

Cows in Space

Basically, you're this cow with wings, see? And you're in space? There's a bunch of random crap that flies at you and you have to dodge it. Except you don't have to dodge it because back then I didn't even know how to program collision detection.

That's fantastic.  The tetris blocks made me crack up.

[Skofo]

A pong clone in Game Maker. It had nine different levels!

I have started dozens of games since then; haven't finished any of them because I lost the motivation to work on them after I couldn't make the art and music that I imagined. Someday I shall learn how to...

[Shade Jackrabbit]

A choose-your-own-adventure game where you have to escape from the Sahara desert.

[Ixis]

I made a maze racing game when I was a kid from a simple screensaver program(back in 1994, rofl... So old now.)

I made so many more games back then :<

[HöllenKobold]

Catch The Frog of Darkness.

Catch frogs in futuristic suits and nets. Also some plot about frogs being evil assholes, besides this mentor frog that helped you. Yeah, I don't know.

[starsrift]

A choose your own adventure game, on an Intertec Superbrain.

[gimymblert]

Me i didn't do anything fancy: find the magic number, and gosh i learn a hell LOT.

[LemonScented]

Me i didn't do anything fancy: find the magic number, and gosh i learn a hell LOT.

You know, I was reading through this thread and racking my brains trying to think of the first game I coded, but it was almost certainly this. "Pick a number between 1 and 100. Nope, too high. Nope, too low" etc etc...

The first game with graphics involved working out the trajectories and timing to shoot down birds that were flying overhead.

[SirNiko]

I've never actually programmed a game, beyond an asteroids clone that I made using a step-by-step tutorial.

I made a game in The Games Factory called "Billy Bob's Adventure!" many many years ago, maybe back in '95 or so. It was a single screen platformer, with boss fights every four levels and themed worlds, like grassy mountain, The Sky, and a construction site. I drew all the art assets myself, but the music assets were just Midi files of Final Fantasy music.

My favorite bit was a Mario-Land style flying level where you fought a giant bird in an airplane, and when it died, it exploded in a puff of feathers. There was another level with a giant bomb, and to defeat it you had to run through a maze to find a bucket of water that would make your gun shoot raindrops instead of bullets. Then you had to shoot the fuse before it burned all the way down.

I don't have a copy of that game any more, which is kinda sad.

-SirNiko

[Danmark]

It's hard to remember my first, probably some dumb vertical shooter in Klik 'n Play. The first game I programmed was this crude zombie first-person shooter in Dark Basic Pro. Everything was made of cuboids, and the environment only featured the zombies and enclosing walls. At least it had mouselook.

Probably still lying around somewhere.

I still have a copy [of ASCIItillery] on my computer. I could upload it if there's any interest.

I'm interested. How did the multiplayer work? Seems like if it was on one machine, you'd have to rely on the honor system (possibly the worst system there is), since the point is limited information.

[J. R. Hill]

Btw, my first game with graphics was a sort-of pong game, except there were no paddles and just two large balls.  The idea was that one ball went fast and one went slow, and you could switch their speeds with a single button.  The goal was to make a red ball hit the red goal and a blue ball hit the blue goal then have them bounce off each other before hitting the opposite goal.  +1 point for the correct goal, -1 point for the wrong goal, x amount of points would increase the playing field size and the speed of both balls.  Again, no remaining copies of the game exist...