g a m e    p r o g r a m m i n g   s t o r y

In 1990 I got my first computer, it was a 386\DX 25 with a 85 meg hd, 2 megs of ram, and a TSENG 4000 SVGA card. I also got Hero's Quest I (Now known as the popular Quest for Glory series), Colonel's Bequest, Zork, and Ultima 6.

Every since I got my PC I have always wanted to make computer games in the tradition of Hero's Quest (funny Graphic Adventure\RPG), and Ultima 6 (realistic RPG). I would spend hours of my spare time reading BASIC books from the public library on how to program simple arcade games in GW-BASIC & QBasic (the one that came with DOS 5.0 and QuickBasic 4.5). (Best part was making sounds with the PC Speaker) I also spend countless hours on drawing maps, drawing scenes, storyline, etc. for my game.

I finally got my first GUI programming language (and so did everyone else...) in 1991 (or was in 1992?). It was Visual Basic 1.0! I spent a lot of time learning everything there is to know about it from using API calls for graphics to learning how to use databases. (When I got VB 3.0 Pro...)

So I decided to start a game company known as AdventureWare Games TM. (Got a nice ring to it, eh?)

At first I wanted to design an all-out Graphic Adventure like the Sierra Online Games. So I spent about a year designing graphics for it, learning how to program graphics using BitBlt, etc. I hated the parser in the Sierra Online games, so I decided to do a Infocom-style parser, which took several extra months to design, and it still was pretty dumb! (I could type in full-sentences, yet I couldn't have multiple objects, or do math, etc in it. I could type: "TAKE THE GOLD", but I couldn't have: "TAKE 5 PIECES OF GOLD, AND DROP 1") Unfortunately, I burned out after awhile when I saw Ultima 6. You could draw graphics only ONCE! Never again having to draw millions of doors at different angles, or people, or what ever! Also no more dumb text adventure parser...

So...

I went ahead and designed graphics using PaintBrush (comes with Windows 3.1) that looked exactly like Ultima-style graphics. They looked really good and it only took me about a month to design them. (On and off, kind of a hobby) Then it hit me. I can't do it all in VB!

Even though VB is good for creating tile editors, or game utilities, doing animation is just too slow (Even with the Timer API calls, it isn't exact, and when you try to have several pieces of animation going at once, it slows to a crawl!). Scrolling is horribly slow (on my 386 and also on my friends 486\DX 33), I could only have 16 colors if I wanted to have acceptably fast graphics (256 colors is a memory hog), and lastly I couldn't have multiple objects in the game world because I needed to do Link Lists which in VB is extremely hard to impossible. (for me at least...)

So...

I was frustrated! One day I went and rented a Nintendo game called "The Immortals". A 3D isometric game, that looked so COOL! I kind of gave up on VB, and thought that I would grow up and use C, C++ or something. So I went ahead and spend about a month designing (on and off again, as a hobby) 3D isometric tiles of objects from the Ultima series. Unfortunately (again, sheesh!), it is a lot harder to program in C than in VB, and it is harder to program an isometric game than a top-down Ultima-style game.

So... (getting old, isn't it!?)

I GAVE UP!!!

Even though my mind is constantly on making computer games, I'M BURNED OUT! I don't have anymore MOTIVATION! I'M SICK OF IT! I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE! (Put down the gun... :-))

Back with my game...

Well, after a 3 months of depression which I'm finally getting out of, I started looking at game editors. I looked at DC GAMES, Klik & Play, The Game Factory, ZZT, MegaZeux, Z2, Quest Maker, Adventure Game Construction Set, AGT (Adventure Game ToolKit), TADS, and Inform.

I liked K&P allot! It was cheap ($14.95), and it kinda did what I wanted! Yet you can't sell your products, and scrolling is a pain to do.

Finally, I got CNC! (Corel's Click & Create) It can do products you can sell and it can do scrolling! It does games that would take a year or more to do in VB (the engine, tile-editors, etc) in a matter of minutes.

Anyway, I am slowly starting to regain my senses on game designing, and I am finally getting some MOTIVATION! Yeah!

Update:

Now I am thinking of buying Sense8 World Up. Its expensive ($3,400) but it has full VB-Syntax, and it lets you create 3D Virtual Reality games that will run on multiple platforms. (Win95, Mac, DEC, etc) I am thinking of combining Zelda with Super Mario 64 to have that big colorful cartooning look. For the last few months I've been in my web designing company, Artistic Reality Web Productions so I am at last making the money to make my dreams come true. (finally!)

All Artwork & Design © 1990-1998 .Artistic Reality.