This is the first "real" game I ever made. I'm a huge fan of racing games and I wanted to make one of my own. But, I had no idea how they were made so I developed my own techniques for doing things.

There are actually two versions of this game. The 1995 version used Screen 12 and was 16 color. I'm sure I have the source code somewhere but it's rediculous. I hadn't discovered functions yet. I had to copy and paste the same block of code over and over again in order to create the tracks. I had a block of code for straight, left and right sections.

The 1996 version (the screenshot) use Screen 13 which gave me 256 colors but no double buffering. By now I knew what functions were so I was able to create multiple track easily.

Despite my enjoyment of racing games, I have yet to make another one.

This is my second big game. Development actually started in 1994 when I checked out a programming book from the library and discovered the "Big" program. It would take a string of text and make it large. I figured out that they way it worked was by looking at pixels on the screen in a select area and if it found a non-black pixel it would do some math and draw a large square elsewhere on the screen relative to the source pixel. The result was large blocks recreating the text.

I had played Super Mario Bros on the Nintendo so I realized what this was: it was tiles. The next step was modifying the "Big" program so that the text would be drawn starting at different locations. I then added keyboard input so I could move the text around by pressing keys. I then realized all I needed to do was move the source rectangle around. But that would move one block at a time. I then "invented" offsets which moved the blocks and didn't move the source rectangle until the offsets had adjusted a certain number of pixels.

At that time I hadn't realized really how to use arrays. In the upper left of the screen the maze is actually rendered but before the page flips (double buffering was a new thing for me then, too) the maze is cleared from the screen. A cheatcode allows you to display the maze and the rectangle that shows the area that is being rendered.

Back then I also didn't have access to a scanner. Every bit of data was entered by hand one byte at a time into a text file which was then loaded at runtime. I hand drew the graphics on graphing paper and then filled in the boxes that the lines went through. That's about as low tech as you can get when it comes to digitizing things. But this was all stuff I came up with on my own. I didn't have the internet to bug people about how to do every little thing.

The concepts I developed and learned creating this game are still used in projects today.

This project was a huge endevor. At the time this game was being created, adventure games were big. Space Quest and King's Quest and others were being developed by Sierra. The big thing at this time was real video. Companies were spending rediculous amounts of money to film actors. By the time this game was finished, game companies had stopped doing video. It cost too much and the genre was dying.

I saved up all summer to purchase a video capture card. For $300 I got a card that could at best capture 160x120 at 15 frames per second. For $40 I recently purchased an MPEG2 USB video capture device that can do 640x480 at 30 frames per second.

I wrote the script and got my friends to put up with me filming them all over town acting out the scenes. Once I was done filming I went to work learning just enough Visual Basic to make the game. The only thing I couldn't figure out was the video. But, after going to a Visual Basic user's group once I got the tip I needed. The game was then quickly completed.

Just burn the ISO to CD and run directly from the CD. No installation is required.

I wrote the script and tried one video shoot. And that was the end of Crade Quest 3. The plan was to take pictures of various locations and then use a blue screen to place the acted out scenes over the background. At that time I just didn't have the equipment I needed.

There's a second "Crade Quest 3" which used DirectX 7 and was just a bunch of students walking around the beginnings of what would have been a school. It was top down and used the same concepts as Cradle Quest 1 but much more refined. Development stopped on that project when I realized I had no idea how to do the things that needed to be done.

Later on I actually built and 8ft by 8ft green screen and used the original blue screen structure (a PVC pipe cube) as the light box. I created three video projects for various classes using it. I had a newer capture card by then but it still was low on quality.

Again, even though I loved adventure games, I've never created another one.

My senior year of High School I got a graphing calculator. I quickly discovered games. Over the course of the year I created a Cradle Quest 1 clone and a Cradle Quest 2 clone. The CQ2 clone use the directional pad to move the cursor over the images (hand drawn copies of the original game) and then pressing a button would bring up a text entry field asking you what action you wanted to perform. It was the only graphical adventure game for the TI-85 that I was aware of. It took up all the memory.

In my browsing of other people's games I came across "Drug Wars" and "Hic's Quest." The goal of "Hic's Quest" was to get as drunk as possible. It was then that I came up with "Chic Quest" where your goal was to hook up with girls. I quickly changed the title to "Pimp's Quest." In order to beat the game you had to fight people and do other things to build up your stats. Unlike every other game ever made, beating up some people (or animals) would cost you stats like popularity.

Unlike every other game ever made, the girls actually had personalities as well. You'd have to have stats (and a car) that they liked or you'd have a hard time getting a date with them. To win you had to get a date with all 14 girls. You could also beat up the judge to win the game. It was kind of an RPG/Adventure game. You had to have certain types of vehicles to get to certain areas to find the girls. But you also had a wide range of stats including popularity and intelligence.

It quickly became a popular download on TI-Calc.org. And soon the clones came. Except all the other "Pimp's Quest" games had you be a pimp and you had to buy and sell hookers. At least one went so far as to offer (literally) 2-bit porn. My version was clean. Who would have thought that a game titled "Pimp's Quest" would spawn such a dirty genre.

I've contemplated making a PC version of the game but have never worked up the desire to go through with it.

Originally this was going to be a single player game. But it was quickly determined that MMORPGs were the big thing and so on-line it went. This was my first professional game. I was hired on as the only programmer to build this game. It was the first isometric game that allowed 8 degrees of rotation. It was also the first isometric game to allow multi level structures. As you can see in the screenshot, the player was able to walk up the stairs and stand on a platform. Another character could actually stand directly below the first. It was even possible to jump onto another character. You could also jump across roof tops. In the screenshot you can also see that the building has two stories.

The other first was the ability to actually build and destroy. Players could actually build a house from blueprints. If you had a blue print in your inventory you could aquire the parts and then build it. You could also toss dynamite around and destroy structures. Nothing was static. Doors could open and close. Windows could open and close.

The game got very far but funds ran out and it was just too much of an undertaking for a single programmer. The engine was basically complete but the content just wasn't there. Quests weren't implemented and the world wasn't created. The graphics also were never completed. A number of tools were made to help with defining everything from tiles to maps.

What isn't obvious from the screenshot is that the player character is actually a 3D object rendered with Direct3D. All the tiles are 2D. Other games have since put 3D models into isometric worlds.

It looked really cool and did some very unique things but unfortunatly just didn't come together.

Gravity Kills was actually a tech demo to try out things with DirectX 7. Since I couldn't release any Tombstone things I created Gravity Kills to try out concepts I was using in Tombstone. The large blue thing is actually a 3D model of the Death Star. They spins at speeds relative to the amount of gravity they exert. The goal of the game was to collect all the targets while fighting against (or working with) gravity.

It was the first game since Pimp's Quest that was actually released.