Where are you from and what's your story?

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quangdx

In an effort to bring the GLBasic community closer together.
I ask the question, where are you from and what's your story?
Asobi tech - the science of play.
Spare time indiegame developer.

quangdx

#1
I split my time between East London UK, and near Dover, Kent.

First computer and programming experience was the ZX Spectrum.
Learnt Spectrum BASIC from the manual, whatever BASIC programming books I could find in the library and every magazine listing I could lay my hands on.
Got an Atari ST (for school work) and started writing stuff in the awesome STOS basic.
Moved on to PASCAL on a 386 PC laptop, then learnt me some C.
Dabbled in Gameboy C and z80 assembly, releasing a version of Jetpac called JetPak DX,
http://asobitech.com/jpdx/
which got me a "dream" job writing commercial Gameboy games.
Worked on Lego Stunt Rally for the Gameboy Colour, amongst other non-released titles.
But that all ended quite badly for me and I went on coding hiatus, for a good few years.

I bought a Windows Mobile smartphone with keyboard and found PPL (pocket programming language),
where I coded for PC and Windows Mobile for a bit, on a PC and best of all, on the device itself.
But the iPhone came along and took over the smartphone market.

I don't even remember how I stumbled upon GLBasic, but here I am.
And I'm loving every bit of it.
Asobi tech - the science of play.
Spare time indiegame developer.

Ian Price

I live in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, England.

My first proper computer was an Amstrad CPC 464 that I got for Christmas 1984. It came with no games at all. It did however come with a free issue of Amstrad Computer User, which luckily for me had several type-in games in it. I've not stopped coding ever since. Love the thrill of the bug hunt! :P

Moved from the CPC to Amiga and used Easy AMOS, AMOS, AMOS Pro + compiler and created numerous cheap and cheerful games, that are sadly all long gone now. Never had access to Public Domain, other than as freebies on mags. I never considered sending any of my stuff to them - didn't think I was good enough at the time. I know better now.

I moved to pc after a good few years and started with the Games Factory, then Div Games Studio, C, C++, Blitz, Blitz3D, PlayBASIC, Cobra, Blitz Max and finally to the best of the bunch, GLBasic.

My pc gaming "career" started with remakes of retro games (which have always been a real passion), but I've done more original stuff of late. I've won prizes in a number of coding competitions with my games.

I've produced loads of games apps freely and commercially for a number of different formats. My games have reached places that I'll never visit - through choice and financial limitations!
I came. I saw. I played.

Sixth Sense

I'm originally from Scotland but now stay in Morecambe, England.

I'll take the easy way here and post links to two pages:

Personal details:
https://sites.google.com/site/6ixth6ense/About-Programming

Computers & Programming Details:
https://sites.google.com/site/6ixth6ense/About-Programming/Basic-Programming
Okay, It's been more than ten years now so I confess............I let the dogs out!

ampos

I started in 1984 with a 2nd hand C= Vic-20. It had no books, so I have to learn with a Spectrum manual. Later we bought a C64 for work: we are photographers, so I made a titler program and a videoclub database (the 1541 was sooo slow!). Later we upgraded to an C128. And then to A500+ with genlock and ¡hard drive!.

In the Amiga a bought Amos Pro. I did my shop's Point-Of-Sale program for the Amiga, and a few more games, one of them a Lord of the Rings game (http://www.lysator.liu.se/tolkien-games/entry/anillos.html) in 1991.

I translated from english to spanish the manual of Scenary Animator 3D, and as payment I got 10.000 pts (60€) and a 2400 baud modem. At work, we have an A4000 with 2x2gb SCSI drives, VLabMotion and Tocatta for NonLinear Video Edition (I did some code in that pipe-language the Amiga had...). I spent most of my time (and my father money!) exploring BBS and FidoNet. I even got a real email then!

My home A500 broke due a ray-storm (it lost the yellow color!) and contacted Dave Hayne (one of the amiga makers!) to fix it. A dude from Germany bought me a (lisa?) chip to fix it. This was amazing for us, internet comunications in days!

At home I got an A1200 that was later expanded with a PowerPPC 603e+060/50 with Cybervision (or the hell was called) and some other expansions (a multysinc monitor). My father was amazed when I show him that I could change the eye-color of a photo using Amiga's ImageFX!

I don-t known when, but our first PC at work was a AMD K6-II at 350mhz (I was an Amiga boy!). At work, I re-did my PoS program to PC using TurboBasic, but the Amiga one was soooo nice... I had also Blitz Basic on the Amiga. There is some programs in AmigaNet.

In 2001 I sold my home's A1200, and with the money I bought a full-high-end PC, and even I some money was left!

