Yup!
Retired video game programmer. 40+ years developing videogames and software. Creator of games for the BBC Micro, Electron, NES, SNES, PC, XBox, PS3/4, Mobile, Vita, 3DS. I am currently rescuing and archiving old game development disks. LEGO Dev/AFOL.
3,181 followers 752 following 1,132 posts
view profile on Bluesky
Yup!
The man himself - a legend!
I had a great time, thanks. Those Caps have indeed fixed a Beeb and made it live again after many years.
Indeed!
Correct - the full set of caps!
Hello everyone. I'm back from my summer break and hope to bring you lots of new retro related goodness! I've not really been online much so missed a lot of great stuff. If you have posted something ultra cool that you think I'd enjoy, please reply with a link! Guess what these are for ( picture ).
Remember when we met Ivan Sutherland? He was the genius behind the clipping technique to solve this! www.tutorialspoint.com/computer_gra...
Dean is also here @breakintoprogram.co.uk
It was a very special time for all of us. So glad you were able to make it!
My guess is that got through because it's a news item - different department with their own editors. The main editorial team would have fixed them!
I hope you mentioned the savings you made when asking for a pay rise!
The satisfaction you get tearing off the edges.
Pretty sure we used capitals for ROM / ROM and for BASIC commands - INPUT, COLOUR etc. The Editor would usually pick-up on inconsistencies like that. These two articles seem to be using capitals as I would have expected.
Built like tanks! Rather like Microvitec ( CUB ) monitors, built to last.
At home I used a KAGA/TAXAN KP-810. A cheap alternative to the pricey EPSON printers of that time. It was really good, fast and had an NLQ mode ( Near Letter Quality ) - 24 pin head IIRC.
Nice. Was the Juki a daisy wheel printer?
I used an Epson FX-80 printer every day when I worked at 'The Micro User' magazine. It was a great workhorse, so I couldn't resist this cheap one when it came up for sale. Not had chance to check it out yet, but was surpised to see an Electrical Safety sticker on it which has only just expired!
Yup, on the case. I'll have a look tomorrow. I need to sort through my archive and see what's relevant.
@bbcbreaking-bot.bsky.social I briefly saw your chat message, but age verification has just hidden them all! Don't like the verification process they are using.
'Galaforce Worlds' for the PC exists. Not much of a market for games of this age without a serious re-work. Commercially it wouldn't make sense either. Perhaps someone might want to do it as a personal project.
It's just a group of us from Creations that are still in touch and live fairly close to one another. We try our best to get together every couple of months.
Had a wonderful pub lunch today with some of my old Software Creations colleagues. This time we were also joined by Matthew Cannon who I haven't seen for about 30 years! Matthew also worked at Ocean Software during the very late 1980s and early 1990s. Great to have a catch-up after so long.
There's a good chance it has been scanned and is available somewhere!
Possibly this one?
The holy grail for 6502 programming - the original MOS 65xx reference books! Hard to find printed versions, but PDFs are easy to found.
Paulie, you'll need to sell a kidney via the eBay route unless you get lucky - see photo from today. Some silly prices being asked! I got lucky a few years back and managed to complete the set. PET Graphics is the tricky ( most expensive ) one!
It was also used to develop all of those nasty tape protection systems that used the 6522 to obfuscated code. Knight Lore, Alien 8, Lunar Jetman, Nightshade etc.
NOOOOOO! Fortunately, I kept my original BBC Micro that I wrote Galaforce and Crazee Rider on. It's the one that got re-capped at the A-BUG Manchester event.
Some amazing stuff was 'skipped' in the Cambridge area in the late 80s / early 90s from all the schooles and colleges. Worth a fortune today!
The heavily discounted QL computer was a cheaper way to obtain a 68K based computer to learn assembly language - even if it was throttled by its 8-bit data bus.
It's the same for retro computer hardware. They became obsolete so quickly people were dumping them or selling them for a few pounds at car boot sales in the 90s. We've all heard about schools, colleges and businesses that hired skips and dumped the old hardware too.
The bulk of my EDGE and PCW magazines were re-cycled. The EDGE ones are now starting to appreciate, especially some of the key early ones.
Ditto. I re-cycled hundreds of great home computer magazines and books in the late 90s. I now regret doing this! Worth a fortune and so hard to replace.
