Who owes their career to the Spectrum?
Miscellaneous Forums/General Discussion/Who owes their career to the Spectrum?
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| http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6572711.stm **EDIT Video: http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_6580000/newsid_6582200/6582255.stm?bw=bb&mp=wm Yeah I had a 48K spectrum when I was 8 and started programming BASIC from the manual. I loved it. I never stopped programming and using computers (and consoles) and after 9 years programming business software in Delphi and SQL, I finally got back on track and now I'm making games full-time :-) |
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| Me - 48K was my first computer - my first love too. |
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| What puki said.. Sniff Although we had a zx81 but it didnt interest me so much |
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| I started on a ZX81 then progressed to a Speccy... followed a 128k (the ones that looked like the spectrum+ with heat sink on the side) |
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| Vic20 and C64 all the way. |
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| Happy birthday to the Speccy - 25 today! Yep, I started on a 48k spectrum when I was 9 or so, about 20 years ago. I started by drawing teapots using block colours on the 'command line' (whatever it was called back then) by using the escape keys to change the text / background colour. Then I progressed to typing in 'Beep' tunes from the Spectrum BASIC manual to play Good King Wenceslas. Then I started making basic games and programs, including a snowflake generator that got published in 'Program Pitstop' in Your Sinclair, along with a pitying comment from the column editor. These days I'm doing C# at work / ASP / .net / SQL at work, but do less programming than when I first started out. I still enjoy all aspects of development, whether it's games or businessy stuff. |
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| Vic20 and C64 all the way. When my spec broke, I naturally bought a C64 :-) better graphics and sound.Sonicfactory: Yeah I played some of my dad's folk music via the BEEP cokmmand. I'm pretty sure he thought it was a travesty. Later on when I had a C64 sound was lots more exciting, then I started tracking on the Amiga for like 8 years or something... |
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| I think the Z80 was great in the Spectrum but the keyboard was soo bad...nah gimme my C64 Brotkasten! :O) |
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| My route was ZX81 - VIC20 - C64 - C128 - Amiga 500 - PC......... |
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| I started on the Amstrad CPC 464, and then later got a Spectrum +2A. If it weren't for these machines and my mums friend suggesting that I tried to make games instead of playing them, I wouldn't be a freelance web developer today. My route: CPC 464 -> Spectrum +2A, -> Amiga 1200 -> Windows -> Mac OS X |
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| At the risk of sounding a little controversial, why did you downgrade from an Amstrad to a Spectrum? The CPC really was the superior machine, although I admire the speccy for starting the whole thing off, and what it achieved for the money. Me: CPC464->Amiga500->A1200->PC(begrudgingly) I remember writing adventure games where it would ask you if you had picked the key up when you tried to open a door. It was my greatest Eureka moment when I figured out how to make the computer remember if you had the key. I will never be amazed by computer gfx like I was when I got my Amiga... for the first time it brought real arcade quality to the home. |
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| Amstrad cpc 464 for me. made my first game on it, was the first house in our street and houseing scheme to get one when it was first released. Then got a comadore but didnt like its syntax. then got an amstrad erm.. the one with the disk. dont recall its name. loved that but trying to delete data from the disk was impossible. I programmed that for a while before getting an Amiga 500, then 600, then 1200 then my first IBM PC. |
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| I still remember going to our local electronics store on the high street and picking up that big, flat Speccy box with games like Horace Goes Skiing and Chequered Flag. *sigh*.... rubber keys... those were the days. After that, it went something like : 128k +2, Amiga 500, Amiga 1200 (later towered up), MacOS 8, Linux, Mac OSX 25 years? bloody hell... |
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| What was your very first game that you made on your own ? Mine was a game where a line appeared, and each tick an extra line was added, the trick was that on level 1 you had to hit the space bar when there was one line, or one link in the chain of lines, level two you had to hit space on the second. and so on. I got to level 14 but after that it got really hard to count the lines. |
