How old were you when you first achieved...

Something programming related thats worth mentioning to people? And what was it? (Explain in detail please) I'm just asking this to see if everyone else started as hopeless failures like me... not... that I'm giving up any time soon =)

That question cannot be answered. Years ago, when I first
made moving-lines in QBasic, there were newbies on forums
to say "neat".

The first bit of "code" that I wrote that garnered attention
was a custom map script for Age of Empires 2. One website
reported 3023 downloads within a month. That was fun.

www.recipicky.com about a month ago hahaha

When i was about 13 or 14(before the internet gain paced) and during the time of the BBS's where MMORPGs were known as "Door Games", I wrote a door game called "In the Building" where you would move into an apartment as residents and would get into fights with one another as well as AI residents....

Needless to say, I was selling it for $10 a copy and uploaded to my friend's local BBS which somehow spread to all over the US and amazingly all over the world. I was getting purchases from Hong Kong, Israel, California, NC, all over the place. Made about $400 off of it....and the next year I started highschool and sorta...stop programming.......and things just went downhill from then. I think the selling point of it was the fact that it was so hilarious for its time as compared to other door games (LORD, Usurper, TW2002...)...i had everything on there from picking on nerds, to graffiti, to fighting bullies, to talking trash about peoples mothers....it was a fun time.

Interestingly enough, i did a search on it and actually found my game on this BBS Door game archive.....interesting!

Does Hangman and a guess the animal game on zx spectrum when I was about 10 count. :) Or maybe the game I made a few years later in the style of Deja Vu, Uninvited etc., where you were investigating this mysterious happenings in my neighbourhood which all eventually lead to this lady vampire. She was, of course, based on a woman that lived there that all the kids in the neighborhood hated. She was a bit of a nutcase really, put up barbed wired fence around her garden so we couldn't climb in there and get our basketballs (she lived just next to a small basketball court), so I figured she deserved being the bad guy of the game. Actually won me a runner up award at a local Apple HyperCard competition. :)

Interestingly I just found some old notebooks I'd written down game ideas in when I was around 11. One of the ideas was a lot like GTA. :)

Ragnar

I was about 13-14, and I managed to write a little program on the Amstrad CPC in machine code that made an astrisks '*' bounce around the screen! :D

Though, I could only tell my mates, they thought 'Erm, great'! Oo LOL

Dabz

Wow! So many great... and braindamaged people on this site! Why does bm only have 56 entries on codersworkshop? (Yes I know this site is shared with other languages, but still)

Ragtag you don't happen to still have a version of the vampire woman do you?

8 - adventure game, folk music player (with beeps), space invader game etc.

A tron/snake clone in GW-BASIC, when I was 13. (Geez! Just realized I first started programming 17 years ago. More than half my life. Now I feel old!)

Anyway, it looked pretty decent on my old monochrome XT system, until I first ran it on a color computer. Way too fast of course, and until then I had no idea I had picked bright green on a white background as the color scheme. :-)

The other thing I did back then was a text-based graphical adventure game... (e.g. you were steering around a guy made up of a CHR$(1) smiley face, slashes for the arms & legs, etc.). Walk through hallways, picking up items & manipulating them, getting past obstacles to see more hallways & other problems. cursor keys to move, and typing commands ('pick up axe', 'hit spider with axe', etc.)

Very pointless, countless of hours of work and an insane number of lines. Exceeded the limitations within GW-BASIC, so had to chain multiple sources together.

The first complete game I ever wrote (International Golf) was published. December 9th, 1994. Guess that would mean I was 19.

xlsior and GFK both 30 right? me too. birthday June 1975.

31 - March 1st 1975

Thanks for making me feel old, lol.

in 1985 sold titles under the company name of vmc software... i found lingering traces of em on the internet, funny though, because when i sold these things it was via mail order through the magazines... there was no internet per say at that time...

anyways, lookee here --> http://www.ti99ers.org/timeline/refv.htm (scroll down)

http://www.ti99ers.org/timeline/diskb.htm

basi-calc99, hi res graphics expander, mini-mail99, and efiles99... available on disk or cassette :)

i guess i was about 30 years old or so... 20 years ago...

wow how time flies... seems like just yesterday :)

--Mike

Built a computer using a Kelloggs cereal box, thin paper cards and knitting needles, aged 10 ish.

Wrote my very first computer programme using proper paper cards 1975 - aged 15.

My first commercial game (1984/5 I think) "Astrowarp" at the age of 25. This was for the ailing Atari 8 Bit computer range - it was fab I had dozens of colours on screen, multicoloured sprites, display list interrupts, most of the code was executed inside the vertical blank which made it totally clean on screen - no smearing, it used a font which was especially designed for the game too.

My first multiplayer game (1989) "Creative Dungeoneering" aged 30. Created using midi leads - you could hook up multiple Atari ST computers and play a D&D game which was moderated by the Dungeon Master on one ST.

My first professional commercial multimedia software (1996 aged 36) for British Gas - working for the last company I worked for. This was a CD-ROM for NVQ kids and covered an enormous amount of detail across the curriculum providing evidence and experience in a customer service representative environment.