I discovered Blitz3D for the PC, so I get it and start using it. I did a few more proyects (and updated my PoS program!).

2 Years ago I discovered GLBasic, and I love so much that I can program for my iPhone! Dude, I can even turn millionaire!

I work all my day as photographer, mainly in fron of the PC with Photoshop. My programs are done at home in my spare time.
check my web and/or my blog :D
http://diniplay.blogspot.com (devblog)
http://www.ampostata.org
http://ampostata.blogspot.com
I own PC-Win, MacBook 13", iPhone 3G/3GS/4G and iPAC-WinCE

spacefractal

I'm not starting to do a long text (as I bad with that).

I'm are from Denmark, near Copenhagen.

I started with Amiga 500 with Amos Creater, Later Pro which I begain to code. The best one is Mouse Runner, still very ugly graphics and a lots of mistakes, hehe (to been avoid in Greedy Mouse).

I moved to PC when Windows 95 came and began to do midi music and less on programmering really.

But when I discovered Java I began to create some java games, which is still on web today (I love Space Taxi) as well one php game (a danish 12 dice yatzee game).

Later I discored M.A.M.E cabinets and begin to play very much mame and its was area I did various versions of Jukebox applications, which could been installed on a arcadecab. They was all made in BlitzMax (Except Arcade Music Box, which is in Blitz+) and still use it that cab today. I love retro gaming.

Also I have created few remakes in BlitzMax as well and prefer doing remakes in that language (which I still prefer that language for desktop use). Not to been debated here.

Later I began to do music again for various Michal Ware Nintendo DS games which was something special for me (I did music for 3 ds games) as well doing music for my first iOS game (which was coded directly in xCode) here. Somes times I do create one or two tunes here and there for Tardis.dk remakes. I have not created for them all of course.

Last year, I dedicated to trying create my first mobile game. This time in GlBasic, dispite its actuelly is really slow in compile, its still enjoyable and cool its possible to using it for mobil game. I'm are still on my first game to been released, but its really a proffesionel one. So I have not started that easy as I could (property due the last projects from other languages). The next mobile game would still been in GlBasic :good:. I might have upgraded my machine since that.

So sometimes I doing music for games, sometimes I programmering. for Greedy Mouse I dont create music but prefer other doing that this time. This is to been debated in the annonce thread of course.
Genius.Greedy Mouse - Karma Miwa - Spot Race - CatchOut - PowerUp Elevation - The beagle Jam - Cave Heroes 2023 - https://spacefractal.itch.io/

r0ber7

Nice to see a lot of (ex)Amiga users here. Of course it's not that illogical given the fact that it's a Basic forum. Anyway.

I grew up with Amigas and consequently have never liked Windows. So when the Amiga died and I was forced to go PC, I took the first chance I got to jump over to Linux. Redhat and SUSE back then, Ubuntu right now. Tried Knoppix and Sheldrake but they didn't stick.

Back when I played around on my A1200 I loved DPaint. Later I got into AMOSPro and also Protracker. I made a few small games with that combination. Nothing quite special, but I was about twelve years old so hey. When I got into Linux I made some games too in C/C++ and a graphical library called FLTK (which wasn't really made for games, but it worked). Then, after highschool, I went to university and stopped programming and pixeling for a while. About a year ago I retrieved my old Amiga from my parents house and got inspired to make a game for it. So I learned BlitzBasic and got started. The result was Red Wizard Island for Amiga. After a while I got tired of having to battle memory management bugs and so on in BlitzBasic, so I went about looking for a way to keep most of my original code and transfer it to a modern system. Cue GLBasic.  =D

Now I have no more memory problems and I'm free to let my imagination run wild. No more sprite limits, no more weird screen glitches, it's awesome.

I'm from the Netherlands.

fuzzy70

I'm from London England originally but currently live in a place called Halstead in North Essex.

My 1st experience with computers was with an Apple II around my uncles around 1977-78 which he got me to type in a listing he had for a game of darts in Integer Basic. I think the listing was around 40-50 lines of code but being a 7 year old it took a while for me to type in & probably even longer to debug all the typo's & syntax errors that came up  :D. Basic programming did not last that long though as my uncle got me into machine code as he said "Basic is fine for learning, but if you want to get the real power of the computer you need to learn machine code". Being so young & naive who was I to argue.

I got my own computer when the ZX80 came out which I built myself (under the supervision & guidance of my uncle) & that is when machine code really came into it's own thanks to having the giddy amount of 1k of ram & the display being stored in that 1k address space meant a full screen of chars would take up 768 bytes leaving very little room left for a BASIC program.