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| then got an amstrad erm.. the one with the disk. Amstrad 6128! ;) I had one, loved it, I made my very first game on that, DeadMaze was the name, crap was the game! :D Still, it got me interested in tech and programming as a whole. Though somehow, I still managed to end up on building sites... BOOOO!!! Dabz |
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| I got my 48K Spectrum in 1983 but later replaced the keyboard with a 'proper' one. It was called Lo Profile, or something. |
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| What career?? |
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| Not me, that keyboard put me off right away and I got an Oric-1 instead. After that of course was the Commodore64! |
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| The Oric-1 keyboard wasn't much better, was it? |
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| I don't have a career in Games Dev but I owe my love for programming to the Commadore 64. My first ever console was this big brick like console that was black and cartridge based. I had 2 games, LadyBug and smurfs. When I got the C64 I was blown away by the graphics and sound. I had games like Turrican 1+2, Little Puff in Dragon Land, New zealand story, Hawkeye, Flimbos quest ect. Ahh the memories! |
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| My cousin had a spectrum 48k, seemed too difficult to use (or perhaps very bizarre ergonomics and design, had its own twisted path to achieve something), instead I picked up a C64 - then an Amiga 500 (for games and multimedia and programming) & Apple Mac (The E.T. machine for work and WYSIWIG design) - IBM 486 DX2 (what a downgrade, I hated that PC, I hated DOS as well) - Dell Pentium Pro (great machine with a matrox card!) after that an endless series of desktop PC, always faster, always with more fans, and now laptops only (freedom!). |
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| big, flat Speccy box with games like Horace Goes Skiing and Chequered Flag. Yep me too. Also it had this new computer smell that I'll never forget. What was your very first game that you made on your own ? pretty sure it was a text adventure game with manual parsing along the lines of 100 Input A$: If A$ = "N" then Goto 500 500 Print "You are in a big square room and can go North or Sound" I wasn't gonna list my route through computers as that's been done lots before, but seeing as others have, mine was: Spec 48K, C64, Amiga 500, Amiga 1200 with HD (great machine), saw DOOM, built PC (DX4 100MHz, 4MB Ram, 500MB HD, Soundblaster, VESA graphics, no CD-ROM) and the rest is history! Also along the way I programmed (round at friends) CPC464, Acorn Electron (extensively), BBC Micro, Acorn 32-bit RISC thing, Spec +2, Spec+3. What career?? well it can be a career in programming, doesn't have to be in game development. |
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| At the risk of sounding a little controversial, why did you downgrade from an Amstrad to a Spectrum? I didn't know what the Spectrum was at the time, but fancied something new. I like the CPC more than the Spectrum, but still think it was worth getting the Spectrum. then got an amstrad erm.. the one with the disk. If it had blue cursor keys, it was a 664. |
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| >When my spec broke, I naturally bought a C64 :-) better graphics and sound. Hmm... my Spectrum was equiped with stereo AY chip + 8-bit covox :) and a few multicolor programs (>16 colors) + 144 KB RAM ;). C64 was good but I like ZX much more. |
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| 100 Input A$: If A$ = "N" then Goto 500 500 Print "You are in a big square room and can go North or Sound" Ah yes, I spent many happy days making a hardcoded, multiple goto adventure game :) The source would reach several hundred lines of code, and trying to read through it was like trying to eat noodles with tweezers. But the first game I ever wrote properly was a game with 2 levels, where you had to collect sticks of candy, either by walking over it, or jumping up to collect it. No, it wasn't very advanced. I would dread to think what the code looks like... |
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| I started with Basic on a Casio PB 100 programmable pocket computer. A few months later came the ZX 81 with 1 KB RAM, then the 16 KB memory extension, and then finally a ZX Spectrum 48 K. After that, I originally wanted to by a Sinclair QL, but since the shop was unable to get one for me, I bought an Apple ][+ clone instead, wich was later followed by an Apple //e clone. After that came the first IBM XT and almost two decades of PCs. Now I'm back on Apple. Still, the Spectrum was the coolest of all. |
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| "You are in a big square room and can go North or Sound (sic)" Sounds like an early Leadwerks game ;) You can see: A barrel. Some crates. :D |
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| TRS-80 Model I here. (I saw it in Radio Shack, found out I could program my own games and I was hooked). The first machine I could afford to own was the VIC-20 though. |
