The cover of the book
Some time ago Juhang Park contacted me to say thanks for ubox MSX libs –which is always nice–, show me some work in progress games and ask for my permission to write a book about game development in C for the MSX using my libraries.
That was interesting. I don’t think anybody needs permission for that –even without considering the licence of the libraries–, so that is what I told Juhang. I wished them good luck and kind of forgot about it.
Well, the book has been published now in Korean: The retro game development bible. Which is very cool!
Apparently the book was rejected a few times because it was “only MSX”, so Juhang had to cover more ground by including MS/DOS and other “retro” targets –the site selling the book lists a lot of systems, but I can’t tell how deeply they are covered–. And there is something unexpected: Juhang wrote a translation layer so my API can be used with SDL1, SDL2 or Allegro as backends.
There is a reimplementation of King’s Valley 1 using ubox MSX libs –that I’m guessing it is used in the book–. It can be played on the browser thanks to WebMSX. There is also a repo with some info about the different chapters.
Juhang offered to send me a copy of the book, but I can’t read Korean, and told me that there are two MSX games that hopefully will be released soon: Galkave (a horizontal SHMUP) and Bomberman Special (a Bomberman clone).