My first commercial game written for a government client M42 ATM Simulator 2002 from my OWN company SmartScreen Digital Media Limited, aged 42 - yes Hitchhikers Guide was right, it was the answer to everything - work for yourself! ;)

Mousey and I wrote this in just 12 weeks from standing still - 800+ cars, coaches, lorries all actually driving along a strecth of motorway, with you drving amongst them, hand coded AI (nice one Mousey!), PS2 like front end, 12 pieces of varying styles of music to listen to as you cruised along, force feedback steering wheel, 4 different scenarios, following the rules of the highway.

These are what I would call some of the milestones in my computing life.

IPete2.

holy crap mike....you're old enough to be my dad....and i'm damm old myself :p (jk)

Things I consider as personal milestones:

- (198-something) Signed contract with CRL to publish an adventure I wrote using PAW. It never made it to the shops. :(

- (1995) Relased PIXELplus 256, a DOS sprite/tile editor for QBasic/QuickBasic. Sold as shareware for a bit (via magazine ads), then decided to make it freeware. Is still widely available on the net, for some reason.

- (1998) Wrote a Yaroze/PSX game that won me a few compos, etc. and was published on the Playstation Magazine coverdisk a few times.

Can't be bothered to work out my age when all that happened. :P Besides, I didn't get a computer until I was 15, so I'm not sure it's relevant.

Wow... similar thing happened to me, except no publisher wanted my adventure game written in PAW! I think it was 1988/9 for me.

Do you have a copy still lying around that you can convert to a snapshot file? I'd love to play it on an emulator.

Check out the "Old games" part of my website for a screenshot of an old project of mine- the latest version got lost when I punched the laptop I wrote it on. Woops! That sprite ed was my attempt at beating your pixelpro :P ( I think it was PixelPro anyway....)

[edit] Click on Cygnus Logo and look around [/edit]



What was the name? :D I've got em all.... I think...

Ipete2: I made this arcade game with a cereal box two. You made a long sheet of paper with a shoot em up scenery on it and rolled it round a knitting needle and attached the other end to the second needed. Hey presto scolling scenery, put this inside the cereal box with the front cut out like a TV. Then made a cardboard ship attached to a piece of card so it could go up and down. Then you used your imagination as the collision detections hehe.

I just so happens I do! :P Someone else (from these forums, I think) asked to see it, back along. I have it in .tap format. Grab it here:
http://big10p.mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/cryquest.zip
P.S. It was CRL's idea to re-name it "Crystal Quest", not mine. :/

hehe, it may not have been my effort you are thinking of. There probably was another one called ProPixel, I can remember now. :)

Blitter Boy.

yeah... i'm on the verge of eternity... on my last legs... sipping porridge with a dirty spoon... hair growing outta my ears old...

sitting on a park bench... da da daaaa... watching pretty ladies in their satin pence... da da da da daaa daaaaaaaaa... old...



will you all remember me when i'm dead... at least curse me over a round at the local bar (pub for you blokes)...

--Mike

Great stuff! I've downloaded it now, and will definitely have a play within the next few days.

[EDIT] Ooh... it is morning, and there is a magic shell! hehe - I love these old text adventures. :)

I've got Blitter Boy. Thats the one with the babies?

I remember finding it funny and amuzing for some reason. Good work BTW.

Avon: Hope you enjoy but remember I wrote it years ago, so, be gentle! :P There's also a complete solution in the zip, in case you get stuck.

Cygnus: Cheers. Yeah, the one with the babies (don't ask). :) Those sprites took me flippin' ages - 4 frames in 8 directions. I was way too much of a perfectionist, back then. :/

don't tell me you did it pixel by pixel..... That brings back memories!

I did this when I was 16... http://hol.abime.net/4480 It was my first game. It won a few awards, so I'm very proud of it, even though it was a worms clone ;)

Well, not quite - I actually used PIXELplus 256 to do all the graphics for Blitter Boy. :)

Grey

Thats cool - did you get a highscore?

lol!

Mine was very primitive - you could select one from 3 items (it was a simple pull knitting needles out to leave what's left).

IPete2.

Yup. almost 31 now. (April 75)

GFK is several months older, think how better at coding I'll be in June hehe.

My first project that's worth mentioning is Anzoom3 (QBasic).
I made an image of it as i remember it because I don't have it anymore. I was about 13-14 (~2000) when I "released" it.



i didn't know how to use massives so the trees (green ovals) were static and enemies were attacking if a random number equaled zero or something.

The three white rectangles are stores (Weapon, Armor and Food store). When you moved, you lost some "dummy" and you had to eat to gain health and kill starve.
Finghting was something similar to mud. Randomly hitted each other. Something like that:
You hit goblin 5
You hit goblin 3
Goblin hits you 7

If you escaped the fight you'd lose some experience and money, but if you won you gained a little of money and exp.

when i was 13 i grew a third nipple.

i was quite proud of it until i discovered it was a boil.