Oolite Bulletins

Only 4 hours time and 'no experience required'?

I won't have even finished my Pizza and Cola in 4 hours!

Cheers,

Drew.

ps. I did (back in the day) write a passable implementation of 'Defender' on my humble Z80A Spectrum using assembly language. Never got the hang of vector graphics though. Once I saw Elite, Starion and the like I knew I was out of my depth!

Hmm... I live just 30 miles from Swindon and go there everyday (pretty much) for work... it's tempting, but I haven't done any serious programming for a long, long time!

I should be able.

I sold 3 games in the 80's. 1983, Rigel with Ere Informatique (you might remember them, they became Exxos and then Cryo with their famous Captain Blood). With Ere Informatique, I was getting 15% of the sales, it was on ZX81. Then Argolath, 1983, ZX81, with Loriciels (Another french company), I was having 5 Francs per software (i.e. 0.8 Euros). Later I programmed Ethnos and sold it to Chips. I was getting 50% of the profit margin. It was 1986 on Amstrad, Thomson and Atari.

Rigel was a planet exploration game where the space rangers were trying to contain an invasion of bad pirates and protect the population. There was a basic exploration of the planet (it was a 128x128 grid) with ocean, giant amobeae, villages...

Argolath is a hack'n Slash game, exploring a dungeon on 2D, 2 floors only. I programmed also the follow up called "Gate of ..." (Can't remember the exact name). But it was on cassette and I love honey on bread. One drop of honey fell on the cassette. Then I recorded the final version. There was a bad contact with the 16K memory of the ZX81. I lost the program. No problem, all was on the cassette. NO, the tape got stuck on the cabstan of the tape recorder and the whole tape was destroyed. And the game. And my cash...

Ethnos was a kind of Civilization but before Civilization. You can still download it, download the Amstrad emulator and play it. There was 2 civilizations and the aim was to federate them, much tougher than the anhillation of Civilization.

I also programmed a game, 3D hack&slash on Psion but it never really worked.

Total revenue with these 3 games was very modest but good for a student: around 10 000 euros from 1983 to 1986. And I was famous and popular in computer shops.

Maybe.
When I was in grade 7, I wrote a very crude lunar lander type program on the high-tech TRS-80 Model III(the trash80) and followed up with a first person shooter shooting pixels from a crude cockpit. Computer was too slow for that though. Blew my computer science teacher's mind though. I don't think it occurred to him where it all was going.

On second thought maybe not. I peaked then. Hard act to follow. Rather play and build oolite. At least I'll have a hobby when I'm 80!