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| But honestly i remember much greater moments when i bought the Amiga 1000. When it came out it was really special and those who had one knew each other in the city...this was like a strange weird club and you knew you had something really really special! :O) |
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| ...and then came the first DOS-PC Coming from the Amiga I was baffled when i heard of the 64/640k barrier. I am a bit too young (40) for the ZX81. I started with the Philips Console Videopac G7000 which had a rudimentary programming cartridge, followed by a C64, Atari ST and Amiga 500 and then al went downwards after my first PC :) |
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| @GameBoy- Perhaps I was trying to start a bit of a flame war, but no-one took the bait. I used to love the banter of Amiga vs Atari or Speccy vs Amstrad back in the day : ) |
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| What did I get started on? Hard question. We were poor and my parents couldn't afford (or willingly but me) a home computer so that was out of the question. I had to use the computers at school or a friends house. I think the first line of code I wrote was on an Apple IIe. I pretty much had to use whatever I could get my hands on...a Panasonic Jr-200, old 3.88mhz IBM computers in high school using gw-basic, and I may have coded a little on an Aquarius and an Atari 800XL. If my parents would have bought me a computer when I was a kid (hell I'd have even settled for a Vic-20), who knows where I'd be today. I used to stand in front of the Vic-20 display at Zaire's department store in the early 80s and just foam at the mouth. My kids will have unlimited opportunities. I'll provide them the tools they want/need to flourish and be successful. They won't suffer as I did. I was like a painter with no canvas. A photographer with no camera. A mason with no bricks... |
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| Speccy>C64>BBC Master >C64 >BBC B>C64 (!!) >BBC Master 128 (wooo!)>PC 386 30mhz > PC P60 (with the floating point problem!) > PC Celeron 1.2ghz> PC AXP 2400+> PC AXP 2600+> PC AXP64Dual Core>Notebook Intel Core 2 Duo. :) Yipes, thats alot of computers. I had a c64 before the master but I never coded on it. So um, Yup, I guess I do. I kept breaking my early machines. The BBC's motor controls kept breaking (and the TV out socket on the master's). I lost my speccy when I plugged its tape outputs/inputs into a keyboard which had the same socket as a power-out, which broke its ability to load/save.. It finally bit the dust when I wondered what it'd do when I put it in the bath! |
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| You can see: heh, Doom didn't even have crates but boy the barrels were sure good.A barrel. Some crates. Spec had a RENUMBER command and the C64 didn't, which was criminal. C64 had a perfect tape recorder whereas you had to buy your own (gasp) for the Spectrum and then set the volume on 7.2517 or it wouldn't load and woe betide anyone who slammed a door or walked too heavily during loading. Spec+2 remedied this with a built in tape deck BUT it had no tape counter - CRIMINAL! |
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| Aha, BBC just posted a video too: http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_6580000/newsid_6582200/6582255.stm?bw=bb&mp=wm I played all the games in the video, in fact I was playing star quake when my spec broken one saturday morning, the screen went black, and it never worked again, sob. Now it's just a retro ornament in my office. |
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| Spec+2 remedied this with a built in tape deck BUT it had no tape counter - CRIMINAL! Kind of strange for Amstrad to do that considering the CPC 464 in which they used the built in tape deck idea from had a tape counter. Oh yeah, forgot to mention that there's versions of Doom and Sonic on the Spectrum too. |
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| > Perhaps I was trying to start a bit of a flame war, but no-one took the bait. I used to love the banter of Amiga vs Atari or Speccy vs Amstrad back in the day : ) Back in the day I would gladly join in, but, sniff, they are all gone now... |
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| Spec had a RENUMBER command and the C64 didn't, which was criminal. I've heard you say this before but am sure the original Speccy didn't have a renumber command. Are you talking about one of the later, Amstrad versions? |
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| My god you could be right, it was the +2 and +3 maybe. |
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| 128k basic had renumber, the original basic didn't... but you could do some really cool stuff where you used maths to gosub a certain line, ie Gosub 1000 + (player*100) which was very handy! So you'd do stuff like assign an range of numbers for certain things and have them at the top of the program - Let AICode = 2000 - Then you'd Gosub AICode + (AIState * 100) which would then give you 100 lines of code per AI state.. all good stuff! Yeah yeah... no functions or procs though! |
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| Don't be sad, Dynaman. I'm sure we can still find something to argue about... ; ) |
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| I wanted a speccy but they were sold out, so i got a c64....lucky break. |
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| 128k basic had renumber, the original basic didn't... Ah, that would explain it. I never had a 128k Speccy. |
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| Like Indiepath, I started with the Vic 20. Never had a Spectrum or Amstrad. Commodore all the way! VIC 20 -> C64 -> C128 -> Amiga 500 -> Amiga 600 -> Amiga 1200 -> Amiga 4000 -> various PC's. |
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| So, no-one had a C16, then? :P |
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| So, no-one had a C16, then? :P Correct. Not no-one here...no-one. :o) C64 here. I remember those big (bigger than A4) blue BASIC programming manuals cover to cover a zillion times, and typing out hundreds of pages of games. Then came Garry Kitchen's GameMaker, then AMOS on the Miggy 500. But it wasn't until Blitz Basic on the PC that everything just 'clicked'. The day I found a reference on the internet to the "basic main game loop" was the biggest "a-HA!" moment of my computing life, and then it was Blitz that made it happen for me. |
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| I also made a hard-coded adventure game in BASIC! Then I used G.A.C. Graphic Adventure Creator. It was awesome but I never finished a game using it. Spectrum->Genesis->Amiga600->Amiga1200->200mhz PC->600mhz PC |
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| Spectrum probably contributed.. My brother was the one that first got me interested in computers.. together we saved up all our money ( from paper rounds , odd jobs ) until we could afford a Sharp MZ-80K. He taught me BASIC and machine code and I was hooked. Then it was a spectrum ( it had more games and more people I knew had one ), followed by a CPC-464 and then an Amstrad PC.. PC's ever since. |
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| > Don't be sad, Dynaman. I'm sure we can still find something to argue about... ; ) True, but I *KNEW* more then anything that Amigas rocked and everything else was second best. :) > So, no-one had a C16, then? :P I knew a guy, who knew of a guy, who knew of a guy that had one... |
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| So, no-one had a C16, then? :P Why would you want one? Besides, IIRC the C16 and +4 where geared (or at least marketed) towards businesses. |
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| VIC 20 -> C64 -> C128 -> Amiga 500 -> Amiga 600 -> Amiga 1200 -> Amiga 4000 -> various PC's. That's like being married to your childhood sweetheart... Personally I flirted with different women!ZX81 -> Speccy 48k -> Speccy 128k -> Memotech MTX512 -> Atari ST -> Amiga 500 -> Amiga 1200 -> Various PCs |
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| Why is it fun typing such things... :O) What i bought: a) C64, +Dataset, +1541, +SpeedDOS (selfmade) b) Amiga 1000,+2MB RAM Fast Mem via Golem Box (and then there was Dungeon Master, hah! :O) c) Amiga 4000/40,+16MB RAM d) various PCs, i guess i started with a P3 and a Riva TNT2 up to a P4 with a Radeon9800Pro e) miniMac PPC! :O) What i've used on top for work: IBMRS6000, various SUN systems , SGI Indy, NeXT Cube, BeBox, various awful Macs (no OSX) |
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| Gotta say the first computer I was given was a Spectrum 16 with an extra 32k ram added on. But really the first computer I played with was am Amstrad CPC464 which my Uncle owned. By neither of those had anywhere near as much influence as the two Amiga's that I bought. |
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| 48K was my first computer when I was about twelve, I made a battleships game where you played the computer in BASIC and a platformer (in basic!). The tapes are still knocking around somewhere... Found girls not too long after that though and computing took a back seat. The speccy didn'y really count towards my career apart from the last 3 years or so. |
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| C64 for me. |
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| Looks like there is not many of us who started a decade earlier. My first machines were Altair and KIM-1. Well.. KIM-1 was technically a single board computer but I still regarded it as a full fledged machine :) Then came the Apple II and it meant the end of the romantic first few years, as I've started programming for money. I moved to UK for a while and I bet some of you (or more likely your parents) parted with some cash to purchase my games. Oh, yes. C64 was a very good machine to program for. :) Barney |
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| So what games did you write Barnabius? |
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| Saboteur I and II and Steve Davis Snooker were the most popular ones. Barney |
