BASIC guides?

[bluejay]

I recently got a VIC-20 to actually start learning to code in BASIC, and the VIC's manual walked me through all the way to making a simple instrument tuner program, but that's pretty much the most sophisticated thing I managed to do. Is there a book or something that can explain everything from print commands to make-awesome-games levels? Thanks in advance.

[carlsson]

The $1,000 question... I'm sure many books have been written over the years, but which ones work for which readers is the question. I'm thinking about books with listings like the BASIC Computer Games and More BASIC Computer Games by David H. Ahl, but not sure how pedagogical those are, and not sure how advanced you get. Usually you learn step by step by studying programs, mistakes and making changes.

 

While being specific to IntyBASIC, I could also mention Programming games for Intellivision by @nanochess which I believe is a modern approach to teaching games programming, assuming you have some elementary skills.

[+mksmith]

Search for the Vic-20 programmers reference guide for an explanation of basic functions.  You might also want to check out some of the old Compute! and it's various associated magazines for basic listings - learnt a lot from them back in the day!

[bluejay]

Thanks for all the info. Hopefully, I'll be able to make something like Tetris with BASIC in the future!

[Flojomojo]

Usborne has some colorful, easy to read guides. Story here.

 

I enjoyed the "Spacegames" and "Battlegames" books as a kid. They're short listings, easy to type out, and annotated app you learn some techniques. They have a machine language book  for advanced work as well. 
https://usborne.com/browse-books/features/computer-and-coding-books/

 

You sound like a beginner so you might get the most out of the existing listings. I'm really glad they put this series online for free, it's a real time capsule. 
 

Also look at the books on archive.org, where you'll find tons more stuff like this.