I recall that PC mags back then often had a section to teach you programming, where you can copy the code from the pages to replicate what they show. I'd be interested to see what they did with this in the magazine (if anything)

I had that issue of PC Format.. IIRC, there was an article by a Bullfrog coder about programming in C or C++, teaching you how to make some sprites walk around to wherever you clicked the mouse, ala Syndicate. The coverdisk had example code and some Syndicate spritesheets, and a C compiler. The Bullfrog libs would've been graphics libs for setting a gfx mode and drawing sprites, grabbing mouse input etc. I was really excited about it at the time but couldn't make head or tail of the code and got nowhere 😀

yeah i had the first like 100-110 issues of pcformat as a kid 🙁 i wish i didnt throw them out when i moved.

from memory, it was not source, the bullfrog libs were just a library you linked into your code. so were less useful than it sounded.