COMPUTER NOSTALGIA
I used to make a lot of computer games in my spare time as a teenager, using software called Multimedia Fusion. While I regret not getting much actual programming and development knowledge from the whole exercise (I'd be a pretty amazing programmer at this point if I'd written them in C++ or even Visual Basic instead), I think they gave me a solid understanding of game development and kept me out of trouble (away from actual human beings) during my vulnerable years.
They got pretty advanced near the end, with features like internal level editors and some fairly complicated game mechanics. I had thought that all of them were lost in my various hard drive crashes through the years, but today I found a large cache of them on gold CD-R in my closet at home that dated back to December of 2000.
Here's the most complicated one that was on the CD, made when I was 14 years old. It was a clone of Mega Man with primitive graphics and some loose physics, but the controls are snappy and it's pretty fun to play. I only made one level for it; I recall having some fundamental trouble with the engine that ended up frustrating me so much I abandoned the project. I think it was that objects that were supposed to be destroyed kept being displayed on the screen for a reason I could never figure out.
Click the screenshot below if you want to download it from my student web space. It's about 350 kilobytes. Press shift to jump and control to shoot. The thing on the left of the screen is a health bar. Sometimes there are little elevators that you have to use to go up and down; just press up or down while standing on them to move them.
It's weird that I spent more years doing this sort of thing in my spare time than I have spent in college, but that the entire thing seems a little alien to me now. I think I'd like to pick up where I left off.
They got pretty advanced near the end, with features like internal level editors and some fairly complicated game mechanics. I had thought that all of them were lost in my various hard drive crashes through the years, but today I found a large cache of them on gold CD-R in my closet at home that dated back to December of 2000.
Here's the most complicated one that was on the CD, made when I was 14 years old. It was a clone of Mega Man with primitive graphics and some loose physics, but the controls are snappy and it's pretty fun to play. I only made one level for it; I recall having some fundamental trouble with the engine that ended up frustrating me so much I abandoned the project. I think it was that objects that were supposed to be destroyed kept being displayed on the screen for a reason I could never figure out.
Click the screenshot below if you want to download it from my student web space. It's about 350 kilobytes. Press shift to jump and control to shoot. The thing on the left of the screen is a health bar. Sometimes there are little elevators that you have to use to go up and down; just press up or down while standing on them to move them.
It's weird that I spent more years doing this sort of thing in my spare time than I have spent in college, but that the entire thing seems a little alien to me now. I think I'd like to pick up where I left off.