Tim Hartnell (1951–1991) was an Australian journalist, self-taught programmer and author of books and magazines on

computer game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This feedbac ...

s. He set up The National ZX80 User Group with Trevor Sharples in 1980 producing a more-or-less monthly magazine entitled Interface. This User Group then expanded to include the ZX81, Acorn Atom and Spectrum computers, and provided a springboard for Tim and Trevor to launch the first of their home computing books. His company, Interface Publications (set up with Elizabeth North), produced titles for all of the machines in the home computer market, including Sinclair machines. Hartnell wrote several compendiums of computer games, which typically had several categories of games, with several games in each category. Each category had tips for writing enjoyable games in that genre. Each game had a description of the program and an explanation of its implementation, sometimes with ideas for modifications; this was followed by the raw code, which the reader had to enter into the computer. Some long games, such as Bannochburn Legacy, had more than 500 lines of code. To illustrate the style of these compendiums, here is the

Table of Contents A table of contents, usually headed simply Contents and abbreviated informally as TOC, is a list, usually found on a page before the start of a written work, of its chapter or section titles or brief descriptions with their commencing page number ...

from Hartnell's ''Giant Book of Computer Games'':TOC of Giant Book of Computer Games
on devili.iki.fi *BOARD GAMES -

Chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...

Gomoku ''Gomoku'', also called ''Five in a Row'', is an abstract strategy board game. It is traditionally played with Go pieces (black and white stones) on a Go board. It is played using a 15×15 board while in the past a 19×19 board was standard. Be ...

, Awari,

Knightsbridge Knightsbridge is a residential and retail district in central London, south of Hyde Park. It is identified in the London Plan as one of two international retail centres in London, alongside the West End. Toponymy Knightsbridge is an ancient ...

Shogun , officially , was the title of the military dictators of Japan during most of the period spanning from 1185 to 1868. Nominally appointed by the Emperor, shoguns were usually the de facto rulers of the country, though during part of the Kamakura ...

and others *ADVENTURE GAMES - Stronghold of the Dwarven Lords, The Duke of Dragonfear, The Bannochburn Legacy *SIMULATIONS - including Mistress of Xenophobia *DICE GAMES - Chemin de Computer, No Sweat, and three more *ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE - including

Eliza ELIZA is an early natural language processing computer program created from 1964 to 1966 at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory by Joseph Weizenbaum. Created to demonstrate the superficiality of communication between humans and machines ...

and Electronic Brain *JUST FOR FUN - Inner Spring, Robot Minefield, and five others *FUN WITH YOUR PRINTER - Celestia and Billboard *SPACE GAMES - including Moonlander *BRAIN GAMES - Fastermind, Switcheroo and several others Hartnell also wrote several how-to books about various genres of computer games, including ''Giant Book of Spectrum Games'' published in 1983, and also edited others, including Pete Shaw's ''Creating Adventure Games On Your ZX Spectrum'', also published in 1983. They were designed so that a beginner could, using his programs as examples, intuitively learn the

BASIC programming language BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College i ...

. Although he created a wide variety of games, the code for all of them tended to be characterized by an outline-style organization that made it easy to discern the basics of how the program worked. His prose showed a passionate interest in, and enjoyment of, the games he created; he tended to be imaginative, witty, and dramatic, as well as nostalgic - he had little use for graphics, favoring text games that let the programmer's and player's imaginations do the work of creating the setting. Hartnell returned to Australia in 1984 and died of

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal bl ...

in 1991, at the age of 40.

References

External links

The Giant Book of Computer Games
Table of Contents,

Tanzarine Technology Ltd. *Hartnell, Tim
Creating Adventure Games On Your Computer

at worldofspectrum.org
About Interface Publications
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hartnell, Tim Hartnell, Tim Hartnell, Tim Hartnell, Tim Hartnell, Tim Australian computer programmers