The list of 8bit computers I owned after that was as follows (in no particular order) , ZX81 & Spectrum, C64 & 128,Memotech MTX512, Sharp MZ80K, Jupiter ACE,  Atari 130XL, BBC model B & Master, Dragon32, Oric Atmos, Sam Coupe, Enterprise 128, Various MSX's (Toshiba, Yamaha, Sony).

Most of the above where again programmed in machine code with the exception of the BBC's which thanks to the superb basic & built in assembler was a combination of the two, & the Jupiter which was my 1st & only use of the Forth programming language as far as i recall.

After that lot the 16bit kicked off which included an Acorn Archimedes & various Atari's like ST's & a Falcon as well as my favourite of all time, the Amiga. The latter I have had (& still have a couple) nearly every model released, A1000, A500 (original & plus versions), A600, A1200, A1500, A3000, A4000 & A4000T. Again all programmed in machine code but I did play around with Amiga Basic, GFA Basic, Blitz & Amos/Amos Pro. The Amos ones I would say was my most used versions of BASIC but mainly for prototyping & testing ideas or algorithms before coding them in assembly.

I have also had various Apple Macs from the original 128k version, PLUS's, MAC II, Quadras, CRT iMacs, G4 iBook & 1 which I still have & use mainly as a file/print server a dual processor MDD G4. Oddly enough I never really programmed the Macs but used them more for graphics & music work.

With regards to owning an x86 PC's I was a late starter with them, a pentium 166mmx was my 1st (although I had access to them from around the latter 386/early 486 days) & dabbled with Turbo Pascal for a while until BlitzBasic came out, then Blitz3D & BlitzMax.  BlitzMax I didn't get along with to much mainly due to the differences between it & it's predecessors plus the docs I found to be a nightmare  :D . I also purchased PureBasic a long time ago but I have yet to do anything with it, mainly due to health & personal problems around that time programming & a lot of other things went by the wayside.

GLB was discovered by accident about 6 months ago from talking to someone about a game they had on their website & me asking questions about it, the game itself was done in BlitzMax but they had played around with GLB & I think one of their games made with GLB is in the showcase & said to me give it a try.

Most of my programming has been little utilities & apps, like the Amiga font converter that I posted on this forum somewhere which reminds me I must finish that off as started implementing Amiga colour font conversion. In the 8bit days I wrote a few games which only made it as far as family & friends but used to help others with little machine code routines for sprites, sound, input etc. I also had a few routines & listings published in various magazines like your spectrum, PCW & others. Pretty much the same goes for the 16bit era but most where musical or graphics tools for myself like midi editors or graphics converters.

I am slowly getting my head back into the game writing frame of mind & am not far away from being comfortable enough with GLB to achieve that as I have never really pushed any BASIC to its capabilities.

Lee
"Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?"
- "These go to eleven."

This Is Spinal Tap (1984)

Wampus

My original plan was to become a ninja. Computer coding skills were only necessary because ninjas had to be hackers too, so they could break into high security buildings and steal important stuff from the bad guys. That was why I tried to learn to do it, really!

The sordid tale of how that quickly turned into a coding addiction starts in the UK. I began to program on my neighbour's ZX Spectrum using the examples from the manual that came with his computer. I also altered the software on BBC computers at school sometimes to do or say stuff that would annoy the teachers...because I was a ninja hacker. Yeah, I played games too, but the power to create or alter things myself was fascinating. One Christmas I got a 128 ZX spectrum. Best Christmas evar. I made a program that drew X-mas presents at random locations on the screen and played annoying beeping music. I showed it to my parents, both arts graduates, who looked like I'd just revealed myself to be a demon child.

I got into the 16-bit era with an Atart ST running STOS and Amiga running AMOS. My game projects were mostly too ambitious and I got tired of them after a while but I usually managed to create a first level and/or boss, title screen and soundtrack. I spent a lot of time drawing and writing music. I probably did that as much as code. Three less ambitious games I completed were a simple shoot'em'up, a text-based adventure game and a mock-3D game.

Coding addiction got so bad I was worried about my school performance. In an attempt to straighten myself out I destroyed my Atari ST (yes, literally) and gave away my Amiga. It was tough but it worked. I didn't code again until I got to University and had to learn Java as part of a Computer Science undergraduate course. Bizarrely I again decided that I should try to get away from computers so ditched Computer Science for Philosophy.

When I left University it was a big surprise to discover the working world didn't need philosophers that much. I ended up working in various IT support roles, became an IT tutor and started a business as a webpage designer. All of those things included coding in some capacity. I gave up fighting it.

It was still years before I started working on my own projects. I feel like I've only just begun even now.

I did also become a ninja, incidentally.

