lethargic_man: (green!)
[personal profile] lethargic_man

When I was twelve I joined my Senior School's computer club. The golden rule there was: you were not allowed to play computer games unless you wrote them yourself. Being the person I was, I then devoted the rest of my time in the school to trying to write my own games. Eventually, I succeeded, and even wrote one which would have been commercially released if the recession in the early nineties hadn't killed off what was left of the eight-bit market.

However, at the beginning I would come up with grandiose plans, way beyond my ability to implement, and would generally founder a short way in. It took me several years to realise what I needed was to start off small and work up. Moreover, in those early years I would always start off working through the game in chronological order, viz. with the title sequence, before getting to the main game. Well, none of the games might have ever got finished, but it kept me occupied, and taught me a thing or two about programming.

The following is from one of my more advanced title sequences; it dates from when I was fourteen or fifteen:

In 2000, I decided to collect together everything I had ever done on digital media, and still had, and burn it onto one CD-ROM, whilst I still had the ability to read 5¼" DFS disks (and the ability to transfer to 3½" DOS disks). I recall finding the above image, viewing it on my father's BBC Master as a BBC Micro format screenshot, then transferring it onto a 3½" disk, wandering out of the room and into my room, where I had phlogiston running Linux, then coming back a couple of minutes later, and to the utter astonishment of my brother Darren, who was in the room doing something else, displaying the file as a GIF on my father's Risc PC.

Of course, I had written a program to do the conversion earlier. But the memory of his astonishment sticks with me still.

If you don't have an account you can create one now.
HTML doesn't work in the subject.
More info about formatting

Profile

lethargic_man: (Default)
Lethargic Man (anag.)

May 2025

S M T W T F S
    123
45678910
11121314151617
181920212223 24
25262728293031

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Saturday, July 5th, 2025 09:26 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios