★ GAMES ★ AUTEURS DE JEUX ★ MIKE SINGLETON ★ |
| Mike Singleton (Popular Computing Weekly) | Games Auteurs De Jeux |
I learnt programming on my first computer - a Commodore Pet; that was in about 1979. The manual, which was a bit pathetic, taught me Basic but after about three months I started fiddling with machine code which I picked up after buying the Mostek handbook. I wrote some games for the Pet which were put out by Petsoft. I'm still quite proud of the first one, Space Ace, which featured full scrolling and wrap-around routines I had developed. I moved to the Z80 processor when Petsoft was in negotiation with Sinclair to do programs for the ZX80. Later I was invited to do programs for the ZX81. The games I did became Games Pack 1 - I got £6.OCX) in royalties, which given that I'd only spent a few weeks on them, was one of the best programming tasks I ever had. I then did a number of games for the Vic 20 for Postern and finally after some discussions with Terry Pratt about some ideas I had for a landscaping game called Lords of Atlantis, the game Lords of Midnight was born in April 1984. I found that once I'd mastered one processer, working on the others became relatively easy - just a matter of learning the details of the instructions. When I work I mostly use my own routines running on the host machine. The only commercial programming tools I tend to use are a couple of assemblers - Picturesque's on the Spectrum and Commodore's own for the 64.1 also develop a lot of the graphics using the Grafpad graphics tablet. The way to learn machine code depends very much on your personality. I think. The important thing is just to start with very short simple routines - screen handling tasks are best because you can see any result and may even find a use for them in your games. Of the programming I've done I still think that landscaping is the thing I'm most proud of, particularly turning the routines into 'action scaping' for Quake Minus One, so that you could actually move into the distance. If I had the hardware I'd like to create an abstract stategy game. Name: Mike Singleton Favourite Machines: Probably the Amstrad 6128 - for the price you get an excellent screen display, a disc drive and a reasonable sound chip. I'm also enthusastic about the Atari ST. Sonography: Space Ace, Games Pack II, Siege. Shadowfax, Snake Pit (last three by Postern originally for Vic20, 3D Space, Lords of Midnight, Doomdark's Revenge, Quake Minus One (I also developed a couple of play by modem/mail games in that time: Star Lord and Star Net). Hobbies: I used to make home movies - I may get a video and start that again. I also read a lot, anything from science fiction to Le Carr& to D H Lawrence. PopularComputingWeekly8603130
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