AMATEUR HOUR.
My career in software development began in 1982. My parents had bought me a Commodore VIC-20 'Color Computer' because I'd shown some interest in home computers of the time, and they been told this was a popular one, which it was, and William Shatner had been announcing it as "The Wonder Computer of The 1980s", which it really wasn't.
Compared to other home computers of the day, like the Sinclair ZX Spectrum or BBC Model B, the VIC was pretty basic. 5K of RAM and a 22 column text screen were not particularly inspiring.
My programming career began with me writing some simple games in VIC Basic and getting them published in the magazines of the day. I wrote versions of Hunchback, space invaders, and some original platformer games. If I remember correctly, I was paid between £50 and £90 per game, and the listings for these games were published in the magazines for other people to type in and play.
ELITE SYSTEMS Ltd.
In 1984 I applied for a job as a games programmer at Elite Systems Ltd, publishers of games like Kokotoni Wilf and Blue Thunder. I have no idea how I blagged my way into landing that job, but I did. I had been given the task of developing a conversion of the Sinclair Spectrum game 'Airwolf' for the Commodore C16.
This first professional software development project came with several major problems:
I was to write a game in 6502 assembly language, which I had ZERO experience of.
The Commodore C16 was a recently launched computer and development tools were scarce.
I was not supplied with a text editor, assembler/debugger, or ANY tools to help.
I had to write the game using the built in 'machine code monitor', or MCM. The MCM let you type in 6502 mnemonics and run the code, but if you made a mistake and needed to change some of the code then inserting code was impossible. The only thing to do was find where you need to insert code, dump the code from that point on to a file, make changes then re-add the saved code. However, the MCM did not support labels, so all branches needed updating. I made use of a lot of paper and pencils in those days.
I also had to create my own graphics, on paper and then add the data into the MCM by hand. The same applied to music and sounds.
I believe that, at that time, I was one of a very small number of developers working this way. Many of the other, bigger companies had better development practices.
The two games I actually completed for the C16, Airwolf and Commando, were appalling games if I'm honest. They both sold well, and I earnt a few thousand pounds from royalties. I'm proud of both games because of how much difficulty I had in developing them, but I definitely would not recommend anyone play them!
After those two games, my next project was "Frank Bruno's Boxing" for the Commodore C64. I was working as part of a team, developing the sprites for the game, with Chris Harvey and Neil Bate. I really enjoyed working on this project, I'm proud of the sprites I created, and both Chris and Neil were top blokes and much better, and more experienced, developers than I was. I learnt quite a lot from those guys.
A little known detail of my time at Elite is that I had written a Commodore 16 version of the arcade game "1942", and had made a great deal of progress on C16 and PC versions of "Dragons Lair". Unfortunately, these games are now lost in the mists of time which is a great shame.
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