Ian Price

QuoteComputer coding skills were only necessary because ninjas had to be hackers too, so they could break into high security buildings and steal important stuff from the bad guys.
I think you played Saboteur a few too many times! :P
I came. I saw. I played.

quangdx

#10
Quote from: Ian Price on 2012-Mar-22
QuoteComputer coding skills were only necessary because ninjas had to be hackers too, so they could break into high security buildings and steal important stuff from the bad guys.
I think you played Saboteur a few too many times! :P

I am incidentally an actual ninja (well a b-boy, but that's pretty close)

[edit]
arghhh! youtube took away the music.
so here it is on facebook.
https://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=2433128224
Asobi tech - the science of play.
Spare time indiegame developer.

Kitty Hello

now you're kidding me?
I can perform a hand stand... for about 2 seconds. XD

quangdx

Quote from: Kitty Hello on 2012-Mar-23
now you're kidding me?
I can perform a hand stand... for about 2 seconds. XD

No joke, my two loves in my life, computers and dance.
I've been a b-boy for about 10 years now.
Although in the last 2 or 3 I've not danced much at all.

Awesome you can do a handstand for 2 seconds, that's where it starts,
then you try for 3 seconds the next time and so on.
Asobi tech - the science of play.
Spare time indiegame developer.

MrTAToad

#13
Are you sitting comfortably ?  Then I'll begin...

I'm from Chichester, England which is along the south coast...

Orignally my father brought a Casio mini computer/calculator thing (one line screen on which editing was done), and after getting used to that we had a game on a friends Spectrum and then brought as Commodore 64.

Whilst my original programs on paper were actually impossible, I studied the Programmers Reference Guide and the programs that came on the cassettes computer magazines and what-not.

I started writing various programs (a music creator written in BASIC with the player in machine code), which sold one copy.  Also wrote a Mastermind-type (quiz) game (unfortunately the source code for those aren't available).

After a while I got hold of an almost free machine code editor and started writing my first 100% machine code game, the results of which I sent to my favourite public domain library at the time (Binary Zone PD).  This game (called Walker - but not related to the commercial game of the same name) is now available here : http://www.gamebase64.com/game.php?id=15496&d=18&h=0

That took a year to write and test, after which I wrote Battle (http://www.gamebase64.com/game.php?id=10521&d=18&h=0) and and arcade game (which can not be found :( )

After a while I brought an Amiga 600 and BlitzBasic for it.  Never really enjoyed either of them (but did write an update to Walker) and when I heard that Commodore went bust, I quickly sold my Amiga and brought a lovely Archimedes A3010 (and then later a RiscPC).

I was initially dismissive of BBC BASIC, but these machines were so nice to program for - I wrote various utilities before re-commencing my game writing with Walker

I also wrote an ARM Module which I sold to a computer magazine for £30 or so...

After Acorn went bust, I brought a Gateway PC and started programming with free copies of Borland C - didn't really do much programming until I brought DarkBasic Professional, and whilst it was usable, it was never really that fast, until they let everyone use it from Visual C.

I did write a few programs for it (Humans on a planet, for example), but didn't do that much.

I organised several meetings for 3 or 4 years and then left to use BlitzMax (after writing Fight Tune and CubeZ).  I was in the forums one way when I saw someone mentioning GLBasic - so I checked it out and brought it!

The main advantage of GLBasic is that 3D works on all platforms and it's fast.  I must say that Gernot has provided a remarkable easy to use language.

Wampus

Quote from: Ian Price on 2012-Mar-22
I think you played Saboteur a few too many times! :P

Exactly right. :) Other kids wanted to be firemen or football stars. I saw Saboteur and knew it was my destiny to become a kick-ass ninja. I had no idea what I was doing but I believed in it strongly and trained real hard. Got myself into a heap of ridiculous fun trouble.

Quote from: quangdx on 2012-Mar-22
I am incidentally an actual ninja (well a b-boy, but that's pretty close)

...so here it is on facebook.
https://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=2433128224

:O That's amazing. You're really good!! Makes me wonder what other talents us coders have around here.

On a slight tangent, the last show of 'ninja acrobatics' I was in was a public event for charity. The idea was my Ninjutsu school would set up near the middle of town and do running rolls over and over again in a big continuous loop, plus anything else that impressed people walking by. People were meant to sponsor us for each roll we could manage. The trouble was we'd thrown a party the night before and that had also turned into a night out clubbing for most of us. So, the running rolls demonstration in the morning also became a barfathon. Ugh, I can remember the sick buckets in the corner, and the smell. Yeesh.  :puke: Our teacher was so embarrassed but he was like the main instigator the night before.