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| That's like being married to your childhood sweetheart... Personally I flirted with different women! Actually it's like working through a group of younger, hotter, promiscuous sisters. Found girls not too long after that though and computing took a back seat. Should have taken the girls on the backseat, silly. Saboteur I and II BTW, weren't you working on a Saboteur III game for real computers, or was that just wishful thinking. Saboteur II was awesome, although the loading noise was absolutely horrible. |
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| You worked for Durell in Taunton, Barnibus? |
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| I worked as a freelancer but Saboteur was done for Durell. I remember them as quite a nice bunch of people. I also remember driving regularly from Southampton (where I resided) to Taunton with my LHD car. It's pretty hard to overtake on 2 lane roads when you are sitting on a completely wrong side of the car. So, the trip to Taunton was always an interesting experience. :) So interesting that finally I decided to get rid of my old car and get a brand new UK model. Only to spend some time learning NOT to change the gears with the right window lever. :)))) Barney |
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| heh :) Only ever played Saboteur 1 but that was a great game. ;) |
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| The c64 had better looking graphics and sound, but the speccy moved better and was smoother at rendering those horrid see through sprites :) I thought outrun and racing games were much better on the speccy because of this. POKE 23609,100 then type 'Beep' 'bip' 'bip' 'bipitybip' :) Anyone remember the last ninja? man what a game :) |
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| Best amstrad command ever..... Poke 192 -- erm.. might have been 182 |
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| Hello. C64->Amiga 500->Amiga 1200->PC's. I did, however, spend almost an entire summer holiday in Hong Kong learning to program on a spectravideo 128 in a shop - a 'park and shop' I think it was called, bang in the middle of Central. The staff there were quite intrigued by the Gweilo sat with his nose in a book, not getting suntanned :o) Oh, especially for Jake: [Edit] Cor, blimey, I'd forgotten how much I used to love programming in assembly language. As Puki would say 'Sniff'. [/Edit] Goodbye. |
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| assembly programming doesnt look much fun looking at that example code(!) |
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| I started off with a programmable calculator (cant remember the make now), but it had a one line (but scrollable) display, and had BASIC I then saw a Spectrum running, but in the end up with a C64 (with superior graphics and sound). Towards the end of its life, I got an Amiga A600. However, when I heard the Commodore went bust (was at University at the time), I sold that and got a Archimidies A3010, followed by a RiscPC Unfortunately, Acorn too, went bust, so I decided to get a PC - a Gateway one (cant remember the model though). Over time, I acquired a Dell machine at a very cheap price, but sold that. Then I got a few Mesh PC computers, sold them and got Acer laptops. Unfortunately 3 or 4 of those were stolen and replaced over several years. Finally, as of this moment, I currently have 3 iMacs and a PC for my sister (who, for some strange reason didn't want a Mac). My favourite machines were the C64 and Acorn ones. Both were very easy to program, both with BASIC and machine code (ARM code is so easy to write and understand), and both were extremely powerful. The new RiscPC's are pretty powerful now - unfortunately, there is little in the way of software for them. The Amiga was a real pain to program for - did have Blitz Basic for it, but it was really buggyfied (which was the main reason I went for DBPro, when it came out - which was a bit ironic really). Anyway, I wrote Walker for the C64, Amiga (which no longer exists - I sent it to a PD library, but never knew whether they received it or not), and for the A3010/RiscPC. Before that I had written a quiz game of some sort, and after that came Duel (C64). After doing Walker for the Amiga, I did a car racing game (cant remember what it was called), using Blitz Basic (the last time I would use it until I got it for the Mac late last year). And after doing 2 versions of Walker for the A3010/RiscPC, I just wrote utilities for the latter - a map editor, program protector, and a linklist module (of which I got paid - albeit late). I also sold some stuff on the C64 - exactly one copy of a music playing program I wrote (called, if I remember correctly Music Maker). The main program was written in BASIC, but the player was an interrupt driven machine code routine. |
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| assembly programming doesnt look much fun looking at that example code(!) It was (and is) :o)You got the rope, *and* both ends, when you program assembler, that's the real beauty of it :D |
