About

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than a year of conversation.

Plato

I was five years old when I got my first computer. Well, it was an Atari 2600 console with an accessory called the Universum Compumate. The console used game cartridges and came with some very uncomfortable joysticks. The Compumate was a keyboard that plugged into the cartridge slot and turned the console into a computer.

After I had played all the games and levels, including cheating my way through the game with the spaceship and pipes, I plugged in the keyboard.

I was barely six when my father and I borrowed an Atari programming book full of little programs you could type in yourself.

So we did that together. He rarely had time to sit down and play or do things with me, so those sessions meant a lot.

Those sessions probably played a big part in my interest in programming. I started by typing programs from books and magazines, then tracking down mistakes such as a line I had missed or typed twice.

That was good practice for finding bugs. After a while, I started tinkering with the programs and eventually began writing my own.

Source: Superandi73

I was eleven when I started learning assembly language on a Commodore 64. I still have that machine in the attic at my parents’ house.

I learned a lot from writing small demo programs, counting vertical sync on a CRT monitor, and using IRQs.

When it was time to choose what I wanted to do, programming seemed like the obvious choice. I went to a technical high school and earned a programming certificate. The course also included economics and accounting, which came in handy later when I started working in enterprise software after college.

But why games? The first thing I tried to write on my own was a Space Invaders clone in C64 BASIC. It became a hit with my family. My father said he liked it too. He always knew how to encourage me when it mattered.

Games have always been part of my life, whether computer games, tabletop games, or board games. I even once joined a team writing a game played with pen and paper.

A few years ago, I decided to give game development another try. I downloaded Unity, later tried Unreal Engine, and got started.

I’m now part of the community, and I try to give back some of the help I received when I was starting out.

I hope you enjoy what I share, and I’d be glad to hear what you think.

Keep gaming, my friend, and try making a game of your own!

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