The Birnbaum assembly language book is excellent, one of the best i'd say for the BBC Micro. Quite easy to find and usually fairly cheap - orange and green cover versions exist.
It's still bubbling, sadly. I want it to crash so I can fill a few more gaps!
Yes, the spiral bound books are mostly Acorn related reference manuals. Some of them are shown in this old photo. The Advanced QL machine code book was OK, but I found that the Motorola programmer's reference manuals were better, along with others targeting assembly language on the Amiga and ST.
I know, it's silly what some people are trying to sell them for on eBay. They aren't that rare, possibly one of the top selling books of their time. However, they are the 'must have' books for those processors.
Started sorting out my home computer library yesterday. Some of these old books are becoming harder to find at a sensible price. I have a huge stack of computer magazines too which are slowly being organised. Fabulous reference and so interesting to read today. Technology has come a long, long way!
When your Twitter post is liked by the real Mark Hamill you know it's been a good day.
LOL. Brother..or is bother more accurate. I shall ask them.
Last time I visited the Northwest Computer Museum I spotted this Atari ST running Bubble Bobble. I started working at Software Creations just as this was being completed. A fact that I'd forgotten is that Mike Follin wrote the 68000 music driver for his bother Tim who did the music for the game.
Ashby Computers & Graphics Ltd. ( Ultimate play the Game ), then later RARE Ltd, now have their own Blue plaque! You can see it on the wall of their first building in Ashby de la Zouch. We need more of these paques to remember the early videogame studios. www.instagram.com/grantkirkhop...
Sad to hear the news that videogame musician Pete Clarke passed away today after a long illness. He worked for Ocean Software and Software Creations in Manchester during the early/mid 80s and created music for the BBC Micro and C64. RIP Pete. remix64.com/news/peter-c...
Last year I took some old friends to the Northwest Computer Museum. We don't see each other very often, but it seemed like only yesterday that we were developing BBC Micro games. Whilst we were there we played a few of our old games. Here's Andrew Farrow and Paul Proctor enjoying Galaforce 2.
Excellent! That would fill a few gaps for me. Let me know when they are ready to sell. Thanks!
There are a few issues of Practical Computing that I've been chasing. I hope you have some of them:- 1978 Issue 1 ( July/August? ) 1980 October 1982 May, July, August, October, December 1983 ALL, except June, August and October. 1984 ALL, except March, April, June and November. 1985-1989 ALL
The Watcom C++ compiler ( 10.5/6 era ) was the BEST! It took Microsoft a while to catch up.
@sharpworks.bsky.social The magazines arrived safely BTW. Feedback left. Thanks! Are you selling any others?
I can't think where it came from...
That's so cool. I'll be back at the museum in November for their annual retro event. I'll no doubt be taking more pictures of the great stuff they have there.
No idea where it came from....
I kid you not when I say this was my first attempt at the loading screen for Galaforce on the BBC Micro. It demonstrates why most programmers should NOT attempt to do graphics themselves. Fortunately, my schoolfriend Paul Proctor came to the rescue and produced a much better screen for me!
My Borland Turbo Assembler install disks - from around 1993. Before 'C' took over, many PC applications, tools and games were written in assembly language - 80x86. By 1996, almost everything was written using C/C++. The compilers were more efficient and robust by this time.
The full history of the one they have in the museum. Do you have pictures of your own shared anywhere?
More beautiful than this?
LOL. 16MB/s!
Coincidentally, the first Amiga 1000 I saw was at Martin Galway's house. He had brought home an early developer one from Ocean Software, possibly NTSC. He was evaluating it and learning to program 68000. I can't remember if he finished converting his music driver. @realmartingalway.bsky.social
I'm sure they were hoping for bigger numbers than that.
Happy 40th Birthday to the Commodore Amiga! It was packed with advanced custom graphics and audio ICs by the amazing Jay Miner. Jay worked alonside Robert Mical and Dale Luck on the Amiga hardware which became the MUST HAVE computer that year. I still can't believe the Amiga is 40 years old today!
A Nintendo 64 Press Release from Peter Main, Executive Vice President - January 1996. Announcing the N64 launch date, price point along with details of the writable Disk Drive Unit with additional expansion RAM.
Proper old-school gaming!
Indeed. A few other games used stippling in MODE 2 to get some extra colours too - worked well with CRT TVs!