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| So a few old hands here, cool. SoggyP: Thanks! Not that I'll be using it though (sigh). Hey my sigh is the same Puki's "sniff". Yeah after BASIC assembly felt like the business. I first did some on my C64 when someone gave me an assembler they'd written along with a home made turboload which was awesome! Then I wrote my own version of basic which compiled into assembly so was wicked fast. Then I did assembly on a friend's spectrum+3, on a BBC Micro emulator on the Amiga and then finally in Devpac2 for the Amiga, but Blitz Basic 2 put a stop to farting around for hours in assembly - I just inlined a bit in Blitz occasionally. Did a bit of assembly again on the PC in DOS just to see how fast it was compared to similar C, and it was around twice as fast (for graphics), which was neat. |
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| last bit of asm code I wrote was inlined into a delphi application I did to encrypt some files, wasn't anything fancy just did a sub and add based on the value of a key. worked tho. and was fast, and as the key was never stored very secure.. It went something like this. - off the top of my head.. procedure encodebyte; asm mov al,buff; mov ah,key; add al,ah; mov buff,al; end; procedure decodebyte; asm mov al,buff; mov ah,key; sub al,ah; mov buff,al; end; Hay while on the subject does Max take inline asm or via an include? |
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| I think you can import FASM. What did poke 192 do? |
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| lol.. Poke 192 crashed the amstrad, HARD.. At first it starts to beep, then the screen goes mental then it just turns off. I found it while sticking poke in a loop from 1 till I dunno like 99999 or something. pokin random addresses did some crazy things but 192 was the best by far. Me and my m8 who coded games together even put it in our stuff. If you died in our games we called poke and BANG, turn off the amstrad time .. was very funny when you let some one have a shot that didnt know about it, and then blamed them for blowing up your computer. I am pretty sure it was 192 but it might have been something else. it was so long ago. ?? Anyone for an amstrad cpc they could test this on ? |
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| I still have my CPC 464 :-) |
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| @flame, girls on the back seat LOL (;-) I'd a Amiga 1200 with a whole 10megs of RAM. Wrote an innovative lap counting application on my Miggy which worked via the parallel port for an RC Car club I was part of. The programs you can buy rarely provide a graphical representation of the laps done...... never made it to market but hey, it worked well. My miggy still works, might see if I can get a screen dump of it.... Amiga was my intro to Blitz. @MrTAToad, I liked the walker game on the Miggy, good game, good game. |
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| Walker sounds familiar but I'm not sure... Links? |
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| Wasn't walker a mech warrior game in which you had to shoot the little soldiers that were throwing grenades at you? I remember playing this on an Amiga Format demo disk - it was ace. |
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| Started on the 48k too. It's in my parents garage somewhere...and I think it still works. :) If you're running OS X, check out http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/games/zxspectrum.html (a dashboard ZX Spectrum emulator widget). |
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| Walker sounds familiar but I'm not sure... Links? The C64 image is on my web site, along with the Acorn review + other things. I suspect your confusing mine with a commercial game of the same name - only found out a few years ago that the commercial one existed. |
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| Nice story, Yav... I'm living the CPC nostalgia with you. 464 masseeeev! Just tried booting up WinApe CPC emulator to try that poke... but for some reason the emulator is black screening on me (before I put the poke in), so no luck there. I know you're into your emulators, so have a look at WinApe or NO$CPC if you haven't already. Relive the dream! |
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| Oh, BTW, for those of us who don't have a Mac, a Java speccy emulator you can play on line. Just click on the game titles... http://www.spectrum.lovely.net/ |
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| Yes, walker was that game, with the little soldiers and grenades :) A DMA job i believe. Isnt DMA still going? |
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| Best speccy game? Chaos for me. |
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| MrTAToad: Aha thanks. Yeah it wasn't the one I was thinking of but I'm sure it was cool anyway :-) |
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| Yeah it wasn't the one I was thinking of but I'm sure it was cool anyway :-) It took me a year to write - in 6510 assembler The Archimedes version took 3 months, was written in BASIC and played much faster :) |