Amstrad was a side runner to the Atari ST and Amiga..
I started out with an Atari800XL which was a games console BUT had a keyboard.. The
hello world syndrome peaked my interest enough to go out and buy a fantastic state of the art spectrum...
I went to Accrington library and got a book called "
Idiots guide to BASIC" and learnt what I could of the language... lots of late nights and I made a crossword puzzle game
I outgrew this and went shopping for a new computer.. the one the spectrum magazines advertised was called something like samspade.. but as I was shopping the guy in the store said they have gone bust... It was down to a choice between an AtariST and an Amiga500 I opted for the Atari as it had a reputation as a serious computer as apposed to a games machine like the Amiga (hehe the old rivalry coming out there)
This machine had half a meg of memory and a 720k floppy disk drive... No hard drive.. thats it..
Let me tell you what i did with this half meg of memory and floppy disk..
I learnt how to program and over the next few years released over 60 titles into the public domain getting very good reviews in the magazines.. about 10 of my games got released on
Future publishings ST Format magazine cover disk.. The mag eventualy commisioned me to write a series of programming articles for them. I released one commercial game but too late to make much money.
About 12 years or more ago I used this same machine to connect to the Internet. I was able to log into shell accounts and use the unix software remotely from my little atari.. So newsgroup;s emails and ftp... around about then the www stated (
internet is over 30 yrs old.. www only about 12) I made a website with the Atari ST that is still out there now (But I aint saying where)
It took me a loooong time to go from my beloved atari over to the dark side.. the world of the PC but when I did I proceeded to learn the
C programing language and released my first PD game to rave reviews... I probably have a copy somewhere..its a platform game if anyone interested... called
Diamond Ice a conversion of one of my Atari releases.
Around about this time I was also developing my web skills and got quite prolific with Javascript.. so much so that I replied to an newsgroup add asking for someone to convert a muimedia atlas CD into a website.. i got the contract for 500 quid and did such a good job the people wanted me to do more... I showed them a game I was working on.
A large scrolling semi3d adventure game called
Droplets of Time .. Anyway we ended up turning that game engine into a 3d petsite released by hi2.com or
www.tvml.co.uk who had at one point over 10 thousand users with pets.
TVML then offered me a job as a full time games programmer using there own in house programming language that I had learnt...
At the same time I was developing web applications for an Atari contact.. when I told him of the offer and how I couldnt help him anymore I ended up in what can only be described as an auction for my services ....
I decided rather than take the gamemaking job and devlope an in house language that would be no good later.. I would go with the web stuff and started to learn
Perl (By far the hardest programming language I have ever tackled) I made an application called
WebWho+ currently now at
www.webwho.co.uk it was a domain checker that would check mutiple tlds (co.uk, com, net , org etc) but with a nice interface and could be hooked to a shopping cart.... This has been downloaded over a
hundred thuosand times and is used in many website selling domains either as-is or in a changed form. This script made me quite famous and got me lots of work that I am still prospering from today..
I am now addicted to the internet. I was the first person in accy to get broadband about 3.5 years ago on test and I cant go more than a day without checking my system. I am a programmer but dont make websites.. I make backends to websites.. the bits you dont see.. control panels.. shopping carts, secure areas. database systems blah blah.
OK boored enough now?