Ted Lowe classic.
From a time when games carried a warning about being 'unsuitable for black and white TVs'. Acornsoft's Snooker for the BBC Micro, 1983.
RIP, Ozzy! A legend.
At work we had some 21" CRTs too. Guaranteed to cause back problems for those that tried to move them on their own.
In a perfect game, the PPU was basically a scheduler. The SPUs should be doing almost all the work!
I do have a few Gen Zs following me, I think. Maybe they don't know how to use one.
Coin mechanisms could be fooled/hacked easily with a cigarette lighter and a piece of metal IIRC.
The loud 'Hummmmm' of the Degauss is a sound I miss. I'd press it when bored on my huge 21" Iiyama CRT!
Fairly sure the pen was inside that zip-up notebook folder already, maybe not!
Yeah, i'd forgotten how poor the PS3 GPU geometry processing was, perfect for the SPU to crunch. I remember there was a talk at one of the conferences about the SPU rain droplets on a formula 1 game...or was it Motorstorm..
LOL. Maybe it's being used as a bulk eraser. I shall tell Joe at the Northwest Computer Museum, however, it's probably too late now.
uk.pinterest.com/pin/26965309...
I think Sony really should have sorted out the SPU programming side of things earlier on and provided devs with better libraries to make them use the SPU. The PPU was really weak and you could only get great performance with extensive SPU usage. It was a steep learning curve for us! Great system!
IIRC they were both at the BFI. I have the Sony PS3 pen still. Beardyman provided some of the evening entertainment if you remember him? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beardyman
No dash!
Trim phones were a big thing in the late 60s / early 70s! This advert is from 1969, still a rotary dial!
It takes AGES to dial a full 11 digit number!
Is there anyone here that DOESN'T know how to use one of these to make a call? How many of you had one of these at home with a lock fitted to stop mis-use!
Very nice! Sadly, I couldn't make Swindon. I hope to be at Cambridge again later this year though, as a spectator!
Look at this beauty in the Northwest Computer Museum. Still working, although the profile doesn't like being left on for very long - I think they have some kind of SD card solution for it, but I may be wrong about that.
The only way to win is to collect something that's cheap and easy to obtain, but that's boring and doesn't satisy the itch!
Why did we choose such an expensive hobby? I hope you've got the mouse to go with the Lisa as that's another mortgage.
You can never have too many Spectrums....or anything else retro/tech related!
It is a great bit of kit, lots of new, extra features too. I hope the scalpers stay away this time.
Great to see the ZX Spectrum Next Issue 3 Kickstarter being fully funded in a matter of minutes. I was tempted to get one, but can't justify £300ish on something that I'll probably not have time to use. Don't get me wrong, the £300 price tag is good value, but only if you are going to use it lots!
I can tell a few of them have hardly been read, if at all. Perhaps the original owner intended to make good use of them, but never actually did. Some of my old reference books from that time are totally wrecked, but I keep them for nostalgic reasons. My annotations are actually useful.
eBay! Sometimes nice copies turn up. One has a rather sun-damaged cover, but the inside is nice and clean. Always a risc/k ( sic ) buying this way as you can sometimes get books that were once owned by a heavy smoker, that really isn't nice!
Bug 'Whack-a-mole'!
Some new additions to the Acorn Archimedes programming book section. Most of these were published by Dabs Press and written by established writers with previous work in Acorn related publications. Mike Ginns' Archimedes Assembly Language book is a great read for ARM 2 related programming.
I'm actually tidying my office area right now and can relate. I have a stack of 'new' retro stuff that needs to be put with the rest of my 'collection'. However, there's no more room for it all. I'm not shoving stuff up in the loft anymore, and certainly not parting with anything, that's not allowed
That grey mat on the floor should do!
Surely that's tidy already?
So true.
Yes, he left to join them about the same time as me. He was running the software side of things and did the Fun School range of educational software. He was also the Editor of The Micro User for a while.
I really don't know about Green Jelly. We had in-house musicians that created the music for our games.
Use your weapon to guide you through the level. If the bullet stops when it hits something then it will injure you!
We did do Arcade's Revenge and a Tom and Jerry game ( SNES ).
Yes, I was there for about 18 months from summer 1984 to somtime in 1986. Got the job there after my A-levels working in-house on various magazines. Wanted to do more programming so left to pursue that.